Millions of Americans Quit Their Jobs... BUT

[Brickman | 4,073]

12 hours ago, avatar! said:

Interesting...

I'm pretty sure he wasn't smiling like that while firing his employees...

"You guys know that at least 250 of the people terminated were working an average of 2 hours a day while clocking in 8 hours+ a day in the payroll system? They were stealing from you and stealing from our customers who pay the bills that pay our bills. Get educated," Garg wrote, according to a Blind post viewed by Fortune... In an interview with Fortune, Garg said terminated employees who feel they "actually had great performance" should reach out to the company.

I read into this incident. Absolutely brutal and at Christmas time. Seems like US work rights are majorly messed up if it’s as easy as getting fired over a zoom call.

[Kguillemette | 1,561]

That really sucks for those people. On the other hand, it sounds like a very poorly run company. If I worked there and even if I survived that cut, I'd have one foot out the door while I look for another job. I wonder if they will even be around in 5 years.

[mbd39 | 2,036]

Behold the world of the NEET (Not Employed or in Education or in Training). They're pretty common on the internet.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NEET/

[Tanooki | 4,958]

7 hours ago, Shmup said:

I read into this incident. Absolutely brutal and at Christmas time. Seems like US work rights are majorly messed up if it’s as easy as getting fired over a zoom call.

It is, you have states that are under right to work, and not.  Depending which state you're in, you'll need to go through steps to get rid of someone, have proof of what they did.  And others, they can just decide for any reason that doesn't violate actual law (picking on race, religion, etc) and just say piss off you're done.

Yet I know in other countries, work is like a co-agreement down to removal short of law breaking bs.  If you opt to leave you may get stuck for a month or months at a place until they find a replacement within reasonable time, and if you cut and run early, even you can end up paying the company to bail for the imposition for quitting.  I find that as equally disgusting, because when you want out, you should be able to go without having to compensate a garbage company to get away.

[Brickman | 4,073]

44 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

It is, you have states that are under right to work, and not.  Depending which state you're in, you'll need to go through steps to get rid of someone, have proof of what they did.  And others, they can just decide for any reason that doesn't violate actual law (picking on race, religion, etc) and just say piss off you're done.

Yet I know in other countries, work is like a co-agreement down to removal short of law breaking bs.  If you opt to leave you may get stuck for a month or months at a place until they find a replacement within reasonable time, and if you cut and run early, even you can end up paying the company to bail for the imposition for quitting.  I find that as equally disgusting, because when you want out, you should be able to go without having to compensate a garbage company to get away.

The notice period is a scale and it isn’t as bad as you may think. To reach a months notice you would have to be working at the company for like 5 years. You can also just use your annual leave if you really want out. And if you’re leaving due to a legal reason like discrimination you wouldn’t have any issues leaving on the spot plus taking them to the ombudsman for compensation.

Waaaaay better than being fired on the spot especially around Christmas with no notice. Absolute dog eat dog.

[avatar! | 1,845]

16 minutes ago, Shmup said:

Waaaaay better than being fired on the spot especially around Christmas with no notice. Absolute dog eat dog.

Overall here in the States things are not quite that gloomy. Many places have unions (although many do not) that require people to receive compensation if let-go, as well as 60-days notice. Larger corporations and institutions typically spend a good-deal of money hiring skilled labor, so they almost never fire people without just cause. I had a colleague who moved to Germany, and he told me the way it works there is if you lose your job, you get very good unemployment benefits *until* a job opens up that you are approved for. If that job is say working 9-5 in a bank and you absolutely hate it and it's a waste of your skills, well you don't have to take it but you lose all your benefits. So, pluses and minuses to everything.

[Andy_Bogomil | 816]

9 hours ago, mbd39 said:

Behold the world of the NEET (Not Employed or in Education or in Training). They're pretty common on the internet.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NEET/

some of the stuff that I see from r/antiwork is kinda funny too. I thought the subreddit was about workers rights etc. but it seems like there's a lot of users over there who want to have all the comforts of life without doing anything themselves.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

On 12/7/2021 at 12:03 AM, Tanooki said:

Is he a dick, or did he take out some entitled trash who were defrauding their time clock like some antiwork stooges?

It's really hard to tell without a lot of inside knowledge from the company regarding what those people did, who exactly got let go, etc.

