Minimum Wage just went up to $11.50 in Washington State. The price of milk is $2.68 a Gallon.

[doc_loliday]

I hope jedi gets something out of this very thread, cus the ignominy of my situation definitively prompted me to do something. If all work was deemed respectable maybe I'd be satisfied doing nothing. Still, I wish I had somebody to tell me to something, join the the army, or advice on where to work, or even just tell me how worthless I was. I guess I didn't have the experience or wisdom to even know where to begin. I worked hard, but for so long, it was just pointless.

[Smitty-48]

The respect of random people you don't know, plus the exact fare, gets you a ride on the public transit. Frankly, the only people I am concerned about, in terms of what people think of me, is my wife, her family, and my immediate neighbors, everybody else can go fuck their hats for all I care.

I like me just fine, if you don't like me, well that's just too fucking bad, don't fuck with me and I wont fuck with you, fuck with me at your own peril otherwise.

[Fife]

I think everyone here has had to pretty much work their way up through the shit strata of crappy jobs. I stood by a pizza oven making pies all summer in Florida. Ran wheelbarrows of concrete as a laborer for a masonry company, puking my guts out with exertion some days. Did a year of soul crushing call center fundraising work, sold cameras at Circuit City etc, etc.

It sucks, which is supposed to be a motivator to move on, rather than some badge of honor over being lowest rung on the totem pole, right? Unless you’re happy doing that stuff, in which case who cares what a bunch of elitist pricks on a rich guys forum think?

The best job I have had so far (among a whole bushel-basket of good jobs) was a work-study gig in undergrad working for the rec department. I got to mow the grass at the intramural fields, rake the dirt, and paint the stripes in the warm weather, and test the indoor pool water levels and rap-duke to the girls in the rec center in the cold weather. They let me have the job on top of my scholarship, and it gave me about 20 hours a week of daytime pay to contribute to my $10/carton cigarette habit and my $8/case beer habit. No boss on my ass, and my biggest stress was whether the AAs in my Walkman would hold up.

[Fife]

The respect of random people you don't know, plus the exact fare, gets you a ride on the public transit. Frankly, the only people I am concerned about, in terms of what people think of me, is my wife, her family, and my immediate neighbors, everybody else can go fuck their hats for all I care.

I like me just fine, if you don't like me, well that's just too fucking bad, don't fuck with me and I wont fuck with you, fuck with me at your own peril otherwise.

+1

Think locally, act locally.

:cheers:

[BjornP]

You also bake delicious pastries for PTA meetings and group counseling.

Little do you know that the "cream" in those pastries is actually sweetened whale blubber. Baby whale blubber. We also license our national pastry production to those US states who only ban third-trimester abortions or have no abortion restrictions, at all. They can't hunt whales, so they just use fetus paste and babies killed by a guilliotine placed at just the right point where they exit their mother's crotch.

[JohnDonne]

Jedi has delineated a certain point in an oblique way: The tendency of the human mind to want to support and identify, not only with who is, but who is perceived as most likely to rise to the top of the hierarchy. It's no wonder we're that way: For most of human history it was deadly to be in the losing side's camp in leadership disputes. To paraphrase someone, we like winners, we don't like losers.

In the book of Job, Job's misfortunes are viewed by others as divine retribution for some hidden wickedness, for his friends think it axiomatic that God will raise up the righteous and cast down the wicked. Yet in reality Job's fate, like all of ours, is merely the outcome of the unfathomable relationship between chaos and order, (God dealing with the Devil)

Hard physical labor is emblematic in society of the bottom of the hierarchy, therefore, as Job must have secretly sinned to have his house burned down by God, so to be a laborer on the bottom of the totem pole you must be at fault morally, for why else would you continue to labor and do not rise out of it? The exact reason will have to do with the in-group's value system. In the forum's case the value system is intelligence, independence and industriousness. But look at how the situation of the peasant was justified in Victorian times as the natural outcome of his stupidity and brutishness. (But there were some who saw in the peasants a pure and moral existence. In Victorian times, there were social movements like Tolstoyanism which idealized the peasant and his labor. Many young noblemen took to the country to live out these ideals.)

At the same time, there are many examples of the hard working, common man being mythologized in characters like Paul Bunyan and John Henry. The culture of respecting hard work itself versus industriousness was probably always localized to the working people themselves. Peasants, slaves, coal miners, farmers, situations where the consequences of slacking at your job could mean others being worked to death.

[Hastur]

<Musical Interlude>



</ Musical Interlude>

[Okeefenokee]

Jedi has delineated a certain point in an oblique way: The tendency of the human mind to want to support and identify, not only with who is, but who is perceived as most likely to rise to the top of the hierarchy. It's no wonder we're that way: For most of human history it was deadly to be in the losing side's camp in leadership disputes. To paraphrase someone, we like winners, we don't like losers.

In the book of Job, Job's misfortunes are viewed by others as divine retribution for some hidden wickedness, for his friends think it axiomatic that God will raise up the righteous and cast down the wicked. Yet in reality Job's fate, like all of ours, is merely the outcome of the unfathomable relationship between chaos and order, (God dealing with the Devil)

Hard physical labor is emblematic in society of the bottom of the hierarchy, therefore, as Job must have secretly sinned to have his house burned down by God, so to be a laborer on the bottom of the totem pole you must be at fault morally, for why else would you continue to labor and do not rise out of it? The exact reason will have to do with the in-group's value system. In the forum's case the value system is intelligence, independence and industriousness. But look at how the situation of the peasant was justified in Victorian times as the natural outcome of his stupidity and brutishness. (But there were some who saw in the peasants a pure and moral existence. In Victorian times, there were social movements like Tolstoyanism which idealized the peasant and his labor. Many young noblemen took to the country to live out these ideals.)

At the same time, there are many examples of the hard working, common man being mythologized in characters like Paul Bunyan and John Henry. The culture of respecting hard work itself versus industriousness was probably always localized to the working people themselves. Peasants, slaves, coal miners, farmers, situations where the consequences of slacking at your job could mean others being worked to death.

I bet Jedi can work a gas pump like you've never seen.

[JohnDonne]

Jedi is welcome to come to Oregon, I recommend him to join the fire crews, have a summer adventure, make a good chunk of change.

[Smitty-48]

Skilled labourers don't take minimum wage, coal miners average $25/hour, a roughneck floorhand makes $30/hour, lumberjacks make $35/hour.

Minimum wage is for Millennial snowflakes who can't even pump their own gas.

There's a shortage of skilled labourers, if you're an iron man with the skills to go into the breach, you make good money, if you have a college degree in cry whining and your special skill is World of Warcraft, you're as useless as tits on a slug, who knew?