(2) After a year of this, the wife has a baby and works just 20 hrs a week, still at $15/hr. The husband has been promoted to store manager or higher (convenience and fast-food store chains are desperate for workers they can promote) and makes $25/hr.
(3) Their new combined income is $67,600–less than before, but still enough for a good life except in a few megalopolises. This is a completely realistic scenario, and not even demanding (the husband could easily continue to work 48 hrs a week). And it’s been done with jobs at convenience stores.
(4) If you come up with places where the starting wages are lower, they’re highly likely to be in poor states where the cost of living is lower. It’s still a realistic scenario. Making enough money to support a family is easy in the United State if you’re willing to work. Easier than it was in the fabled 1950s.
So the manager is allowed to have children and nobody else. Good system.
And even then, only in his made up scenario. Convience store mangers are not making 10 more an hour than workers, maybe 2 or 3 dollars more at most.
This guy is so old, born in 1943, he’s not even a boomer. He’s silent gen. Why do these people, not just go sit down somewhere, and yell at the tv?
Why do these people, not just go sit down somewhere, and yell at the tv?
That’s kind of what twitter is these days, isn’t it’?
True, and every crank with opinions, now has a platform.
He also boasts “I haven’t worked fewer than 48 hours a week in about 60 years.”
linkHas he even done wage labor for a day in his life?
Considering his idea of work is writing the Bell Curve, he basically has never worked a day in his lofe
I’m sure his college speaking tours required 60+ hours of weekly of study to re-familiarize himself with his own “work”.
THIS is capitalism’s “economists”? one that does calculations without taking taxation into consideration and then does further calculations based on hypothetical promotions and hypothetical wages for those roles? i know economics is a soft science but come the fuck on, you have to be a LITTLE more concrete than that no? and why does this dude think people should be working 50hrs a week? the 40hr work week was invented when one person was at home taking care of the housework. now, in his defense of this bullshit system, his solution is BOTH those people do a nearly combined 100 hours of labor per week, while nobody is taking care of the home, in hopes that one of them will be promoted so that the other can— not even stop working entirely to take care of the home, but just work LESS and still take care of the home and also somehow raise a kid while doing all this. again, to try to pretend the system that HE grew up in where ONE person working LESS than he’s proposing we do could afford to take care of a family and have savings while the other parent is at home keeping everything in order and raising the children
i hate these pig pieces of shit so much because they present these “solutions” to try and gaslight uninformed people into thinking we arent a far cry from capitalism’s supposed “glory days” that THEY grew up in and benefitted from meanwhile if you actually think even the tiniest bit about what he’s saying and apply just a little bit of historical analysis you see right through it and see what a dishonest piece of shit he is for trying to paint this as something anything other than dystopian
how about its the most basic human function to have a child and if your economic system doesnt permit people to do that then the system needs to be killed and if you disagree then so do you?
He’s an economist? Damn that’s incredibly sad
If you think that part of his work is bad, you should read his interviews about his time in Thailand, where he supposedly did some work on behalf of the American government on how to pacify a restive native population (in Thailand, these were the peasants and ethnic groups that got displaced to build western-accomodating hotels and resorts, and in the US the population were the african americans in the inner cities). Mind you, his trip to Thailand was before the Vietnam war even started IIRC, so he literally just went there to do experiments on racial control.
Actual demon of a human. And he seems to be a very big star with rightists. Go figure.
I would say Economists have more in common with ancient Roman Augers than they do Scientists. It’s a job for the rich by the rich, to justify why the rich are so rich. They’re the high priests of capital.
THIS is capitalism’s “economists”?
Yes, after purging LTV from economics and basing the science on vibes and wishes of capital the downfall was ineviteble. Result is basically a religion.
The American economy would shit itself if it were possible to simply be a quiet family that works retail jobs and raises a kid on 1 and a half incomes. Every aspect of American life for lower income people is presumed to have debt involved. Credit cards, home loans, medical debt, car payments. Those are how the gears turn and it’s what the capitalist class wants. They don’t want stable, financially independent workers. They want debt slaves who live off payday loans.
Maybe it is possible to live like Dr. Racist is suggesting, but it would involve a series of implausible circumstances to the point it’s not worth considering. It would be a family who somehow has no debt, a stable living circumstance, an assumed promotion after one year, no medical emergencies, no accidents, no layoffs, no sudden natural disasters, nothing. It would be threading a needle every single day, for the rest of their lives. Getting a royal flush every day.
I love the subtle use of “48hr weeks” like someone didnt sneak in an extra day’s work somewhere
I hope Charles Murray is eaten by gila monsters
feeding Charles Murray to wildlife is essentially feeding them bio hazards
Putting gas in cars for people used to be a job and people could make okay money doing it. He probably thinks that’s still a thing, because it was a thing when he was not so old. He’s probably also has cognitive issues at 82 years old on top of being stupid as fuck.
When you think about it, everything us easy if you make up an acontexual scenario and treat it as fact.
Expect nothing less from the Bell Curve guy
A combined income of $75k isn’t enough to live off of and save for retirement. It’s practically a poverty income once you have kids.
If this is the same scumfuck I think it is the only thing I wanna hear from this decrepit creature is the screams as its being vivisected
The Bell Curve guy? Yes.
Remember, this is the same guy who will call you an “out of touch elitist” because you don’t fly into a violent rage and shout intents of genocide at anyone who isn’t a heterosexual white man
promoted to store manager or higher (convenience and fast-food store chains are desperate for workers they can promote) and makes $25/hr
I mean this is all bullshit but I’m gonna focus on this point in particular, even if you’re lucky enough to be the one person who gets promoted to store manager (have fun with that fucking job lmao), at least 6 people who’ve been promoted to that level at a “convenience/fast-food store” level of establishment have told me their wage and it was not $25/hr. Try $16-$18, asshole.
why would anyone care what this stupid asshole has to say? pointless
he’s stipulating that they have to work 6 days a week, but he’s leaving overtime out of the calculation. Is it because he doesn’t think there should be overtime? Or is it so he can get to the number
$74,880
for some reason?
$74880
88
Coincidence? I think not
