People who deserve more

[Icey Dominus]

I had a interesting thought as I rode the bus today, some people are very under payed and very unappreciated! Take dish washers for example I have done dish pit in a few places and simply put most people dont give a shit about you and its hard to find a dish pit that is payed much more than minimum wage. Then you take are more public jobs and essential services just think about the shit bus drivers and taxi drivers put up with on a daily basis what a thankless job an once again throw in the low fucking wages especially for cab drivers. I understand are need for entertainment I really do but why really are people who PRETEND to be in he military or be a cop payed so much when the starting wage for a cop or regular infantry is approximately 30 grand a year thats only 10 grand over the poverty marker. I am not saying they should be payed millions like actors or sports stars but I think they should get a little more than what they do now. I hear about athletes getting 14 million dollars over the course of 5 years well sure you are in good shape and good/great at a sport but what about the people that clean up your garbage or protect your country? Food for thought thanks to anyone who actually takes the time to read my drivel.

[Drake Wingfire]

This is exactly what all the Occupy protests have been about more or less, so many service type jobs treat you and pay you like shit. yet, if these jobs didn't have workers things would fall apart fast. Imagine a day if everyone walked off from their grocery store jobs..

Its fair that more educated and risky jobs be payed higher, but as for CEO's... their wages should not even be 1/3 of what they are now for most companies. Especially in this day and age when we keep hearing of companies being run into the dirt and still some how the CEO's are getting pay raises and hugs income supplements for apparently being the worst business managers ever. If even 1/2 of the salaries they get for cocking things up was divided amongst their low-level CORE employees who actually do the work, I think that would make a huge dent in this provinces poverty.

BC is very very slowly taking steps to improve this little part of Canada but its too little too late, even the new min wage when it hits $10.25 in may 2012 still falls well below the poverty line, we got child poverty like its going outta style and food bank usage by young people and young families is higher than it should be. Personally I think BC shot their people in the foot by making this place rely too heavily on fickle tourism and penny pinching retirees. Now we are paying the price for our leaders stupidity. Seeing the minimum wage debates disgusted me, a lot of older people all felt that $8/hr was fair and people making below poverty wages had no right to complain they could not afford rent and food. Personally I just call them wannabee slave owners for surfing on a wave of poverty workers and getting mad when the ride is slowly coming to a stop.

Take what you will of this, I am sorta jaded on the subject matter XD

[Ember]

People who are actors or play sports are paid so much because they bring in a lot of money- they are a product being sold.

Dishwashers are not paid much because although it is a hard job, it is a mindless unskilled job that anyone can do. Further, if people like dishwashers were paid more then the cost of their wages would be handed down the chain. Your complaint would then be "Why are restaurant meals so expensive?!"

Minimum wage really should be higher, but minimum wage jobs are shitty jobs. I think that the real problem is that certain jobs shouldn't be minimum wage jobs in the first place.

[mediar]

Police, firefighters and emts should be making more money then what they get now. Sure sports star are fun to watch, but the above 3 save/protect lives. Its crappy that they make so little compaired to a sports star, that will probably require their assistence. :/

[Selkit]

The main issue is that minimum wage is not a living wage (The point at which the basic necessities of life can be taken care of). Not that minimum wage needs to be high enough that everyone can enjoy cognac and cigars, of course, but it should at least be high enough to stave off malnutrition, homelessness and provide for basics like utilitarian clothing, prescriptions, and basic sundries. Right now, it doesn't. Hell, even at the May 2012 increased rate, it still won't in most areas of BC. Ember's right, though; Higher wages in some fields of work means higher prices for basic goods. In most foodservice, the priciest ingredient in the kitchen is often labor. On the other hand, I doubt all minimum wage jobs need to be minimum wage for budgetary reasons; I'm jaded enough about human nature to suspect what's been suggested, that the highest man on the totem simply wants to scrimp where possible to ensure they can still buy their fifth Lexus with a wad of cash. Sadly, then you have to flip it back around again; The man with five Lexuses pays mechanics to fix them, wash attendants to clean them...

