Atta boy spoken like a true democrat, keep'em poor but alive and they will love us for giving them something!!

What is your solution strike? How you gonna make those ditch diggers better off?

This should be funny.

so far so good so far so good

I employ several ditch diggers as you call them, if they work hard they will make 50k give or take....so you need a better example.

Our society requires winners and losers, if the reward for winning isn't high enough there is no incentive to raise the bar and take the risk, if the penalty for losing isn't low enough there is no reason to work hard.... Presently that is the case in the US.

We have gotten into trouble by trying to manipulate the system.

What else would you call somebody that digs ditches? What do you call them? Also, what kind of assistance did you need to start this ditch digging business? (and what's a good name? I'm thinking of calling my business either Ditches-R-Us or Dig-o-rama)

It's so refreshing these days to have somebody just come out and spew this sophomoric ****.

100% you've never started a business.

That part is standard knee jerk conservative though.

Why do conservatives think America sucks so much?

America sucks because the poor isn't hurting enough. Apparently.

Just like strike calling me a democrat as a derogatory term, I fail to see how this is even an insult.

Actually I'm not even sure how it relates. I'll accept the responsibility that I might be missing something fairly obvious.

$14/hr seems pretty low for unskilled manual labor in a crummy working environment. People tend to do much better where I am, but I work in and around refineries, so there may be a big difference there.

If you're really having problems getting young people to work there and those that do tend to walk, do you think the problem could be with your company and not with "young people?" If all the older guys treat the young people like crap every day, they're going to quit no matter how much you pay them.

It's not a myth that there are lots of capable people unwilling to put in a hard day's work.

That doesn't mean I want to cancel the government.

Hey, rowcoach has feelings too, y'know?

Really, please what is your vast business background

I don't think America sucks, it used to be better. The socialist direction things are moving ultimately will be the undoing...we will be as over the hill as France England and the rest of Europe.

I am thinking cubical next to the ladies but feeling like he is overlooked everyday...the boss knows who he is but can't seem to remember his name!

As long as we're attacking ideas, and not posters!

Don't worry, I've been around for a long time. I relish this ****.

So you needed a ditch digger, OK. But that wasn't the important question. In fact none of the questions were that important but Microbet joined the convo so I'll take it seriously and stop being facetious and flippant.

I'm assuming the lack-of-business-background comments are in response to the bold, asking about what assistance you needed. We CAN talk about that, because there's gold in them there hills and a healthy dose of the-lady-doth-protest-too-much-ness, but that wasn't nearly the main point, it was just me running wild.

I was simply poking fun at you and your world-view being so narrow and/or you not possessing the intelligence to realize that I was literally talking about ditch diggers. As in, dudes/ladies who literally dig holes in the ground in situations where a backhoe is too cumbersome and impractical. Figurativeness might be tricky for you but if you're up to it we can also include similar very low-skilled and very manual labor. As a corollary it's telling that you seem to imply a "ditch digger" is just any worker that isn't a boss, an oversimplified version of the prototypical Us V. Them capitalist/free market mentality, which I was poking fun at as well.

Do you see why I was asked Microbet to clarify the relevance of the below?

Aye that would be the worst to have to sit next to the women and other second-class citizens.

But actually, I still play poker for a living (this is still ****ing 2p2 right?) and am a freelance audio engineer (as in I don't work in-house at a studio but contract myself for various studios and projects). In one sense this is a hyperliteral example of me running a one-person business where I use my skills as an economic commodity, but in another sense maybe not as I suspect it only counts to you if I have ditch diggers working under me to exploit.

Strike3 knows what you are talking about. You call people who dig ditches laborers, not ditch diggers. Even if they literally dig ditches. Calling a ditch digger a ditch digger might cause offense. Strike3 knows that. He's a contractor who has done large projects and hired many workers in different categories.

Get it, he was also literally talking about ditch diggers. You are being condescending about it, as if understanding that communication were a great window on one's intelligence, but you are the one who was wrong.

My comment about you not starting a business was not well place, so it's not your fault, but that's not what I was talking about.

It was more that you just started annoying me with this "Srsly tho, the guy digging the ditches is always going to need your help. " and then it continued a bit. The last guy I hired to dig a ditch got $25/hr. Strike mentioned the guys he hired might make $50k/year. Pretty condescending of you to assume anyone holding a shovel needs your help. The lowest paid people I know, possibly excluding guys working the 1st year with no experience, are all people who went to college too long. I've never paid anyone in construction less than my PhD holding wife makes.

But, as my Marxist friend who got a PhD in Econ and is now an Assistant Professor and has spent 25 years basically being dirt poor would say, she has Intellectual Capital.

Also, I don't really know what Strike3 meant, but I'm pretty sure he'll back me up now. hint hint

Let's not run wild counting these chickens just yet.

I assume this is the king's "you", and something like not ending your sentences with a preposition. I call the guy digging the ditches the ditch-digger, but because manually digging ditches is less common now I'd call the guy who only digs ditches as a fraction of his workload a laborer.

THERE IS A METAPHOR HERE

I said figurative thinking might be too hard and I'm scared I'm right, so I just limited it to literal ditch digging, but I allowed that it could include other unskilled labor. What's a rung below a ditch digger, a s--t shoveler?

I have labored before and even loading and pushing a wheelbarrow is a learned skill. That thing is getting tipped over guaranteed at the beginning, and it takes quite a few trips to load/push/unload in a remotely quick and efficient manner. Nobody is getting hired/kept on as, like, an assistant bricklayer without being a pro wheelbarrower, and nobody is calling the wheelbarrow guy a ditch digger.