Before I got laid off (for reasons legitimately unrelated--the VP over our team made crazy unrealistic promises for sales and cost savings during COVID and dumped us and a bunch of others in order to try to show saving our salaries/benefits/etc. as making up some of the slack he could have just lost some face over), I and a few other folks that I worked with had been in similar situations before transitioning to more and newer duties.  We had been in our specific roles for so long and knew our customers and procedures so well that we could accomplish in a couple of hours what would be considered an entire 8 hour workday (or often times more) by someone else.  They actually transitioned those duties away from us to a team several states away who they had to pay more, and who took 2-3 workdays to get done what I and the folks I worked beside could in a couple of hours during 1 workday.  Yeah, we had "idle" time, but we got loaned out a lot to other teams to help pick up slack, rush special projects, etc., so we didn't often actually just sit around doing literally nothing while on the clock, but it did happen from time to time.  And the company wouldn't just come in, knock out all the standard stuff for the day, then knock off and go home (either unpaid or using earned/accrued PTO).

Based on how inflammatory the language from the guy doing the firing was, I suspect he may have done something similar to what the VP who laid my team off, and was similarly just trying to reduce headcount so that some chart somewhere went from red to black so he didn't lose face, bonuses, etc.  God forbid you tell the CEO or board or such that your teams were ahead of estimates until COVID hit and suddenly nobody anywhere was buying, and for those who were, stock couldn't be immediately obtained or pulled out of thin air.  In the case of my former company, the estimates the guy made for the quarter following our layoff were in the black, but sales were so pathetic it wasn't even funny.  Then, the quarter after that, something happened, as the estimates were way over what they were before COVID happened and the red in the investor reports was like 100x what it was when we got let go.  And somehow, to this day, dude still works there--it's incredible.

[Tanooki | 4,958]

Damn that is incredible (sad that is.)  That dude should get spit fired and roasted for that set of antics.  Yeah whoever would want someone who could do the job in less than a day when you can pay more to many slow pokes elsewhere while trying to cover your tracks.  I'd actually perhaps feel even less great about the person over them if they felt lying around a virus impacting the business you were doing so well then not, as if that wouldn't be expected either.  I'm guessing the upper management there is so stupid he can lie so blatantly and win, or they're complicit in the stupidity to make the company seem solvent so they're not all destroyed.  Either way it'll come down around them on their own doing, or backstabbing the wrong IT guy or whatever who can wrap up all the proof when things crack.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

7 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Damn that is incredible (sad that is.)  That dude should get spit fired and roasted for that set of antics.  Yeah whoever would want someone who could do the job in less than a day when you can pay more to many slow pokes elsewhere while trying to cover your tracks.  I'd actually perhaps feel even less great about the person over them if they felt lying around a virus impacting the business you were doing so well then not, as if that wouldn't be expected either.  I'm guessing the upper management there is so stupid he can lie so blatantly and win, or they're complicit in the stupidity to make the company seem solvent so they're not all destroyed.  Either way it'll come down around them on their own doing, or backstabbing the wrong IT guy or whatever who can wrap up all the proof when things crack.

Well, the week or so before it happened, he was basically ranting and all but frothing at the mouth during a video Teams meeting, where nobody except the IT guy who supported everybody under him but didn't report to him would say a word.  The sales people managed to get him within 10% of the goal he'd set before COVID blew everything up by getting a massive deal done later that day (the last day before that quarter closed), and the IT guy earnestly asked why he couldn't just explain what happened and that getting 90% of the way to goal when 50-60% to goal was what had been expected/feared was a fantastic reversal.  VP blew up at the IT guy about how "You don't understand, I ALREADY TOLD THE BOARD," and basically just repeated variations on that theme.  All of the people who took on our old duties were under a different branch of the company, so I guess it worked well for him because he could be seen as saving money, even though the company as a whole was paying 2-3x as much per hour per person and in benefits, plus the incredible lack of efficiency and experience (everybody on our team were basically 15 year veterans with the company while our "replacements" were total new hires).  Next quarter's goal was 20% of what the one that got us gone was and they just barely covered it.  The one following was like 10x what the one that got us sacked had been, and boy...I think they made it like 10 or 20% to goal.  I couldn't contain my belly laughs upon seeing it, especially since everything at the uppermost parts of management are nothing but a numbers game.

Not sure at all how the guy has managed to survive beyond typical corporate subterfuge (shifting anything that has bad numbers to be under someone else's umbrella and everybody wearing a suit being too uncaring or inept to follow the paper trail and see what's really going on.  I was really depressed about it for a while, but I got a really good severance package, had some savings, and some windfalls, letting me spend more time with my kids than I had all their lives and more with my wife than in decades, so it was ultimately a win for me.  Recently my wife picked up and ran with an opportunity right up her alley doing what she went to school for, plus days only, no weekends, and no holidays, so, for the moment, I've ultimately lucked into being a stay at home dad and am loving it.  I won't say I loved that crap happening to me/my career, but I can now say that sometimes the best gifts come in the strangest packages.