Economics. It's a complicated beastie. I do agree, though; Sports stars, divas and the like are hideously overpaid for the actual material value they produce. Or the toxic waste that can only apparently be disposed of in the ears of the dim, in the case of some "musicians" nowadays. How music still thrives on the model it does, in an effectively post-scarcity environment where commodity value is dictated by fiat-of-oligarch...

</Waltzing ramble>

[Drake Wingfire]

The new min wage will only make life a little more affordable in small towns or citys where rent is lower, Vic and Van, no way in the coldest day in hell, the living wage index was rated at $18/hr for Vancouver last I heard. Perhaps one day there will be universal living wages, well more like basic survival wages... The real skewed part was how the opposition twisted data, when the concept for these wage boosts was brought to the table, opposition was quick to say only youth who lived at home made that wage and that the actual amount of minimum wage workers in this province doesn't even break 100,000 or so. The thing is, if you change that figure to just anyone who is working and falls under the poverty line, that number just explodes. I found it laughable how when $8/hr was the min you had people with this notion that if someone made like $8.30/hr they were no longer a poverty worker... It was a clever way to skew the fact of the matter to make it look as if this province was full of well-off workers.

[Selkit]

Well Drake, here's how it is for me. I earn a few bucks more an hour than minimum wage. I have a room-mate, I don't dine on steak every night, and I'm actually being paid almost twice what I earned upon moving out on my own in Calgary, Alberta, one of the most expensive cities to live in, in Alberta. And on that Albertan job, I managed to save more than $300 more monthly than I do in BC despite making half as much. I managed to buy winter clothes, boots, prescriptions, adequate food... all the necessities. Only recently in BC have I had a job that actually paid me enough that I can start considering even a few of my basic expenses to be adequately funded; I'm fed, sure, I'm sheltered, but I don't have enough surplus overhead right now to go buying much of anything unless I'm doing game art contracts on the side, effectively holding down two jobs. Simply put, the Lower Mainland is not "liveable" in the sense of being able to save for retirement, buy all you need (Not want, need; I had to choose this month between buying new boots and a new winter coat, so I get to pick the part that freezes until next month), and actually deal with any financial contingency that comes up (If and when my wisdom teeth do become a problem, I am solidly fucked). $18/hour does sound about right for Vancouver, and $15 or so an hour seems like the minimum for Surrey.

[zenia]

I don't work as many hours as I would like to, since my shop has been pretty slow for a long time. I make $12/hr... but I can only just afford rent/utilities/bus pass. Some months I get to eat nice things... other months I have to eat rice from the dollar store. I hate it when unexpected things come up... 'cause I am not able to save any money. At the end of each month, I have practically nothing. Recently I had to pay $300 to have a filling replaced (and another one at the same time since they had to go through the first one to get to the other one... it was the only way) and when i was there, the fill-in dental assistant punched a hole in my wisdom tooth with the rubber dam clamp, so i had to go back in two weeks later and have it removed. That was another $100 out of my pocket. I had to put it on my credit card because I didn't have the money, but didn't want to be in agony anymore.

I can't afford a winter coat. It would cost me at least $200 for one. I wear a big hoodie that I bought four years ago. It doesn't keep the cold out much (and not the wet at all). I haven't had boots in years. I have to buy $20 running shoes... which I need to replace now, 'cause they have huge cracks in the soles and leak water. >___>

It sure would be nice to make more than $10k a year.