If this is an actual conversation/debate then obviously the above is necessary, delineating the thresholds of skilled labor/semi-skilled/unskilled. And some might disagree with my wheelbarrow assessment but that's fine.

But I really don't think it's an actual conversation, because...

That's why my first and basically only question was "what do you call them?" If it were an actual conversation we might've just, like, answered.

Look, I get it. The reason I'm falling in love with this forum is because most everybody just starts unloading the clip of hot shots the moment their worldview is even slightly compromised and everything quickly goes bananas. It's wonderful. That's the reason I'm typing this long-ass multiquoted thing, because it's fun and engaging.

But, there's no point in denying this reality. Strike fired shots and failed to fulfill even the most basic requirements of a conversation. Luckily he has a good PRman. I won't denigrate the noble profession of public relations by calling it "ditch digging".

There's also something to be said about him using "democrat" as an insult while I'm taken to task about the etymological faux pas of using "ditch digger" but I'm not saying it.

Again with the chickens, but I'll concede this: If he was including literal ditch diggers he used them as his lower bound while I used them as my upper bound.

Ignoring all the above, we didn't even get to the point where I could be wrong or right.

It was a wild hot shot, but like I said I love it, it puts hair on the chest.

Here's a thing: At one point in my life I loved manual labor. I was into fitness and my thinking was, holy ****, they're gonna pay me to work out. I could sprint with a wheelbarrow full of bricks. Not only a great workout but sharpened coordination and balance as well. But, work was not always easy to find. Much of this might be due to geography and wheelbarrowing should be an olympic sport, but I digress. Point being, our anecdotes are useless.

There might be some headway if we can talk about how much s--t shovelers are getting paid but that's still probably fruitless.

I'm essentially a techno-progressive, like a post-future utopian socialist. Some might call it quasi-left-libertarianism but nobody actually uses the term "left-libertarian" anymore. Left-libertarians are just techno-progressives... waiting.

That's the long way of saying I don't know how to address the shoveler needing my help. Maybe he'll have a monolith moment and realizes he owns the ditch he dug, maybe not, but all that is way too political for a politics forum.

Book learnin' is for losers or so I've been told.

I agree with both sides of the comma.

5ive,

That was a very good post that I'm too tired to answer. I'd call myself a quasi-left-libertarian as well if the hippie in me didn't oppose labels and the libertarian weren't too paranoid to let myself be labeled as anything. You may notice from other posts that I do not see eye-to-eye with Strike3 generally.

Workers get classified for various reasons like worker's comp, labor unions, listings at staffing agencies, Davis-Bacon wages, etc.. Laborer is a common classification. Ditch-digger is never a classification. That's why I call a guy who digs ditches by hand every single day a laborer. That, and, "ditch digger" has the same connotation as peon.

So, your original point was, the person with the worst job always needs help. I assume that goes for PhD who ends up at Starbucks or maybe 1/2 time teaching at a Community College as well as that **** shoveler who makes the same money. The issue I think was why not give him a fish every day instead of teaching him to fish?

Is that the point? Because now I think you're too smart to think that generally giving someone a fish every day is better for the recipient than teaching them to fish. We're talking about people who can fish here. Not everyone can fish. (from now on lots of metaphors, I'm trying to prove myself)

edit: pretty long for a non-answer

And otoh, there are lots of fish given out every day. People below a certain income level generally receive more in services than they pay in taxes. Especially true if they have families.

Strike3 seems like a pretty straight-forward Fox Republican, but I wouldn't even be sure he would want to eliminate public schools, free lunch programs, public libraries, etc.

This is good to know. I was under the impression ditch-digger was too generic to be insulting, but I guess I answered my own question by giving an example that sometimes actual manpower is needed when you can't use a backhoe. I like "laborer" because I'm not quite die-hard left to start tossing around "proletariat".


Yeah, pretty much anybody and everybody. Lawyers have been having a hard time finding jobs the past few years, societal needs and holes that need to be plugged shift around rapidly.

Aye, teaching somebody to fish is better. You teach them to fish and if the fish ain't a-bitin' that day you give them a fish. That's our oversimplified welfare state.

I admitted I was being facetious with the "**** you, give me my fish" example and even as a thought experiment I was being excessively silly, but that's what it is, a thought experiment. It's the counterexample to strike's "**** you, in this society there are winners and losers, sometimes you catch the fish and sometimes the fish catches you (or whatever)."

Because the idea of welfare shouldn't be a radical idea necessarily and even if it is it should be understood. I was talking to a kid (well, college age but still more than 10 years younger than me) recently and he literally didn't know what welfare entailed. As in, he thought welfare was only people getting a check on the 1st of the month and didn't know things like unemployment benefits and universal health care fell under the definition. I don't know if it was the fox-news-effect or what but it was disturbing, because he still had strong ideas about welfare being "bad" and was hot-taking left and right with "I knew a family on welfare but the kid had nice shoes" and so forth.

Right, and it's exactly because fish are given out every day that I find it bizarre the thought experiment is still necessary. It's one thing to be opposed to it as I "get" where ACists and the like are coming from but something else entirely to not realize how integral a part of society it is.

Backing from the tangent, I was genuine when I said it was refreshing to hear strike admit that he thinks there should be "losers" as framing it this way might cause some people to restate their assumptions.