I don’t mean this to sound crass but 2% unemployment sounds lovely. The United States is normally around 9 to 12% unemployment.

You’re right we definitely do have more open positions and a lot of those jobs, But ultimately I think it kind of washes out by the fact that everything here is so expensive and that unless you’re paid extremely well in your field it’s really hard to make it.

Anyway this has been really interesting hearing about some of the issues going on in the netherlands. I have some research to do. Your government tends to be a lot better at governing in mind so I’ll be interested to hear what the solution that y’all come up with.

Ah yes we should just swallow everything any NATO country tells us as an objective fact.

Understood.

Ugh.

• Omar Khadr: Pled guilty to spying in Canada in 2010 was held in gitmo Bay before being transferred to Canada

Seriously I don’t know why I’m I’m even dignifying this with a response because we both know that they hold people there that they accuse of being terrorist or Spies of terrorists without any due process and so we don’t know their names typically and we don’t know why they’re in there other than what the US government will tell us which isn’t much.

We also have multiple officials from that time admitting that the president and most the administration from that time knew that most of the people put in gitmo Bay were innocent And kept there because it was politically expedient. And that’s just according to Wikipedia.

Still it’s not a far stretch to imagine that United States has imprisoned foreign spies in places like gitmo Bay without informing the public.

Sorry I read something else and got confused I’ll go correct the information later.

hurr durr none of these were spies. They were only accused of spying

Duh

Ahmed al Halabi

This guy was actually acquitted of the charges but was still horribly abused inside the prison: Captain James Yee

Mohammed Hashim

Omar Ahmed Khadr

I mean these are just a few. This wasn’t even hard to look up. Did you not expect that there would be actual spies in one of the US terrorist torture camps?

~~That’s an interesting part of the story but in this case this Canadian tourist hadn’t live in the country at all. I feel like the speed at which he entered the US and then died indicates a problem with us custody and handling.

Like I feel like it’s more egregious if you lived in the country for 30 years and then you know were prosecuted as a spy but to just die from being detained is total bullshit~~

Misread something not valid.

Someone’s never heard of Gitmo Bay 🤣

From my personal experience people in the US don’t have a lot of different jobs to choose from but we really don’t. Unless you have the education and connections for the most part you’re relegated to retail. It’s hard to even get into management nowadays. Sure there’s job growth but for the most part it’s for minimum wage retail jobs or salary jobs that are for Dollar General where your work 80 hours to the Bone.

Most of my family Works Blue Collar construction jobs because they pay more consistently and they’re easier to get into then the white collar stuff that I work in

Would you mind expanding on how there’s a limited job market in the EU? I have the standard American perspective of the EU of being this nigh utopian place of freedom and competition even though I know it’s actually not like that. The EU does definitely help with those type of regulations. The United States answers to the people with the most money typically the companies. That’s why the iPhones would never be USB C if it was up to Americans.

Iran has not confirmed that they have him in detention and this was a spy. They literally caught a US spy. Do you know what we do to people we catch spying in the US?

This is quite literally not the same thing. The US has accidentally killed a Canadian tourist. If a part of Iran’s government killed a US citizen we’d use that to launch War today.

I mean that’s kind of the Crux of the issue though. The mom and pop shops really want minimum wage to stay low so they can stay competitive with the big box stores.

But those same big box stores also drive out the mom and pop shop by driving prices much lower than the little shops can and then they suffer because people stop going to the shops because they’re more expensive.

Regardless voting with your wallet is not necessarily a viable choice and I don’t generally think works well. United States has been pushing to buy from small business for over 20 years and yet small businesses still keep on failing. The United States only really helps out big business. Small businesses are left to fend for themselves and often don’t make it. Honestly even if the public is really small business oriented unless the government is also small business oriented it’s kind of like swimming against a tidal wave.

The United States right now has a a social system that’s threatened very close to Bare Bones and is often non-existent for the poorest. Even to make it work it’s a bureaucratic nightmare that involves multiple departments and could involve months of legal business wrangling.

So I can see for you why maybe this minimum wage doesn’t make a lot of sense for the Netherlands but in the material circumstances surrounding the United States I think this minimum wage increase makes a lot of sense especially considering that we haven’t had a significant wage increase since 2009. The median minimum federal wage should be $22 and that allows the poorest communities in the poorest parts of the United States to have a living wage. For anybody else that’s living in poverty that’s still not enough especially in the blue states where most of the social services are located. Even in New York City $30 an hour for minimum wage it’s going to be hardly a drop in the bucket.

