Come visit my state sometime. Are most of the places you lived generally liberal or conservative? Because nearly every description I've seen in this thread is very much indicative of conservative areas. Political or religious. Something about America really encourages extreme conservatism and liberalism to try and coexist... it's completely baffling. There are giant wage gaps because the rich want to get richer, and we are consolidating wealth out of the producer/laborer and even pushing labor out in the name off operating cost and efficiency. So no, Reika was not basing his opinion off of two guys. That is how very VERY large portions of the country work in many ways.
I want to specifically tackle "A) The wage gaps are present between those who work hard / have an education and those who don't want to work hard / get an education. Yes, there are exceptions as always, but that is overwhelmingly the case."
Have you SEEN the statistics for underemployment? College degrees are basically worthless unless you're going into a technical field, and are horrible predictors of skill in those fields they still matter in thanks to degree farms. If you really think "work harder" is the way to get paid better I have one hyphenated word for you. Wal-Mart. Where corporate policy and culture conspire to treat everyone as replaceable cogs and use government assistance to help you pay your workers less than a livable wage while keeping them under the legal work hours for requiring the worker receives benefits like insurance coverage. This isn't the case everywhere, but it is the case in enough places so as to be a problem. Not to mention the minimum wage hasn't kept up even remotely with inflation, or cost of living. Don't get me started on the "prove you're worthy of getting help" bull like
drug tests and the part-time "look for work" job that you have to do if you're not making $290 a week gross income to recieve SNAP benefits in my state. Yes even if you have a steady job, you still have to look for another one in order to receive SNAP (Food stamps) if you happen to be even an hour short of being a full-time minimum wage employee. Don't even TRY to talk to me about "work harder" I've been looking for a job for entirely too long and I'm getting so tired of this shit from people that got lucky or are privileged enough to actually be employed or pay their way through college. I'm personally not willing to put myself into crippling debt to get a burger-flipping job for my 4+ year degree, because apparently higher education is supposed to cost more than anything reasonable except for houses and expensive vehicles.
Sorry for the rant. I'm way beyond tired of not being able to find a job because I had sleep apnea induced crippling oxygen deprivation headaches whose untimely diagnosis (I suffered from it for nearly 5 years before it finally got resolved with a C-PAP machine) prevented me from finishing my secondary education (high school), and gave me a giant blank spot in my employment history that's just getting bigger and bigger as nobody will hire me, and obtaining gainful employment using my truly marketable skills require licenses and degrees that I can't pay for.
Also that's what the Recent Events Discussion thread is for. Short-ish off topic asides that don't deserve their own thread. I don't particularly care what the original post set it up as, when "REDThread" is used when people are being off-topic? That's what the REDThread has turned into. If you want that to stop, bug the community for mis-using a thread and give them the equivalent to an "Off-topic Arena".