[Tanooki | 4,958]

Wow what a self important douchy psycho...you never make guesses as promises to the head of a company.  That clown clearly did, so he implodes.  Lucky it got up to 90% when half that was projected, ingrate entirely.  You never tell the board unless what you're doing is done or will be 100% surely done with the numbers projected as otherwise it's stock plummet level disaster worthy.  You're right it was all about he, him, that loser saving money, and saving face basically offshoring your work to another cheaper less competent department so he can look like a penny saver.  As you said on the whole they ended up company wide paying more, and he better hope they never catch it, because it seems like he projected it as saving money doing what was done, and in his tiny mental patient little bubble...he did.  But hey that's like cutting off a hand to get rid of an infected hang nail...sure it's gone, but the collateral damage is worse all around.  I totally got this clown figured out pretty well from this and the last post you did, ass kisser and attention diversion saved his employment, repeatedly.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

You're right it was all about he, him, that loser saving money, and saving face basically offshoring your work to another cheaper less competent department so he can look like a penny saver.  As you said on the whole they ended up company wide paying more, and he better hope they never catch it, because it seems like he projected it as saving money doing what was done, and in his tiny mental patient little bubble...he did.

 Oh no, he literally, in the short term, made it more expensive for the company.  He took the work from under his tier, where we worked in a state (and area of that state) with a relatively low cost of living and average wage compared to the rest of the nation and moved the work to another state which on its own has a much higher cost of living and wages, but on top of that moved the jobs to that state's capital where the cost of living and wages are highest in that state, plus the difference that they'd be paying for the same full benefits from one state to another...  But, he "saved" money because his branch wasn't paying out for our team and some others anymore, so it didn't matter what someone else was suddenly having to pay out--he'd made up the 10% shortfall difference number-wise.

But yeah, it was totally about him saving face, and who knows, possibly his own ass given how shouty he was during that last big group meeting.  I hate to say it, as it is kind of petty and I don't truly have any emotional feeling on it one way or another, but intellectually, given how things turned out for me in getting to spend all the time I want with my kids, I feel that he's kind of made his own bed and gotten what he deserved, as even before we got let go, his kid was always trying to (and sometimes succeeding to) burst into his office and beg him to spend time with him, which of course he never did.  After what happened, word around town was that he was even busier, so he had even less time to try to spend time with the kid.  I feel bad for the kid, but the back of my mind is basically shrugging and saying "well, this is what happens when your priorities aren't straight."

[Tanooki | 4,958]

Yeah that's kind of what i was thinking, fake savings because he's a parasite.  I get where you're coming from, screw him, shame for the kid though.  There's a classic rock song about a douche of a daddy who ignores his kid its entire life with always 'tomorrow' basically as the excuse.  1974's Cat's in the Cradle.

 

[avatar! | 1,845]

In Liberty County, workers who quit feel liberated, but the community discovers a powerful downside

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/12/quitting-great-resignation-downside-labor-shortage/

Workers who have stepped away from full-time jobs say the pandemic helped them discover they can survive on occasional gig work and government benefits.

Government benefits are not long-term solutions, nor should they ever be for people that can work!

Frasier pays $11 an hour, plus commissions, at his hair and cannabidiol shops. The few applicants he gets these days "want $30 an hour, which is just impossible," he said.

Seriously! people with no skill want to be paid what skilled laborers receive - NO.

...now the power and phone bills are piling up again. "There are days I just don't know how I'm going to make it to the next day," Towne said. "It was so much easier when I was working."

How about that...

"It's not that people are lazy," he said, "it's that some of them are better off financially by not paying for child care, staying home for a while, using their benefits to pay down some debt. It's simple economics."

That is true to an extent, but honestly, overall people ARE lazy.

"It's that some people's attitude toward work has changed. If you're a couple with five kids and you're getting $250 credits on each of them, plus the food stamps, you can keep one of you at home and take care of your kids."

Yup, some people are happy staying home doing nothing... ugh. Honestly, this is so antithetical to the American dream.

He remains confident that workers will come back. "It's always been the nature of Americans to work," Espada said, "to find a way to make some money and better yourself."

Yes.