I’m not sure about the Netherlands housing crisis but what adds insult to injury and a lot of Sting that ours is that ours is self-induced. It’s literally being created by companies like Black Rock and other hedge fund in stock portfolio businesses buying up residential houses and keeping them empty until the time is right to rent them out to maximize their profits. Currently there is roughly 2 million or so empty houses in the United States and there’s only 600,000 homeless people at Last count.

No I appreciate what you’re trying to get at though and the perspective you offer even if the rest of the community did not. I’m not saying it’s your job as a foreigner to worry about any of this. United States politics is complicated and honestly it really it shouldn’t be up to people outside the country to fix it. Perhaps the Netherlands will show us a way out of the mess that we’ve dug ourselves into with solutions to the problem that you guys have because we also have those problems. I kind of feel like they’re more Universal problems though at this point

Oh I see so we’re coming from a very different places. We don’t have nearly the type of safety net that you guys do out in the Netherlands. I’m sure you guys definitely have your problems and your fair share of issues but to Americans it feels like the United States is literally collapsing around us.

Like most of us if we lose our job we’re probably going to lose the place we live as well. It’s not uncommon to have to move back with your parents to couch surf after you lose a job. The minimum wage in America doesn’t even cover like a car payment for a decent car. It’s not nearly enough to live on it’s being basically given change all day and then ask to live on it on top of the fact that you’re treated like absolute crap. You have zero say in your work and how it’s done and if you have problems with your boss your boss can just fire you because they feel like it. As long as it’s not one of the discriminated categories with of which there are only five they can fire you for anything up to and including the color of your shirt at any time without notice. And in many places in the United States if you get fired you may not qualify for unemployment or any of the state assistance.

The absolute only way to make it out here is to get a job that pays enough money so that you can find a place to live and have Private health insurance. If you can get on the Medicaid system it’s actually not bad but they’ll take it away from from you over getting things like a bonus or maybe a dollar in raise.

We live in a capitalist hell hole where we can’t hold anybody to account. We can’t hold our politicians to account. We can’t hold our police to account. Nor can we hold our justices to account.

The government has determined we all just have to grin and bear it and pray they don’t alter the deal any further to take more from us.

That’s why you’re going to see a lot of business apathy from those in America because we’ve been screwed most of our lives and are tired of it. It’s very blatant and very obvious

Eh nothing of value was lost

I was going to say that’s still better than the Lemmy scene.

I just found like 5 minutes looking around on Google this was one of the first results: https://www.epi.org/blog/most-minimum-wage-studies-have-found-little-or-no-job-loss/

I understand that this would eat into your profits and would probably eat into the amount of money that you can make off a business like this But if the business is not viable Paying a living wage where the minimum should be 30 an hour then the environment is not correct for that business and the business isn’t viable.

I don’t want to sound cruel but for a long time businesses have gotten away with paying people pennies for work that they should have been paying dollars.

Who cares? Study after study show that stores and corporations can swallow these costs and even when passed on to the consumer the increase is much less then thought.

Besides as long as people can afford groceries I don’t think people will care if restaurant and fast food are a bit more expensive

Yeah things will get worse in some ways and things will get better in others. Not that it balances out but it’s not like there won’t be objectively good things that happen in the future.

I have hope. We shall see what the future holds for us

I think things are getting worse for white people exactly the way you say. I think for minorities though it’s kind of always been this bad or even worse made by people being far more racist.

Things are still pretty systemically racist but there has been somewhat of a correction and that probably does result in things being a bit better for some minorities.

Ultimately I think that means that We live in better times today because they’re more accepting than we did Even 20 years ago.

As far as getting by I think things have been like this for a really really long time and people were patient and sold a crock of shit and with covid it’s forcing a lot of these things to come to a head.

Not only that Trump himself is a governmental crisis and when there’s chaos in the government there’s absolutely chaos in society. Simmering tensions tend to get exposed.

Oh I don’t give a crap about their “savings”.

Even if self checkout is more expensive to the companies I still prefer self-checkout for personal reasons rather than economical ones.

Besides the issues and opportunities for theft that self checkout creates means that it’s probably a wash as far as how much money they’re saving.

I definitely understand though not wanting to like scan your own groceries or deal with the whole system it would refer somebody else to do it. That’s why they should have both available.