Come again?

[oDDity]

Death Squads are an improvement over crack-dealers? Sweet FSM, I'm glad I'm living in the States!

Exactly, at least drug dealers only try to keep you alive long enough to make some money out of your suffering, not just shoot you dead on sight.

[demagogue]

Interesting coincidence ... a project I'm working on right now is on Philippine military sponsored killings & death squads. They are taking out leaders in the Leftist opposition parties ... politicians, activists, their families, priests.

It's unfortunate how that country, while it makes so much progress on some things, keeps back-sliding.

The gov't is running an investigation into the killings, but it's a "fox guarding the hen-house" sort of situation.

Edited October 17, 2007 by demagogue

[Ishtvan]

If you count it as a job, maybe crack dealers... "Studies show that timber cutters, the most dangerous job according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, have a 1-in-200 chance of being killed, while the Black Disciples gang of Chicago's crack dealers have a 1-in-4 chance of being killed while earning a salary of $3.30 an hour (well below the minimum wage, and the reason crack dealers live with their mothers)." (link)

 

That's just pathetic.

Yeah, the same source goes on to argue that drug dealing is a "glamour industry" like acting and singing. There are many people willing to work minimum wage crap jobs at the bottom of the food chain (e.g., stand at a corner and hope rival gangs don't shoot you), with the unrealistic hope that one day they'll be one of the 0.1% who make out like bandits at the top.

[Komag]

My impression is that video game design is like that. The new hire thinks he just landed the awesomest dream job, even though the pay is extremely low. A few years later he realizes the workload is extreme and the rewards minimal.

[Domarius]

...that really depends what company you get a job with, which is not much different than any industry.

 

@Omnebruit - sorry to hear your job sucks, you sound like a really hard worker. Eventually you'll find the opportunity to impress the people that matter, and rise up the ladder quickly.

[OrbWeaver]

@Omnebruit - sorry to hear your job sucks, you sound like a really hard worker. Eventually you'll find the opportunity to impress the people that matter, and rise up the ladder quickly.

 

Sure, that's what they want you to believe. What's more likely to happen is that after all of that hard work, the "people that matter" (i.e. the ones who make decisions, whether they actually "matter" in real terms is debatable) decide that you haven't worked quite hard enough, and that they would still save money by firing you and hiring somebody cheaper (possibly in a foreign country).

[oDDity]

Oh yes, there's always someone more desperate for the job/money (two words that mean the same thing) than you, and therefore is willing to work a lot cheaper.

Most employers would quite happily go back to the standards and conditions of the first factories of the industrial revolution if they could get away with it, and of course, in many third world countries, they do get away with it.

[Ombrenuit]

I'd say working as a nurse in a children's hospital ward. Spending your life regularly seeing kids in pain and with terminal illness and dying must be terrible.

 

I volunteered at a hospital one summer, and I have to say it was an absolutely discouraging experience. I took one of the hardest jobs by actually helping nurses rather then sitting behind a desk filing papers. I didn't meet a single nurse who didn't seem depressed, and I have to say they have every reason to be.

 

Patients are so drugged out of their minds they can't even remember if you just came in or not. My first day there was a woman screaming bloody murder about how much pain she was in.

 

Specifically I remember one particular memory. I had to fill the waters as I always had to do in the morning, and I walked into a new patients room. I filled her water, and it seemed she was asleep. She was hooked up to a respirator, the lull drone of a heart monitor in the background. I just remember her eyes; I've never seen eyes so haunting. They just screamed of pain--like a desparate plea. It just froze and chilled me ever since.

 

Working there was like seeing humanity in its worst condition everyday. I can't imagine how it wouldn't break the spirit.

[oDDity]

Exactly, and it makes it even worse if it's children in those conditions. And of course, they get shitty wages as well. It's makes me angry when you think of what sports players get paid for example.

We really have developed a seriously warped idea of worth and value in the modern age.

[OrbWeaver]

Specifically I remember one particular memory. I had to fill the waters as I always had to do in the morning, and I walked into a new patients room. I filled her water, and it seemed she was asleep. She was hooked up to a respirator, the lull drone of a heart monitor in the background. I just remember her eyes; I've never seen eyes so haunting. They just screamed of pain--like a desparate plea. It just froze and chilled me ever since.

 

I have never had the misfortune of such an experience, but I think that all of the anti-euthanasia brigade should be forced to do that job for a few months.

 

Few people disgust me more than cosy middle-class moralists with perfect lives telling terminal patients in excruciating pain that they must go on living because of some asinine gobshite about the "sanctity of life". Some of them even phrase it in terms of the "right to life", as if somebody telling you that you can't make your own decisions is somehow "protecting your rights".

[Domarius]

Sure, that's what they want you to believe. What's more likely to happen is that after all of that hard work, the "people that matter" (i.e. the ones who make decisions, whether they actually "matter" in real terms is debatable) decide that you haven't worked quite hard enough, and that they would still save money by firing you and hiring somebody cheaper (possibly in a foreign country).

Once again - depends on the company. Once you get to know everyone and talk to them about their progress in the company over the years, you know if you're in a good place or not.