[WhyNotZoidberg | 586]

26 minutes ago, avatar! said:

"It's that some people's attitude toward work has changed. If you're a couple with five kids and you're getting $250 credits on each of them, plus the food stamps, you can keep one of you at home and take care of your kids."

Yup, some people are happy staying home doing nothing... ugh. Honestly, this is so antithetical to the American dream.

 

I have 3 kids and spending the day with them is way harder more work than just going to the office.

Edited December 13, 2021 by WhyNotZoidberg

[Andy_Bogomil | 816]

So being a stay at home dad or mom is 'staying at home all day doing nothing'? Yikes.

 

[Estil | 1,267]

36 minutes ago, Andy_Bogomil said:

So being a stay at home dad or mom is 'staying at home all day doing nothing'? Yikes.

If the kids are home from school...NOT possible.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

2 hours ago, avatar! said:

Workers who have stepped away from full-time jobs say the pandemic helped them discover they can survive on occasional gig work and government benefits.

Government benefits are not long-term solutions, nor should they ever be for people that can work!

 

I really think that depends on what "government benefits" are in question here.  If it's welfare, or such, ok, fair point.  If it's stuff like WIC or similar programs for people who are in lower income brackets, then no, you're wrong, those folks should absolutely be taking advantage of them all they can--that's what they're there for.  They're being paid for whether people utilize them or not, so if We The People aren't taking what the government has specifically set aside for us, they'll find some other bullshit nonsense to waste it on, guaranteed.

2 hours ago, avatar! said:

Frasier pays $11 an hour, plus commissions, at his hair and cannabidiol shops. The few applicants he gets these days "want $30 an hour, which is just impossible," he said.

Seriously! people with no skill want to be paid what skilled laborers receive - NO.

 

So, what, you have someone just shave your head?  Or you do so after whoever takes a crack at giving you a haircut--with no skill--screws it up?  Just because someone is working in a "shop," it doesn't mean that there's not skill involved, especially in consideration to people working in hair salons.  I avoid getting haircuts at the "academy" shops specifically because I want a skilled professional to do the job.  "Skilled" laborers are typically things like factory workers, plumbers, electricians, and similar things.  Those types of jobs have been rapidly declining in the US for decades, while the cost of living has gone nowhere but up regardless of where you live.  While I don't think that $30/hour is terribly realistic as a basic "living wage" anywhere outside of maybe Alaska or Hawaii, I think folks are justified in asking companies to pay a living wage.  Sadly, larger/the largest companies have basically done all they can to suppress and ruin that concept as much as they can, which can hit small/smaller businesses pretty hard, and definitely harder than it ever did in the past.  It stands, though, that if you want someone to work for you 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, you need to be able to pay them enough to afford a roof over their head and food on the table, otherwise it's not worth their time.

3 hours ago, avatar! said:

...now the power and phone bills are piling up again. "There are days I just don't know how I'm going to make it to the next day," Towne said. "It was so much easier when I was working."

 

How about that...

Except that for a lot of folks ,even with a steady job, they're still playing bill pay bingo, deciding what gets paid on time, what gets paid late, and sometimes what gets paid at all.  Why?  Because after paying for the essentials (especially if it's not just a single person), there's often little to nothing leftover.  If you end up with an unexpected bill, or something essential (car, fridge, water heater, etc.) breaks and you can't afford to immediately pay for it, you're either getting behind on one or more things or scraping every last cent together at the end of every check and/or starving a bit until you have enough to take care of the unexpected need.  Working 5 (or more) days a week just makes things like that all the more complicated, because schedules are frequently set in direct opposition to when various offices and specialty stores are open, and most workplaces aren't willing to let people off work or help them schedule around emergencies.

3 hours ago, avatar! said:

"It's not that people are lazy," he said, "it's that some of them are better off financially by not paying for child care, staying home for a while, using their benefits to pay down some debt. It's simple economics."

 

That is true to an extent, but honestly, overall people ARE lazy.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  Some people have been spinning their wheels against a system that becomes more and more stacked against them as time goes on and, seeing the opportunity to take a step back for a bit, they've done so.  I certainly did when I got laid off, and I didn't take a single cent of unemployment, etc., despite it being something that I had paid into and was due.  Folks who haven't struggled against the system for years are being seen as lazy as many just have the foresight to see it starting to come to a head and are opting to just not play a part in the current system until some changes are put into place to make things more advantageous and fair for workers and less about making things comfortable for companies and the absolute upper crust.  And honestly, having been a part of the system, I can understand where those folks are coming from.