[Dana Dragonpaw]

I was a busser at Tim Horton's - essentially a dishwasher - for about a year. While I agree that they're underpaid, the point that it's not very 'valuable' in that anyone can do it (not to mention, for every one that gets the job there are twenty more willing to do it) is valid. From an economics standpoint, minimum wage is fine for dishwashers. Let the high school kiddies take those cruddy jobs and learn what it's like to work. However, I do think the attitude towards people in these jobs needs to change. I always got treated like I had a lower social status than a pile of shit on a stack of used syringes from both sides of the counter. There was a sort of meme that'd go around every time we got a particularly bad customer: "We need a douchebag button. Every time the customer is a dick to the staff, you charge them an extra dollar". And you know who were NEVER douchebags? Our fellow underpaid-employee cops who also get mistreated all too often.

I'm out of a job at present and may well take a retail job or work at a theater, but frankly I'd like something that pays enough that I can move out of my parents' place. So far I haven't found a job that pays enough or a room cheap enough (at least, not one where the potential roommates aren't creepy and/or drug addicts) and I've lived in BC for three years now - I used to live in Alberta too, and often wonder if I shouldn't have stayed there. I'm here for the animation schools, but I might just move provinces again after I'm done (first having to actually get in). I'm glad minimum wage is going up, but the wage isn't the only factor that needs to change if people are to live where they want to comfortably.

[Ember]

Police, firefighters and emts should be making more money then what they get now. Sure sports star are fun to watch, but the above 3 save/protect lives. Its crappy that they make so little compaired to a sports star, that will probably require their assistence. :/

Again, the point is that sports stars and actors generate revenue- lots of it. That is why they are paid so well. It has nothing to do with who does the most good.

[mediar]

Again, the point is that sports stars and actors generate revenue- lots of it. That is why they are paid so well. It has nothing to do with who does the most good.

I know why they get the big cheques, just shows that us as a people would rather be intertained, then saved from a burning building. *shrug*

[Ember]

I know why they get the big cheques, just shows that us as a people would rather be intertained, then saved from a burning building. *shrug*

Firefighting/EMT/Police work is not a self funding industry. That is to say that they do not raise the money (or even close) to pay for their own jobs.

They are almost fully paid for by external forces.

The entertainment industries have a product, the sale of which covers their own costs. Because of this, the people who pull in the most revenue (also providing pay cheques for all the people around them) get paid very well.

It's not a matter of social priority, it is a matter of basic economics.

[mediar]

Firefighting/EMT/Police work is not a self funding industry. That is to say that they do not raise the money (or even close) to pay for their own jobs.

They are almost fully paid for by external forces.

The entertainment industries have a product, the sale of which covers their own costs. Because of this, the people who pull in the most revenue (also providing pay cheques for all the people around them) get paid very well.

It's not a matter of social priority, it is a matter of basic economics.

Bottom line is that people still rather pay thousands of dollars on sports teams, rather than their local emergency services.

entertaiment > personal safty

[Drake Wingfire]

I gotta side with Mediar on this issue... My two cents would be why should acting pay upwards in the millions of dollars PER movie for some actors? That seems excessively greedy, pay them well, yes, but THAT much? That would be like paying a cashier $50/hr simply cause they look pretty...

Society always seems to pay out the highest to those who only entertain or simply sit on their asses in managerial positions in contrast to how poorly payed the most essential services are. Emergency services, airline pilots, chefs and line cooks. Do we want a society in which our most stressed and poverty-distracted workers are the ones who have the most important jobs? I don't know about you but I get concerned that the person making my food is payed so poorly when it could only take that one time of the chef being all "shit shit, how am I gonna make rent?!" and then forgetting to fully cook my chicken or something and then suddenly I got botulism. And for the love of all things decent don't try and say "well maybe he/ she shouldn't be working that job" cause that's like saying the best way to fix a broke car is to just put more broken parts into it.

Simply put...

Celebrity fucking up = Funny/ stupid/

Service worker fucking up = Potential harm.. even possible death though not likely.

[Renwaldo]

What Ember is saying is that the movies make millions of dollars.

Arson doesn't make millions of dollars, that's why civic fire fighters get paid less.

It isn't a matter of wrong versus right, it's just the way things are.  :-\