[Springheel]

It's makes me angry when you think of what sports players get paid for example.

We really have developed a seriously warped idea of worth and value in the modern age.

 

That's one of the things I hate about our society as well.

[OrbWeaver]

I don't really understand it myself anyway -- surely the jobs that everybody wants to do (such as playing football) should be paid less, and the jobs that nobody wants to do (like cleaning up sick) should be paid more?

 

How do they find so many people willing to do shitty jobs for shitty wages? Is it just the case that there are so few jobs available that people have to take whatever they can find?

[SneaksieDave]

I get into this debate semi-regularly with a friend of mine. He'll bring up an example like the american football player who recently broke his back (or neck or whatever it was), saying that it's the riskiness of the sport, and the fact that they must retire young from their abused bodies and bad knees, that they get paid "well." Shouldn't high-rise construction workers also get $100M contracts then? What about police officers, who face unknown dangers every day on the job? I'd rather have bad knees and $100M than a bullet for $35k a year. It's the same with actors. One popular sitcom over here (Seinfeld) had all four leads getting a million dollars per episode in the last season. To tell jokes written by someone else for 24 minutes a week? Who in their right mind can justify that? "It's entertainment, and it brings in a lot of money from advertising; the money's gotta go somewhere, so the performers are paid well." Well that's some pretty tight circular logic. And then there's the CEOs, who despite running businesses which are bound by law to maximize profits for investors, are often paid hundreds of millions of dollars per year in salary and stocks. The rich keep getting richer, as the rest of the country sinks into a bottomless hole.

 

I think it should all be regulated in some way (earning caps perhaps? at the very least hit them with heavy tax, not tax breaks!), but don't say that to a purebred (and uninformed) capitalist or they'll start calling you a pinko.

[Ishtvan]

I think economists would argue that football players get paid for the scarcity of their skills. I don't know exactly how many players are in the national football league at any one time, but lets say it's 1000. That means that, of the 10s of millions of people who decide to play football in high school, only those who are good enough to play in college and then finally good enough to get drafted in the league make it through to the top 1000. The league is hiring the most talented 1000 individuals out of a pool of 10s of millions, and scarce resources cost money.

 

Of course this doesn't address why we see the need to sit around and watch people kick/throw a ball around with amazing skill. Personally I'd rather watch people fight to the death, or at the very least build robots that fight to the death, but to each their own.

[demagogue]

Well, they aren't really being paid for their skills per se, not in absolute terms. They're getting paid for the amount of fans they can draw, and the market involved in that (ticket sales, tv commercial advertising). Any individual or group whose combined talents can draw 10s of millions of people to pay attention for literally hours in a single night, really doesn't matter what the talent is ... throwing a ball, punching another man, strumming a guitar, luke-warm acting and a few dumb jokes, or how good it is in absolute terms ... they are the draw in relative terms (which of course, brings talent back in through the back door, if the fans are that discerning about it, at least), so the market says they deserve a big share, and even then they often don't get the lion's share. Their talents are almost uniquely bringing in 10s of millions of dollars a night from a very passionate crowd, but they don't get the biggest share ... it goes to the managers. Some might say they are actually being shortchanged.

 

It's hard to argue they're overpaid, at least, since one punchline of the history of the free market is that the pressure is to consistently devalue the contribution of labor. If there's unfairness, it's not about the market, or the talent/salary relationship, it's why individuals in our culture choose to give things like ball throwing, man punching, guitar strumming, and dumb joke telling so much of their time and attention. And I have a sneaky suspicion that, at least in its modern mega-stadium/national t.v. form, it's something that's been cultivated and created with a lot of money over a long time, to create an self-reinforcing expectation that we should be. Or something.

Edited October 22, 2007 by demagogue

[Ishtvan]

Yeah, I agree that's the driver for it, that people are willing to pay for tickets or watch ads during the televising of these events in which people run around performing some sort of entertainment. The managers who hire these performers try to get a bigger draw than the other managers, which is where perceived talent/attractiveness/likability/whatever comes into it, and there is only a handful of people who fit the bill. Also, the overall number of teams/players in a league has come to some sort of equilibrium as well. If the NFL suddenly doubled the number of teams and let in the next-best 1000 players, a lot of people would not watch these other teams and they'd end up losing money. I'm guessing athletes in Arena Football/AFL are not paid nearly as much.

 

If Hollywood suddenly decided to churn out twice as many crappy moves and created feature film jobs for double the number of actors it does now... well, in that case I don't think anyone would notice.

[hatching-a-plan]

Hmm, I think that this has more to do with WHO you are working with rather than just the market place as a whole. Although I will agree that everything you said is right. However not everywhere is as stingy and dasterdly as where you work. I worked at a sales job, but I was given more or less free reign to make descisions as I went. They were more annonyed with me because I kept asking questions about returns and things than anything else. I was told that I could no longer ask them questions and that whatever I decided they trusted me to make the right descision. I think no matter where you work you will find that there is something there you don't agree with. You can only hope and pray that the ppl you work worth are reasonable human beings and not deuche bags like the people you seemed to be working for. So far I've had a run of good bosses and only one bad egg in the bunch. I guess I'm lucky that way.