Newsflash: Life sucks anywhere when you're poor and uneducated.
I worked as an independent Google contractor before for less than $11 an hour with very stringent rules, ever increasing performance requirements, no holidays, no sick pay, no nothing.
If you're poor and uneducated you're disposable dirt anywhere these days, even though people would like you to think otherwise and it's obviously even worse in 3rd world countries, where people looking for relatively unskilled jobs far outnumber available positions.
Newsflash: Life sucks anywhere when you're poor and uneducated.
And abundant evidence indicates that (most) corporations will do everything within their power to take advantage of this fact, unless very strongly regulated.
Not trying to start a capitalism war, but would an Earned Income Tax Credit be a more viable alternative to higher minimum wages? I've not done the leg work, but the IRS has a lot more info to help determine who's making how much that could help make the EITC even out unequal pay.
I'm not really on top of the various policy debates, actually. What's important is not to be distracted by this idea that "life sucks, and you can't really do anything about it -- so just keep your head down and look after yourself." Being as this is not only exactly how the powers-that-be want you to see things; it's entirely integral to their strategy of keeping things the way they are.
Very good point - it's a bit disheartening to see many people eschew political action in favour of self improvement.
Self improvement is fine and necessary and honorable and all, but ultimately living together in society is necessarily political.
Note also that a lot of what is taught in undergrad/MBA economics 101 distracts from that, and (even while aspiring to be value neutral) implicitly promotes a trust in markets and corporations that is naive and misguided.
James Kwak's book "Economism" is a nice antidote to that:
As consumers we could do better. Instead of just focusing on the price and features we could be also interested in how the product was produced.
I think the pressure from consumers can be even stronger force than regulation. It can act faster and it is not so susceptible to lobbying and loopholes.
Well, there was a bit of a golden age for lower/middle classes in the West in the decades following WW II (though tainted by racism).
Pikkety's seminal "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" is the famous, but somewhat dry exposition on that.
Branko Milanovic's "Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization" is a relatively slender volume that gives a great overview (on this question in chapter 2).
Google wants Geographers with masters degrees to drive their Google Street View cars for minimum wage in Seattle. Their requirements are ridiculous for their lowend positions.
I'd probably make the argument that it's an overemphasis on the principles of supply and demand (capitalism) that make one potentially worthless.
If there are enough geographers with graduate degrees applying for the gig even at minimum wage pay, you pay them minimum wage.
In the US (and let's be real, most of the world), capitalism trumps altruism (paying someone more than their market value because you're nice).
We exploit our own kind - it's always been that way, and there have always been a sufficient number of justifications (whether you agree with them or not) to keep up the practice.
You see exploitation, I see a market signal to high schoolers and undergraduates telling them we have enough graduate-level geographers, encouraging them to pursue something else and eventually making us all more prosperous in the future.
Sure, just two different ways of looking at the same thing. I personally view all employment as fundamental exploitation. Obviously you only hire employees with the intention to extract more value than what you give back in compensation. Some employers are downright extreme in this exercise.
I'm not against all of it. I just appreciate viewing things from as many perspectives as possible, uncomfortable or not.
What's a better system? About the time that Marx was formulating his ideas on society and markets, the US was just about finishing up several decades of government businesses that kept losing money against free market ran businesses even though they had the weight of the US treasury behind them. I doubt anyone would disagree that the reason the government businesses failed was that they were not sensitive to market signals and kept investing people's labor poorly.
Actually it is ridiculous. Why were public funds spent on giving someone advanced education to drive around? Is there nothing better society can do with such skills?
It absolutely is. If the best you can do with someone with an advanced degree is make them drive a car, you're wasting a valuable mind on a menial task.
If it was a valuable mind then surely the owner of it would opt to do a more valuable activity than drive a car around? Google is just providing an option. Should they be binning applications for the position that include degrees?
How pretentious of you to decide what's best for someone else. Your job shaming just reinforces the notion that everyone must get a higher education degree or GTFO. Maybe people doing the job enjoy it or are doing it part time or find that the resume benefits outweigh the pay?
Either way there's nothing inherently wrong with a job that requires you to drive around all day. Work is work regardless of if you look down your nose at it as "menial".
