Silverwood under wage pressure from neighboring Washington

So wage pressure from Spokane, a half-hour away, is forcing Silverwood to raise its base-pay by less than 3%....seems more like a COLA than anything else. Somehow I can't see that as a major obstacle to Silverwood's operations...

Wow. $8.75. Now the kids working there will be able to afford bubble gum AND a Coke.

And one day, when they finish college, or work their way up to a better job, they'll be able to afford outback.

Not with the debt they'll incur.

Outback sucks anyway.

All of us have access to the best steakhouses. Some of us simply choose I-phones over something better than a bloomin' onion.

I keep hearing that word, "access." I'm not so sure that word means what it used to mean...

Happy Inigo Montoya Friday!

Insert infuriatingly liberal comment here.

It was a play on words, because Gator abbreviated "Cost Of Living Adjustment," and I mentioned "Coke."

I said what I said because I disagree with the blanket statement that many low-wage earners are teenagers who spend their money on bubble gum and video games. Many low-wage earners are trying to make a living.

I don't think that life is as easy as some people imply, that you simply work your way up the ladder or just magically come up with thirty thousand dollars a year to go to college. Not everyone has those kinds of opportunities.

I totally forgot about the Facebook conversation about Outback Steakhouse. It's nice to know that it's still rolling around in Tek's head after all this time.

Hey if you're gonna repeat the same junk for decades at a time everywhere you post, its kind of hard to forget...

And P.S. No one said life was easy. It surely hasn't been for me. But I've been determined to work my way up and that's paid off. That doesn't mean my life has been easy, just means I refuse to settle for less.

Life not being easy and unwillingness to change your situation aren't the same thing. I totally get the socioeconomic disadvantages and institutionalized discrimination that hold people back, but if you're unwilling to try to overcome those factors, then there's a 100% chance that nothing will get better.

But if you do work you butt off to overcome those factors, there's still a non-zero chance that nothing will get better. Here's an interesting article trying to actually quantify that non-zero chance:
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265356290/study-upward-mobility-no-to...ecades-ago

tl;dr - About 8% of the people born into the bottom quartile make it to the top quartile. Half of what it is in Denmark, and not great for a "wealthy" country.

Yes, that's why I qualified my statement, that there were always things that work against you. But if you don't try, I can say with certainty that your chance of overcoming is zero.

ApolloAndy said:

tl;dr - About 8% of the people born into the bottom quartile make it to the top quartile. Half of what it is in Denmark, and not great for a "wealthy" country.

Full disclosure. I'm basing this reply off of the TL;DR version.

The quartile approach makes no sense to me as it measures one doing better in a specific way using a relative comparison. You don't have to jump quartiles to be doing better (and certainly not a full three). In fact, if we do measure that way, some will be seen as doing measurably worse even if their personal situation improves. (the one moving up but being leapfrogged by another who has created even more mobility for themselves, thus pushing the first person down in quartiles) Quartiles are realtive, not absolute.

And moving from the bottom 25% to the top 25% isn't mobility in the US, it's hitting the friggin jackpot. According to this income distribution chart the worst case example of going from bottom to top as suggested here is someone born in a household making roughly $25,000 achieving a household income of around $100,000. (that's the highest bottom quartile and the lowest top quartile incomes) - that's the worst case example of bottom to top quartile movement...and there's roughly a 1-in-12 chance of it happening.

And that doesn't include the mobility of those moving quartiles from 1st to 3rd or 1st to 2nd or 2nd to 4th or 3rd to 4th or the bottom of the 1st to the top of the 1st...and so on. (you get the point)

The comparison to Denmark is disingenuous as well. I can't find an actual exact layout of numbers like that US chart, but by all accounts income inequality is much lower. (this article mentions the top quintile in Demark makes 4 times the bottom while in the USA it's 8 times and it puts the percentage of citizens making more than $91,000 at just 2.6%)

Jumping quartiles would be much less of an achievment. That same jump that 1-in-12 make in the US in terms of absolute income would be a jump to the top 2% in Denmark. In reality, Denmark has twice as many people jumping half as far.

Sorry. I just feel strongly about the mobility thing. I'm a firm believer that socioeconomic mobility exists in abundance in the USA. You just have to go find it and take advantage of the opportunity.

I agree to a good extent. What I will say is that any white american male in this country that wants to better themselves has very little actually standing in their way but themselves. Everyone else may have to work harder, but there is definitely value in working hard and being determined.

And that's why I don't like to make the blanket generalization that it's just a matter of will. Race, gender, poverty all create barriers to success. If we could accept that as a society, it would be a lot more realistic for all people to lift themselves up.

Gonch makes a good point, but absolute wealth is also not a completely meaningful metric in a vacuum. For instance, I just moved to San Jose last fall and the price of the same square footage of house is literally between 5 and 8 times what it was in Fort Worth. Why? Because lots and lots of people around here are super rich.

Cost of living follows absolute wealth so for the biggest expense, housing, relative wealth, not absolute wealth, determines your actual buying power.

Lord Gonchar said:

Sorry. I just feel strongly about the mobility thing. I'm a firm believer that socioeconomic mobility exists in abundance in the USA. You just have to go find it and take advantage of the opportunity.

I'm just curious what the basis for this assertion is. I don't know how much I agree or disagree (even aside from inequalities like race, gender, geography, etc.) with this statement.

ApolloAndy said:

I'm just curious what the basis for this assertion is.

Same as the basis for my opinions in the Trump thread - observation, personal experience, anecdotal evidence, common sense.

You know, Gonch Logic. :)