WHY? Steam and Yahoo

[HeyYou]

Wages here for SKILLED jobs are actually pretty good. My son runs a concrete company, and his workers START at 25 bucks an hour. The problem we have here though, is that most of our good manufacturing jobs all left, and we are now a 'service industry' country. Most of those have historically been low-wage jobs. And then we have McDonalds, and jobs of that nature. Those jobs were NEVER intended to support a family. They are low wage, entry-level jobs, that were expected to be filled by teenagers just getting into the workforce. (and likely still in school....) but, with the mass exportation of manufacturing.... all those factory workers needed to go somewhere. I have no real desire to spend 15 bucks for a meal at McD's, when I can spend just a couple bucks more, and get a REAL meal at a sit-down restaurant, with a nice waitperson.....

[Dashyburn]

Google the LIMA agreement signed in 1975, not too many people are aware of it, it is solely responsible for the demise of manufacturing in western countries and the transfer of manufacturing to poor nations, such as China, who are no longer poor, a BAD mistake, it has had a huge negative effect in Aus and the U.S. When the dictator decides it's time to annex Taiwan the world is in for it as they manufacture pretty much all computing chips.

 

McDonalds was ok years ago, when they had 5 buck meal deals but last time I went there (about 3 years ago) I received shrapnel back from a 20 for cold floppy fries and a cold burger slapped together by overworked and underpaid teenagers. I have also been dished up a side order of EXTREMELY SEVERE food poisoning about 20 years ago, I felt like I was going to die, for over 5 years after the mere sight of the big yellow M would trigger nausea as a warning, I was eventually able to stomach it again but I give it a wide berth due to it being so expensive for possibly the lowest quality food on the planet. Yuck.

[HeyYou]

It started with Nixon going to China back in the 70's. Then we had NAFTA, and various other 'free trade' agreements. Of course, all that did was allow china to generate huge amounts of money, which they then spent on their military..... To me, that has "bad plan" written all over it..... but, nobody asked me....

[Dashyburn]

I see you have an election of some description in the U.S. today, bet you're glad it's not compulsory to vote, wish it was like that here I would never vote again for any of these career politicians in Aus who actually couldn't care less about people, they do it for personal gratification and to have power. The only reason I vote is to avoid the preposterous fine, I can't be bothered reading through the million parties on a ballot sheet the length of 6 bits of A4 paper and width of 3 bits of A4, plus it's a huge farce as there's this thing called 'Preferences' that have nothing to do with public votes, it's an in house thing decided by politicians and it can decide the tipping point. I don't exactly know how it works I will not devote brain capacity to store that crap, all I do is whinge about them, that's all they are worthy of, I get my name marked off and that'll do now, I used to care but then I learned the entire system plus it's people are broken beyond repair so it's actually of no use participating. Depending on the mood I'm in at the time, the ballot will either be left blank, or in big letters things ranging from "not a single one of these candidates are worthy to make other people's decisions on their behalf" to "get stuffed the lot of ya's" :D

[HeyYou]

Actually, that was last month. No elections today that I am aware of.

 

I didn't even vote in the last election. Didn't see anyone there I wanted to vote FOR. Figgered I would let random chance sort it out. :D

[Dashyburn]

Ah right, I was channel surfing on free to poor, oh I mean free to air TV and caught a glimpse but didn't watch it long enough for details, you can't watch anything on free to poor in Aus it's just unwatchable, it's insulting to anyone with an IQ of more than 2 digits :D