Re-read what I said, because you are responding to something that has nothing to do with any of my claim.
Restated: If you spend 8+ years and tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn something, not putting it to use is a colossal waste of resources for everyone involved. It's not just you. It's the seat you took from another student who would have appreciated it more.
I have a different perspective. Education is resource-constrained, and learners do not exist in a vacuum. In my opinion, it is the height of ego to refuse to make use knowledge that so many others have spent time and effort to teach.
The education is paid for, so the "others" who are teaching are earning money, it's not wasted effort.
Knowledge itself doesn't contain any inherent value, it's free if you want to learn it all yourself without depriving anyone else of it. What you're paying for is the academic environment, resources and tutoring of a person. That's a business exchange like any other and everyone is free to spend their money on that, whether they do anything with the results or not.
All knowledge learned represents an opportunity cost paid, both in real capital and time consumed in acquisition, both for the students and the educational system as a whole. If nothing is done with it other than acquisition, we as a society lose.
I am not against the viewpoint you present for anything other than what I see as pragmatic reasons. If we lived in a post-scarcity economy, I would agree with you.
But we don't, and we aren't going to be there anytime soon, either. The system we have now loads crippling debt on to students, and one of the reasons it can do so is because of the constraints of supply and demand. Thus, in my opinion, to not do anything with an advanced degree is deeply selfish.
while i agree with your sentiment about not at all utilizing the potential of an advanced education, i'm not sure how google is "at fault" here...
assuming this resume requirement is real: is it google's fault there is a sufficient supply of master's holders willing to drive for minimum wage, such that they're content having the requirement?
No. But it very much is their fault for making such an asinine requirement. I have no doubt it actually hurts them, too. Turnover is expensive, and someone who has an advanced degree will bail for better prospects as soon as possible.
That very attitude (that higher degrees=better at everything) is what I have the problem with. Not only is it demonstrably not true, but it comes with real consequences. An entire generation is being saddled with crippling amounts of debt because of attitudes like this, and we all lose because of it. Our society becomes lopsided, with not enough jobs for college grads to enable most to pay off their student debt, and not enough tradesfolk to fill the ever-widening gap between our needs and who can do the work.
Please note that I am not talking about learning in general. Lifelong learning is fundamental. But there are other paths to knowledge beyond a 4-year college.
well, they presumably weren't born into slavery only to be worked brutally hard then tortured and murdered by a slave owner, so i guess they're worthy of a sneer or two.
Oh it is exploitation. It's not like there's a victim, though. The drivers likewise exploit Google's insufferable desire for street photography in exchange for cash.
I worked for outsourcers before as well doing support type jobs. Bad pay, ever increasing performance pressure, no benefits (no sick pay or health insurance), so if you got sick you were shit out of luck and healthcare was prohibitively expensive. Private insurance was available of course but these were all angle shooting companies in the affordable range that are barely better than having no insurance at all. The gap to the 3rd world is quickly closing in a lot of places these days unfortunately. (and not in a good way)
What does "socialised medicine" mean? Many European countries have mandatory health insurance premiums on top of normal taxation (for example: Netherlands, Switzerland).
The original poster says claims Ireland doesn't and whilst I'd assume they know more than I do, http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/Find_a_Service/eligibility.ht... makes it sound substantially free or heavily subsidised ("comprehensive, government funded public healthcare system").
The link I posted said that's for roughly 30% of people, to receive completely free care, so yes, it's fairly low. Skimming further than that page suggested the remainder was still heavily subsidized. Most European countries I've experienced do not have 100% free healthcare for all.
Germany doesn't, for example. You have private ensurance companies and you have to chose one. When things go bad, you bet the insurance company won't be on your side. It's all ok if you have a good job (IT or otherwise) that pays for the best, but for poorer people it sucks.
> Germany doesn't, for example. You have private ensurance companies and you have to chose one.
What? No. In Germany you have public health insurance and private health insurance.
Private is only an option if you make over ~55,000€ or are self employed. Of course there are many private insurance companies happy to sell you insurance. They're in it to make money. Just be prepared for the premiums to increase as you get older.
Public health insurance [0] is available from several different providers, all which basically offer the same thing: you get sick and go the doctor, you are treated without charge.
