This Week in Poverty: Ms. Vasquez Goes to Washington

This Week in Poverty: Ms. Vasquez Goes to Washington and asks JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon. This question: “Despite making billions last year, why do you deny the people cleaning your buildings a living wage?” Well Ms. Vasquez the answer to that is simple. Your chosen profession requires a skill set that demands very little ability, intelligence, education or physical strength. And so as hard (and admirable and honest) a job as yours may be the potential supply of employees is just so great that the level of compensation must drop very low before no one is willing to underbid you for the position -a situation exacerbated by illegal aliens that increase that supply and drop the potential income even lower as they will often work for less than their citizen counterparts.

This post was last modified on June 22, 2012

Kip Hooker:

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  • It surprises me that none of the posts so far have made note of the fact that her comments to the author of "This Week in Poverty" (is that a small town in Georgia?) were made "through an interpreter", which would indicate that she not only somehow obtained the wherewithal to travel to Washington but she also lacks the initiative to learn the language of the country she's bitching about.

    Therein lies my problem with such folk.

    Oprima el numero dos si usted está de acuerdo.

  • This is why corporate america keeps allowing for illegal aliens to come here. Unlimited supply of cheap labor. Like I said, corporate greed.

        • Nobody says that you have to be illegal to get one of those jobs.
          Name alone is not a qualifying factor in legality.
          You're just proving how lazy you really are if you won't take any available job regardless of pay.
          Maybe if you spent more time pounding the pavement instead of chatting with your buddies on the online gaming forums, you might find a job!
          http://forum.tip.it/user/178690-jcrowley1985/

          Although, this doesn't surprise me:
          http://www.theisozone.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=3737&sid=84b34eeedae2334755bd8178b7608864
          Friends (0)
          jcrowley1985 doesn't have any friends :(

          • Who says I wouldn't take any job regardless of pay?

            Also, nice online stalking. The former of the two I haven't even used in years.

          • BTW it's hardly stalking if all I did was put your screen name in the search engine and found your online public activity. It's not like I tried to find out where you live (not interested) or what you look like (REALLY not interested).

          • Poppa, we don't know. Maybe he DOES pound the pavement, and apply for dozens of jobs every week. He just can't find anyone that WANTS such a pathetic loser around. Bad for morale.

          • Just trying to get a clearer picture of who I am dealing with.
            Since you were the one that posted under the other name, it gave me a chance to find out something about you, namely that you spend all your time either here or playing games.

          • Since there are hundreds of jobs in the newspaper every Sunday, and you are unemployed, you and your actions say that.

          • Hundreds of ads for thousands of unemployed. And hundreds is a huge overstatement. The job listings never go more then a full spread on a good day.

  • Just keeping voting for more open borders allowing more and more people with only "cleaning skills" to come in. Also more and more people on welfare. There are only so many "cleaning jobs" available and as the government likes to say, the work goes to the lowest bidder. Also, more and more people taking money out of the welfare pot means less for everyone.
    You cannot possibly overestimate the stupidity of these people.

  • Or..... go back to Mexico where the people working at McDonalds (in Mexico) cannot afford to eat there.

  • I'm sorry, but building cleaners, or as we used to call them janitors, are one of those non skilled labor jobs that don't call for higher wages.
    When I was a kid, my father went to work (electronics technician) all day long, came home, ate dinner, and went out to his part time night job, as a janitor! He made minimum wage for emptying wastebaskets, sweeping floors, etc. He was way overqualified for this work, but was glad to have it to bring home a little extra money.
    If you aren't happy with the job you have, or what it pays, learn how to do something else and get a different job. If you think I'm going to pay you to empty my wastebasket and sweep my floors, both jobs I can easily do myself, you're nuts! Be glad you have ANY job!

    • I used to tear apart and clean engines in preparation for rebuilding. I made minimum wage. I never at any time expected to STAY there doing the same job forever.

      • We all worked minimum wage jobs, never expected to stay there forever. It doesn't make sense, but when you have rent and utilities to pay, you take whatever job you can get. There was a time when minimum was $2/hr, and I was happy to take home $60/week! You do what you have to in order to hold your head up and not live off mommy and daddy.

        • My first job was tearing tickets as I waved people into a movie theater, selling them popcorn, candy, and drinks, then cleaning up all their trash after they left. It wasn't at all fun or glamorous, but it helped pay the bills while my husband was a lowly Lance Corporal. After we had children and agreed I would stay home with them, no matter what, my husband has at times worked as many as three jobs concurrently to provide for us. You do what you have to do.

