Company Raises It's Minimum Wage to $70,000 and All Hell Breaks Loose

Noodlemod_sl said:

The rich don't get rich by giving shit away

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Except drugs. At least the first time.

Mist_sl said:

50% of households make basically nothing, because they're either poor as shit, or too fucking old, so making more than 70% of households isn't a high threshold.

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Listen to this snarky agreement.

50% of households make nothing because they're poor asv shit.

Vinen_sl said:

Do they at least have non-shit beer now? Last time I went there Sam's Summer was the pinnacle of greatness. (Which is a pretty pathetic beer)

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They keep adding a mix of micro brews and it's Boston so there is always Sam Adams, but 90% of the people in attendance drink bud light anyway

Mist_sl said:

50% of households make basically nothing, because they're either poor as shit, or too fucking old, so making more than 70% of households isn't a high threshold.

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This also doesn't include data on those households making more than > 250,000 which is actually not a negligible amount. (Thanks to Tech hubs)

It should be more along the lines of a weighted salary based upon area cost of living. This is actually something the Military does. There's a long chart for base pay and then depending on where you live there might be a cost of living attached to that if it's deemed necessary. I know people stationed in Hawaii tend to get one because COL is fucking ridiculous out there due to the tourist economy. So yeah, if you're living in SF making 70k, that's different than living in, say, Buffalo making 70k. Guarantee your 70k goes further in Buffalo. 70k is probably barely enough to get by on a one-bedroom in a place like NYC.

moontayle_sl said:

It should be more along the lines of a weighted salary based upon area cost of living. This is actually something the Military does. There's a long chart for base pay and then depending on where you live there might be a cost of living attached to that if it's deemed necessary. I know people stationed in Hawaii tend to get one because COL is fucking ridiculous out there due to the tourist economy. So yeah, if you're living in SF making 70k, that's different than living in, say, Buffalo making 70k. Guarantee your 70k goes further in Buffalo. 70k is probably barely enough to get by on a one-bedroom in a place like NYC.

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70K isn't even enough unless you can find a tiny studio.

As of May 2015, average apartment rent within 10 miles of New York, NY is $3432. One bedroom apartments in New York rent for $3039 a month on average and two bedroom apartment rents average $3805.
That is 41000 roughly after tax income.

moontayle_sl said:

It should be more along the lines of a weighted salary based upon area cost of living. This is actually something the Military does. There's a long chart for base pay and then depending on where you live there might be a cost of living attached to that if it's deemed necessary. I know people stationed in Hawaii tend to get one because COL is fucking ridiculous out there due to the tourist economy. So yeah, if you're living in SF making 70k, that's different than living in, say, Buffalo making 70k. Guarantee your 70k goes further in Buffalo. 70k is probably barely enough to get by on a one-bedroom in a place like NYC.

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People don't live alone in NYC, you can't do it unless you make 100k+ in almost every part of NYC, even less desirable areas (outside of the real ghetto areas). Upper East Side is like $2600/mo for a 600 sq ft, 1 bedroom apt.

Lyrical_sl said:

I know that the board is overwhelmingly a bunch of hippies

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Completely, utterly, and totally disagree. For the most part, I'd say that the overall political culture of this board is socially progressive, fiscally middle of the road, and libertarian. Just look at discussions of gun control. If this board was composed of "a bunch of hippies", why is it that the vast, vast majority of posters here do not support more strict gun control in the US?

As far as this Dan Price guy goes, he strikes me as being incredibly naive about just about everything in life, given his background:

NYT_sl said:

The isolation did not prepare Mr. Price for the complex social interactions of junior high school. He was awkward, out of place. He remembered joining in when a group of children started laughing, only to later realize that he had been the target of their ridicule.

His experiences did reinforce an independent, contrarian streak even as he made a place for himself in the teenagers? terrain. He formed a rock band and got a girlfriend. After their first hug at 17, her conservative Christian father demanded to know his intentions. The two were engaged, and they married four years later. (They divorced amicably in 2011.)

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I think his decision to pay everyone a minimum salary of 70k is fairly idiotic, from a business perspective, for a whole slew of reasons.

The Ancient_sl said:

Well you are building a nice strawman again. Resentment over another employee's pay is not the same thing as suggesting a good employee is just going to stop working because he's making 70k now and has no motivation.

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I can't say I've seen someone "stop working" because of a raise. But I have definitely seen an employee's performance significantly decline after being given profit sharing bonuses, because his ego got in the way. Suddenly he figured he was king shit of turd mountain, and started dumping on everyone else far more than he had previously. To the point that we ended up firing him. And this was a guy who'd been with the company for the better part of 25 years. It went straight to his head, like he literally all of the sudden thought he owned the place. Thankfully the handful of other guys that were given the same deal have continued to be extremely valuable, productive, and most importantly low maintenance employees. So we don't regret instituting the "key man profit sharing" plan. But it was unfortunate that one guy in particular couldn't handle it.