> When things go bad, you bet the insurance company won't be on your side.
I have never been seriously ill, but for all the minor things (flu, infection) I just went to the doctor and gave them my health card.
I do know people who have been seriously I'll, requiring hospitalisation, and I haven't heard many complaints from them. They're still alive, and not financially ruined or suing the Krakenkasse.
So how exactly will they not be "on your side" ?
The public health system in Germany, and other European countries from what my friends say, is not the most luxurious or expedient, but you get the care you need and without paying extravagant amounts as one would in America.
I know people in America on ACA who pay thousands per year and still have a deductable of thousands. Sure, I pay ~4,000€ to the Krakenkasse through the mandatory salary deductions each year, but I have no deductable for care.
As a young and healthy person it doesn't cost the German government that much each year to keep me alive, but this money goes toward keeping other people healthy and alive. I consider that a worthwhile goal (though I do strongly want them to ban tobacco advertising).
I don't mind Japan's system. You pay monthly to the government (about 10% of your income for a married couple with a child) then the government pays 70% of your medical bill out of that, no questions asked.
The short answer is no. The long answer is your bill is based on your salary from the previous year e.g. Jan 2017 bill will be based on Jan 2016 income, which is not nice if you don't have a job anymore. The good part is extensions are easy to get. Other than that it is free for poor people.
I don't want to dox myself, but you can probably guess which western European country doesn't. Healthcare isn't US level expensive there where you'll go bankrupt with any minor issue but still prohibitively expensive if you don't make much and break your arm for example, so it's somewhat essential.
A colleague of mine got diagnosed with a serious heart condition, was away for a month or so without sick pay, got fired as a result and went bankrupt from medical bills.
> I don't want to dox myself, but you can probably guess which western European country doesn't.
Maybe this is supposed to be an easy question, but as an American, I have no idea which western European country doesn't have socialized medicine, and Wikipedia is not helping me out.
From the description I assumed it was one of the more Eastern European countries like Romania. I've never looked at Ireland like that. I assumed they had the same setup as most of western EU countries.
[Born and raised Irish, left at the first opportunity ]
Ireland is a weird (and sometimes nightmarish) mix of European and American culture. For some reason we decided that some of the dumbest ideas of the US simply had to be implemented, at great cost to the average citizen.
In Canada, specifically BC if you fail to pay monthly medical premiums you have no health insurance either they sell your account to collections and you have to pay cash for any doctor visit. Since private health is not available you're screwed and have to either leave the province to get health insurance again or continue paying cash.
There's always loopholes in socialized medicine usually only affecting the poor.
I keep hearing that you will 'go bankrupt' with every minor health issue in the US. Do you actually live in the US? Have you used US healthcare?
I pay for my own health insurance (because I own my own company) and while not cheap, it's affordable. I think I pay around $250 US/month. I get regular checkups included (most prescriptions cost me $10 or less) and I had a colonoscopy last year and it cost me less that $50.
If I had major surgery, I would be out a couple of grand. While it does have problems, it's nowhere near as bad as many would like you to think.
Aside from the deductible, most insurance plans in the US cover only a percentage of costs. 80 or 90 percent is common. For a single, simple, surgery it's bearable. Something like cancer, with ct scans, chemo, radiation, surgery with a 1 week hospital stay, etc...can bankrupt you.
"Something like cancer, with ct scans, chemo, radiation, surgery with a 1 week hospital stay, etc...can bankrupt you."
Again, I will have to disagree. Do you have any actual experience with this or are you going to just give me more talking points....
My wife's sister went through stage 2 breast cancer over the past 2 years and she had her own insurance plan as well. After 4 major surgeries and 1 year of chemo, her total expenses are $10K.
You can negotiate with hospitals and they almost always have payment plans with 0 interest for a few years. She negotiate it down to $5K, which is pretty reasonable, considering the amount of time she spent in the hospital.
My Aunt lives in Canada and she had thyroid cancer a couple of years ago. Because it wasn't considered 'life threatening', she had to go before a health board to determine when she should actually receive surgery.
They determined that she could have surgery in 2 years. This was unacceptable, so she went over the border to the US and got it done in a month.