3 hours ago, avatar! said:

"It's that some people's attitude toward work has changed. If you're a couple with five kids and you're getting $250 credits on each of them, plus the food stamps, you can keep one of you at home and take care of your kids."

 

Yup, some people are happy staying home doing nothing... ugh. Honestly, this is so antithetical to the American dream.

As others said, if you're staying at home with even ONE kid, you are far, far from doing nothing when you're staying at home.  As far as "the American dream?"  That's been dead and buried for decades now, and keeps going further underground the more tax breaks are provided to companies and the uppermost financial tiers.  Do you know WHY there was such growth and perceived prosperity in the "golden age" of the 50s and a bit further on into the 60s?  Because corporate and highest tier taxes were something like 50-60%, if not higher at times, but there were plenty of breaks available to folks who reinvested in their companies and who paid their workers better wages or offered more benefits.  This resulted in the concept that a single person could work 40-50 hours a week and provide a house, food, 1-2 cars, fuel, college, etc., for their families, as it was true then.  If a job needed to be done, someone was paid at least enough to take care of their basic needs, and frequently a bit more.  THAT is what created "the American dream," but the ability to do exactly that has been in a death spiral since at least the late 70s, and was effectively gone by at least the mid 80s virtually everywhere.

3 hours ago, avatar! said:

He remains confident that workers will come back. "It's always been the nature of Americans to work," Espada said, "to find a way to make some money and better yourself."

Yes.

Absolutely, but only so long as they can actually take care of their needs based on what they're receiving.  With "corporations" (essentially the upper 1% that most folks these days complain about, as that's who's really running all of these things) taking as much money as possible for themselves at the expense of everyone and stashing it anywhere they can to avoid paying taxes on it, the above concept is going to remain on life support or effectively dead until that sort of thing gets a severe turnaround favoring all of the people actually doing the work that makes those corporations actually operate or have any actual worth at all.

[avatar! | 1,845]

@darkchylde28 hey, I definitely think we mostly see eye-to-eye, I was a bit generalizing in my previous post

Of course there are people that absolutely deserve government assistance, and I absolutely agree that corporations and the ultra-rich should pay their fair share. By the way, the US corporate tax is slightly higher than the average in the world
https://files.taxfoundation.org/20211207171421/Corporate-Tax-Rates-around-the-World-2021.pdf
It's also substantially higher than quite a few industrial countries, and in fact Ireland is incredibly low at 12.5%, which is why many businesses have moved their headquarters to Dublin. So there's always a give-and-take with everything, and if the US now raised corporate tax to 50% it would likely devastate the economy.

https://eig.org/dcieop

I'd really like to think the American Dream is still alive! I think sometimes people assume it should be easy to be prosperous, but in the 40s and 50s people worked their ass off! At the time USA was the world's powerhouse, now with a "global world" that's no longer the case, but if I'm being honest, I still believe...

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

8 hours ago, avatar! said:

 

"It's that some people's attitude toward work has changed. If you're a couple with five kids and you're getting $250 credits on each of them, plus the food stamps, you can keep one of you at home and take care of your kids."

Yup, some people are happy staying home doing nothing... ugh. Honestly, this is so antithetical to the American dream.

 

I would think one worker supporting a household while one can take care of the kids IS part of the American dream, and that through a variety of reasons we have all gradually succumbed to the need for dual income households over the last few decades.

 

Also, you are obviously not a parent if you think being a stay at home parent with 5 kids is "doing nothing"...

[guillavoie | 1,213]

7 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

 

Also, you are obviously not a parent if you think being a stay at home parent with 5 kids is "doing nothing"...

Yeah, especially when a bunch of them are still very young, going to work would almost feel like vacation VS being the stay at home parent.

[Tulpa | 3,569]

5 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

Do you know WHY there was such growth and perceived prosperity in the "golden age" of the 50s and a bit further on into the 60s? Because corporate and highest tier taxes were something like 50-60%, if not higher at times,

During the 50s and 60s (which seems to be what some refer to as "the good ol' days) it was 70%-90%, and didn't dip into the 60% range until the early Reagan era. Though they dropped rapidly during his two terms.

The last 30 or so years they've hovered between 39% and 35%.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

3 hours ago, avatar! said:

By the way, the US corporate tax is slightly higher than the average in the world
https://files.taxfoundation.org/20211207171421/Corporate-Tax-Rates-around-the-World-2021.pdf
It's also substantially higher than quite a few industrial countries, and in fact Ireland is incredibly low at 12.5%, which is why many businesses have moved their headquarters to Dublin. So there's always a give-and-take with everything, and if the US now raised corporate tax to 50% it would likely devastate the economy.