          Funny thing about that old job... the theater had advertised that it was hiring and to apply on a specific Saturday morning. When I arrived, there had to be close to a 100 people milling around. We waited for quite some time out in the sun and heat before a manager came out and announced that we would be called in one at a time for an interview. My name came up somewhere in the middle of the pack. I walked inside, took a seat as directed and then, when the manager asked, "How are you today?", I responded, "Great! Thanks! How are you?" He looked at me for a moment, then smiled and said, "Now, that's the attitude I'm looking for! I'm assuming you can do basic math, right? Congratulations. You're hired." My interview was all of five seconds long. As it turned out, over 150 people applied for what was only 3 available jobs that day.

          Are you listening, Mr. Crowley? Attitude is *everything.* I'm sure you probably believe you temper your bitterness when you apply for jobs, but I promise you, your potential employers can see right through you. As long as you are stuck in your "Corporate greed! Corporate greed!" rut, they will look at you and see someone who is a potential trouble-maker, someone who will bite the hand that feeds him, as the saying goes, and not someone looking to be a hard working team player and a valuable asset to their business. They will see a "blamer," not a "go-getter," and that makes you completely undesirable in their eyes. Let. It. Go. john. It is really long-past time for you to grow up and move forward with your life.

          • Excellent point!
            If you can have a positive attitude even when you have been standing out in the hot sun waiting for an interview, you have won the war! No boss wants to hire someone that is always pissed off unless he's looking to hire someone to be a bouncer or professional wrestler!

          • Thanks, y'all.

            Poppajoe, when I taught a Life Skills course to the teens in my kids' homeschool co-op we dedicated several class periods just to conducting mock interviews. I told them over and over, "Your diploma, degree, or credentials might get you in the door initially, but it will be how you conduct yourself thereafter that will determine whether or not you get any further."

            flashingscotsman, you never know. Miracles happen.

        • Lets see I worked in a grocery store, gas station, tire shop, cleaned toilets and floors for Servicemaster while my kids were little, drove a tow truck, hell all kinds of jobs for minimum wage, glad to have a job, sometimes two at a time, after I retire shortly I will again find a full time job....and this lady is bitching cause she makes low wages, do what I and a lot of others did, get some skills and work your way up, I don't expect people at the top to come rescue my ass cause I mop the floors...Damn I get sick and tired of people who think they are entitled to get shit for free because they try and lay a guilt trip on someone, I hope he fires her ass. Then she can get a free phone, welfare, section 8 housing and a free medical care, she will have it made.

        • $2/hr was actually in line with how much things cost back then. Nowadays, inflation has far surpassed wages thanks to corporate greed.

          • Are you really that stupid? $1.60 was minimum wage when I started paying into social security, at age 14, and I never expected to pump gas forever. It gave me a chance to learn about household finances, I paid my parents "rent" and helped with the grocery bill. With what I had left I bought an old 1959 Ford Custom 500, had to learn that tires, gas and oil changes were not free, and learned at a young age that the poor life was not for me.

            Serving our country in the military, then education, and I have not lived in my parents house since I was 17 years old. I made my own way just like the majority of young Americans do today and we did not do it by working in minimum wage jobs, we worked our way up and out of poverty instead of being a crybaby, wanting something we had not earned.

          • The average new home in 1950 was 1,000 square feet (and it only had one bathroom). In the 1970s, it "grew" to 1500. Today, it is over 2300. You are free to check the census stats to confirm my numbers, dear. Think LONG and hard about that for awhile. Think, too, about how many things are in these 2300 square foot homes that your grandparents never even dreamed of. Seems to me people like you expect to have twice as much junk and twice as many luxuries in homes that are twice as large as the previous generations, yet inexplicably you think you shouldn't have to work twice as hard to earn enough to pay for it all.

          • And raising the minimum wage combats inflation exactly how? The increased cost of production incurred by labor has to either be absorbed by the producers or transferred to the consumer. Of course you can't be suggesting that these greedy corporations are going to eat the cost . . . I mean they are after all "greedy corporations". So the net effect of this policy is a driving up of the cost of living. Which is, in party, why the value of our dollars are diminished.