I would much rather have the option of actually getting the surgery done in a timely fashion than having to go before a board (IE: the 'death panels' that everyone talks about) to determine my fate.
The US healthcare system does need work, but many people use hyperbole and have never experienced it first-hand.
There is no single US healthcare system that someone can experience first-hand. There is a lot of variation from state to state. I take you haven't experienced the system as someone, say, making less than $25k/yr, in every single state, at various times of year (say 2 months before your deductible rolls over) with various kinds of conditions (acute, chronic, extremely rare, etc?), at various points in their careers (if they can even claim to use that word)? And you've experienced this in a range of personal contexts? with various mental issues, or with dependents, or with poor mathematical skills coming out of a bad-fit-for-them public schooling system, or no slack to even be able to take any time off, no PTO?
There are millions of Americans who can't afford $250/mo on top of food, rent, and transportation costs, working more than full-time hours spread across several jobs, all of which pay minimum wage in poor conditions that are bad for their bodies and with unpredictable scheduling.
In light of the reality of many, many people's experiences in the healthcare system that are contrary to your own, which are NOT hard to find, your comments comes across quite poorly.
"There is no single US healthcare system that someone can experience first-hand. "
Sure there is. There aren't that many private insurance companies in the US and they all work similarly.
"I take you haven't experienced the system as someone, say, making less than $25k/yr, in every single state, at various times of year (say 2 months before your deductible rolls over) with various kinds of conditions (acute, chronic, extremely rare, etc?), at various points in their careers (if they can even claim to use that word)? And you've experienced this in a range of personal contexts?"
I feel like this is the 'no true scotsman' logical fallacy creeping into the conversation. You could say the same thing about every single healthcare system (or any large system) in the world: it's not the same for everyone.
..and by the way, my wife's sister makes $35K/year. Money has little to do with it.
"There are millions of Americans who can't afford $250/mo on top of food, rent, and transportation costs, working more than full-time hours spread across several jobs, all of which pay minimum wage in poor conditions that are bad for their bodies and with unpredictable scheduling."
You say that, but many people I know won't pay for healthcare, but pay more in booze, weed, and expensive electronics and services.
When I was single, I got bare-bones care for $75/month. This is as cheap as a cellphone plan. My premiums were high, but I wouldn't go bankrupt if I had major surgery. Many people can easily afford healthcare in this country. They choose to spend their money elsewhere.
I've traveled the world and the US has the richest poor people I've ever seen. Try living on less than $2/day with starving children.
Hospitals can't refuse anyone by law. We also have lots of systems, paid for by the taxpayers, to help people on low incomes get the care they need.
"In light of the reality of many, many people's experiences in the healthcare system that are contrary to your own, which are NOT hard to find, your comments comes across quite poorly."
Your comments come off as rather naive. No system is perfect and I can point to many instances of people getting terrible care in every other healthcare system as well.
You want to paint a hyperbolic picture that the US healthcare system will make you go bankrupt and you need to be rich to get care.
My point is that this just isn't true. It needs work, but it's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.
Note that I never said the healthcare system will make you go bankrupt and you need to be rich to get care. That's a strawman you've been fighting from the beginning.
> "Money has little to do with it."
Again, you are severely out of touch with the existence of many Americans if you think money has nothing to do with it. I guess the poor ones aren't actually poor if they would just stop spending money on vices? You would do well for yourself if you stop looking at anecdotes of people you know, and start looking at the generalized case of the hundreds of millions Americans across socioeconomic classes.
The disappointing truth is that there are indeed many hard-working Americans (many of them immigrants...) who bust ass all year long, and they don't have money to pay for even a high deductible plan. They can barely make rent. And if they did, those plans still result in many tens of thousands of $s in the event of a severe hospital stay. These are the people where a single chain of events can push them into severe poverty with no easy way out.
If you read HN then you'll know this stuff is happening, and a lot of people are talking about just how hard it is to climb these days for the bottom %s of America. Just a few months ago, we're now at the point where potential to climb, social mobility is lower than our grandfather's generation?
I would like to invite you to read some of the work done by David Belk MD and see if that changes your seemingly cavalier attitude that it's "not that bad". Here's a former comment of mine with some links. The system is very inefficient, with a lot of corruption, and people like you are genuinely hurting people by fighting as if it's otherwise.