Honestly, it's shit like this that makes me start to wobble toward being ok with things like nationalization.  Perhaps there'd be a way to get things back on track (beyond more and more of America's workforce essentially doing a "sick out") if most high level politicians weren't already in the pockets of the corporations.  Freezing corporate accounts/assets until all the bullshit loopholes were either closed up tight or the corporations saw fit to stop doing shit like "being located" in Dublin (for example) on their own would seem to fast track things.  Intellectually, I know that's me just feeling vindictive, but it really seems like a short term solution is due, since all of the long term ones that have been suggested or implemented in the past 30-40 years have managed to be circumvented in one or more ways before they could actually do anybody propping these companies up any good.  Deregulation of basically everything starting in the 70s and continuing through the early 90s has basically turned the balance of power over to companies (who are now "people" insofar as collecting benefits is concerned, but not so much when it comes to actually being held responsible for anything), and helped things like inflation and the national debt explode (the latter of which has also swelled in part due to inflation, but also due to a combination of overspending as well as a lack of tax revenues brought on by a plethora of loopholes and tax cuts intended to spur reinvestment which have never borne fruit).

3 hours ago, avatar! said:

I'd really like to think the American Dream is still alive! I think sometimes people assume it should be easy to be prosperous, but in the 40s and 50s people worked their ass off! At the time USA was the world's powerhouse, now with a "global world" that's no longer the case, but if I'm being honest, I still believe...

More and more, it's dead as an across-the-board proposition that's accessible to everybody in the country.  Basically starting in the 70s and spiraling more and more rapidly afterward, being able to obtain "the American dream" without working yourself into an early grave or dying and having anything you'd pass on to your family be absorbed by what debts you were going to pass on has far more to do with how lucky you are birth.  If you're born into the right family or are born or move into the right area (the latter shown by the maps within the article you linked), you stand a chance at it, otherwise, forget it, you'll run forever on a hamster wheel getting nowhere without some sort of luck of windfall coming your way.  Things like that can be turned around by increasing workers' wages, but that is cut off at every turn by the folks at the top of every company refusing to ever receive a lesser percentage of the corporate pie (even though a lesser share can easily be worth more if a company is actually able to do more business due to more motivated workers and a populace more able to purchase their product), spurring on an ever increasing amount of inflation which leaves those not at the top with less and those at the top effectively unchanged since they'll just receive dividends and interest forever.

2 hours ago, Tulpa said:

During the 50s and 60s (which seems to be what some refer to as "the good ol' days) it was 70%-90%, and didn't dip into the 60% range until the early Reagan era. Though they dropped rapidly during his two terms.

The last 30 or so years they've hovered between 39% and 35%.

That's what I recall a few people, including Warren Buffett, saying, but when doing some quick Googling I found only middling statistics at best, so stuck with them as they were what I could actually support.  But still, people reinvested because they had huge incentives to do so and actually ended up making MORE money in the long run by doing so, just not as quickly as they do now.

[Andy_Bogomil | 816]

9 hours ago, Tulpa said:

During the 50s and 60s (which seems to be what some refer to as "the good ol' days) it was 70%-90%, and didn't dip into the 60% range until the early Reagan era. Though they dropped rapidly during his two terms.

The last 30 or so years they've hovered between 39% and 35%.

... and that's when they decide to pay. I'm sure a lot of 'high earners' skirt the laws and find loopholes that would be inaccessible or unknown to the vast majority of every day people. Not to mention they also get massive bailouts or debt forgiveness when the economy tanks.

 

 

[avatar! | 1,845]

19 hours ago, arch_8ngel said:

I would think one worker supporting a household while one can take care of the kids IS part of the American dream, and that through a variety of reasons we have all gradually succumbed to the need for dual income households over the last few decades.

 

Also, you are obviously not a parent if you think being a stay at home parent with 5 kids is "doing nothing"...

Totally fair

I should not have said " doing nothing"! I meant to say some are happy staying home and simply NOT looking for work or trying to improve their positions whether it is financially, intellectually, etc. And honestly, there is a point where that is perfectly fine. However, when people really could use extra money, and there are jobs available, and you can learn skills, AND then people just don't want to bother - then I feel that's antithetical to the American spirit.

Also, people with multiple-kids often have the older kids "help out" - in essence it's a bit like free babysitting/daycare and of course there's nothing wrong with that!