My uncle went through a similar problem at his construction company (pretty much identical company to mine). He's on his way out the door to retirement and his son is fairly useless, so he identified a couple long term employees as his succession plan. As soon as the ink was dry on the paperwork to sell 25% of the company to one of the guys, that guy started treating everyone like shit and very rapidly alienated most of the company. It took a couple years to repair the damage he did to his own reputation.

People can be pretty ridiculous with how they value their contributions to the company, how they perceive their role and importance, and so on.

Vinen_sl said:

How is this any different then a CEO of a Fortune 50 company?

My favorite people are the ones who salivate over sports superstars then bitch when a CEO makes a ton.

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Lots of studies have shown that CEO pay is not correlated with company performance, and in some cases is actually negatively correlated. There's not really a lot of justification for the huge pay packages CEO's receive. It's a rigged game. Every professional sports league has a fairly different salary structure (cap vs luxury tax vs no cap, guaranteed contracts vs non-guaranteed), but in the vast majority of cases pay does reflect performance.

Rangoth_sl said:

Every year my fucking tickets go up like 5$/seat and it's just annoying at this point. Basically sports related crap seems to "inflate" at much higher rate than all other shit. Like the argument against colleges. It's more and more becoming a thing only the "wealthy" can do....and this is coming from a "wealthy". It's just annoying.

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I dunno, the Oilers had only been raising their season ticket prices about 2-3% a year for the past few seasons, because they knew damn well that the market wouldn't pay any more to go see a shit team that doesn't win much. This year they went up 8%, coincidentally that increase was set AFTER the team had won the draft lottery. They're going up another 10-20% for 2016/17 because of the move to a new arena. Basically, they're going to charge whatever the market can bear. As there is a very finite number of games to go to, teams to watch, and players good enough to make it in the league, demand is going to be very high for the product. So of course prices are going to rise faster than inflation. I don't recall it ever being written anywhere that professional sports, or other forms of entertainment from concerts to plays to opera to whatever are supposed to always remain accessible to the average joe. If you can't afford tickets to an NHL/NFL/NBA/MLB game, then maybe go check out the AHL or whatever other minor leagues there are for the other sports, along with college and other amateur leagues. Or watch the major leagues on TV.

Celestein_sl said:

I've mentioned this before, but I lived in SF. $210,000 per year there is the equivalent of roughly 60-70k here in buffalo. In terms of the housing/luxuries you can afford being equivalent.

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Yeah shit. Rent for a 1 Bedroom is higher then my 2000 sqft house in an expensive town next to Boston. (Arlington)

And by higher I mean 1.5X the cost. It's kinda hillarious

They dont' even get the Tax deductions which makes it even more LULZY

Eomer_sl said:

I dunno, the Oilers had only been raising their season ticket prices about 2-3% a year for the past few seasons, because they knew damn well that the market wouldn't pay any more to go see a shit team that doesn't win much. This year they went up 8%, coincidentally that increase was set AFTER the team had won the draft lottery. They're going up another 10-20% for 2016/17 because of the move to a new arena. Basically, they're going to charge whatever the market can bear. As there is a very finite number of games to go to, teams to watch, and players good enough to make it in the league, demand is going to be very high for the product. So of course prices are going to rise faster than inflation. I don't recall it ever being written anywhere that professional sports, or other forms of entertainment from concerts to plays to opera to whatever are supposed to always remain accessible to the average joe. If you can't afford tickets to an NHL/NFL/NBA/MLB game, then maybe go check out the AHL or whatever other minor leagues there are for the other sports, along with college and other amateur leagues. Or watch the major leagues on TV.

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Ohh I get it, it's not a lack of understanding. More of just a pure annoying/jimmie rustle factor. It's the same reason everything here in the US is more expensive than the exact same product made by the exact same company in a different country. They can charge is so why not. Fuck I would too....

I mostly just dislike it because of principle, but like I said in an earlier post; My principles are strong enough for me to QQ on a message board, but not actually do anything about it in real life, well because, I like going to the game and getting shitfaced more than I care about the economic disparities between the plebs who watch me enjoy the game on TV

Williston, ND is the worst. 2.5-3k for a 1 Bedroom apartment. Oil boom craziness. Only issue is now that oil is cheap as fuck a lot of those guys aren't working anymore!

Cad_sl said:

Christ even in *Dallas* most people don't live close in, they live in the burbs. People act like if you can't live on the UES in a 4 bedroom house with a yard the real estate there is unmanageable. Yes NYC is expensive, but you don't have to live there.

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Try commuting into NYC from a suburb. Even getting to Midtown from fucking Brooklyn is a pain in the ass. You do NOT want to work in NYC unless you live there, trust me. I did the commute thing for almost 2 years. It was hell on earth.

wormie_sl said:

There are 3 million jobs in Manhattan. There are 1.5 million people that live in Manhattan. 1.5 million people do not have problems traveling from the suburbs (and its probably more because a portion of manhattan does not work in manhattan (see population above 96th street)). Maybe it was just you that had trouble traveling around NYC.

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I'm sure every one of those people loved the commute and didn't just do it because they couldn't afford to live closer.