            I am also curious as to how corporate greed is driving this inflation. Of course there are reasons to be made for this suggestion. But do you understand them? Can enumerate them? What is the Austrian perspective on the matter in relation to that of macro? And how is it the case that rampant consumerism can be attributed to the fair market system when that approach to economics would likely have produced interest rates forcing savings and austerity rather than cheap money and indiscriminate stimulus of sectors supposedly in glut.

          • Funny how labor unions and the minimum wage effect the cost of labor and contribute to unemployment in exactly the same way. Hazlett wrote about this almost 70 years ago but liberals refuse to grasp these very simple concepts. How else is their leadership going to lead these suckers around but for pretending to help the worker with a "living wage" and protection from company management?

          • I sent him a link to Hazlett's Economics in One Lesson in another thread. But I don't think he read it.

          • That's one of the books I used for my kids when we studied economics a few years ago. They will be taking college micro- and macro- economics courses this upcoming school year. It will be interesting to see what they will be taught/studying for this go-round.

          • :) I'll put him on my list of crazy-wishful thinking. Right next to, "Golly, it would be awesome to win the Power Ball." Which is funny, because of this joke...

            A blonde (which I am - a natural, not bottle, one *ahem*) was having financial difficulties and prayed to God one night, "Lord, please, please let me win the lottery. I really need the money." She continued to make the same request every night for several weeks. Then, one night, after she prayed, "God, please! I need to win the lottery! I'm going to be in so much trouble if I don't!" - a big voice boomed from the sky, "Honey, meet me half way here! Buy a ticket!"

            *snert* That's me. I always talk about what I'd do if I won the lottery... except I don't ever actually buy tickets.

          • Ha! luv the avi. As to Gollum, suit yourself. You certainly seem to be one smart cookie; you'll figure it out for yourself soon enough.

          • Aw... LOL drb. Maybe we could still manage to rehabilitate him and release him back into the wild with some hope of survival. There seems to be a lot of brainwashing to undo, but he might not be totally unreachable.

          • Oh, john. Heh. At least you have some sense of humor. Tone down the "Young Man Angry At The Big Mean Corporations (and Tilting at Windmills to Demonstrate It)" schtick, and there may be hope for you yet.

          • It's quite a common occurrence for people to hit the wrong thumb. It happens all the time to my posts.

          • Oh! LOL. I didn't even notice.

            If he doesn't object, I think I'll go with PJ, for ease of use. Or, for sheer laziness. It sure is faster to type than Poppajoe49, Infamous Relentless Cyber Smoocher, for instance. ;)

          • He means he accidentally thumbed you down when he meant to thumb up.

            I call him Poppa, others call him PJ or Poppajoe, one calls him Poopajoe but to be fair he mutilates her screen name too (not entirely undeserved when he does as I see it). He answers to them all. So I'm sure it will be fine to pick what you like. Oh and watch out for the cyber smooches...he's relentless on that score!

          • Er... huh? Missed the mark on what, Poppajoe? (Poppa Joe? PJ? Hee. Do you have a preferred way of being addressed?)

          • I browsed the first section of Hazlett, and knew he wouldn't tackle it. Makes too much sense.

          • Right, rent $180/mo, electric $75/mo, car ins $50/mo, doesn't leave lots of room for food and gasoline. Even with a roommate to split expenses, it was tough. Thank God you're so smart that you know what it was like to live on your own before you were born.

          • Blow you corporate greed out your ass....No wonder you can't get a job with that attitude. "John says Corporations bad"...must not like them....you realize just how many people they employ? If you don't like corporations, just get a sign and stand next to the freeway with a dog, (if you don't already) and you can have tax free income, get welfare, and maybe a free phone...then'll you'll be working for BIG government and have the fifty percent of us who pay taxes pay for you too. Minimum wage was NEVER designed to make a living, it was designed to supplement income for people and allow kids to get a job. Checked the unemployment rate for kids lately? Especially minority kids. There are no jobs, raise the minimum wage and there will be LESS jobs...I guess you slept thru that part of economics class huh?

          • You have no idea what you're talking about. You think you know, and every time you let your brain leak out your finger, it spews crap onto the threads here. 2 dollars an hour was in line with the cost of what, exactly, in the mid 70s? Don't answer. Go away, whistle.

  • Obviously she was motivated just to get some time in the lime light, but I'd also like to know how she managed to afford traveling to DC, if she's on such a tight budget with her income, as I'm sure she is? What bugs me about people like her is how they can't see beyond their clueless noses! If you don't like you current lot in life, do something legitimate to change it. Whining is not legitimate!

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