90 percent up to out of pocket max. My out of pocket max has always been between 1k and 5k per year. So if I need 1 million dollar cancer treatment, I don't pay 100k. I pay 5k.
So no I cannot go bankrupt with health insurance in the US.
The ACA did fix some of that, but there are situations that can still be challenging. The max out of pocket can be higher than yours..close to $8k/person, and it's annual, so if you get sick late in the year, the clock starts over. It's also not uncommon to have to go out of network for certain types of treatment, which opens up more doors.
Also, many people aren't able to work when they are sick.
You called $250/month affordable, which is almost an entire week's salary full-time on the federal minimum wage. 20% of your wage for a poor person is not 'affordable'. There are 45M people poor enough to be on food stamps in the US - the average monthly net income of these people is $335[0].
Median household income is 52k. At 52k, you get massive ACA subsidies. At say 75k or 100k, yes you can afford the $250 (or more realistically $1000 or $1500) it costs to get a family health insurance.
Call me overly cynical, but the future is looking even worse with ever increasing automation. There will most likely be a small elite of technocrats and wealthy while everybody else is living in shacks competing for whatever jobs are left.
Most single millenial guys that aren't in tech or another high paying career are already living in shared housing indefinetely if they're in a big city.
An excess of people having no purpose in society will result in such conditions unless there is a revolution and a technologically disadvantaged north korea where everybody has stuff to do suddenly doesn't look that bad anymore.
Shared housing isn't bad in principle. It was only some decades ago that most people didn't own a single-family freestanding home. I hope that when I'm old I can live with all my friends in a big shared home, rather than a nursing home.
Did you ever watch the cartoons growing up, like _Hey, Arnold_ on Nickelodeon? Remember how Arnold's family ran a boarding house, with shared common spaces and bunch of people renting rooms (for years at a time!) and a diversity of humanity to provide Humanity, different perspectives, and other such forms of Color for the show?
Did you ever stop think about how weird that arrangement was? Do you know anyone who owns, operates, or lives in a boarding house?
And yet it's not really all that weird by historical standards. It's only in fairly recent times that cities decided to get all Moralistic about how Home, Family and Neighborhoods Should Be Structured and started imposing zoning restrictions with super emphasis on homes, waging war against boarding houses and residential hotels and flophouses and other haunts of the poor and lower classes in the name of Progress and Class Warfare. Can't quite afford a place that meets the minimum square footage requirements independently? Well, don't worry, we can find a place for you in the crime-ridden public housing projects or on the streets. Kiss your remaining independence goodbye and welcome to the Bureaucracy, because you're never going to be able to get on the bus to a new town with $100 in your pocket and find a place to crash for a few nights until you get a new job. Who would rent you a place like that anymore? There's the YMCA... and that's about it, _period_.
(Hell, a lot of the debates about AirBnB "abuse" end up rehashing these same problems.)
Only if we let it. Technology could equally be used to let everybody work less, have more spare time, instead of enriching the wealthy and leaving the rest as useless extraneous people
America is built upon the idea of cheap labor and fat profits. Everyone for themselves. Unions won't do much. Automation will only make things worse for poor and uneducated.
Humans are selfish by nature driven by financial rewards.
Yet you make four times what the subject of the article makes (assuming you work 40hrs a week), receive additional pay for additional work, and are protected by US labor laws.
I'm not saying your job isn't though, but I find it silly to use it to dismiss the point of the article which is that US companies should be held responsible under US laws.
He made 2k a month with tips. I was not protected by any labor laws as I was a contractor and not an employee (their way to get around benefits and employee related regulations).
I'm also living in a first world country where costs of living are fairly expensive and where I don't have free housing (and food I presume), so I was living hand to mouth without health insurance.
The employee worked over 75 hours a week, but routinely had his timesheets rewritten to show 40. When he complained, he had some of his works taken away. When he was seriously injured in his job, his injury was laughed off as a lie and he was sent back to work anyway. I think it's fair to say that this person has a unique set of extremely challenging circumstances different than what you described. I'm not sure what we have to gain by dismissing these henious labor violations. Even if it was just as bad for you (I doubt it), would that invalidate this person's experience, or mean we shouldn't investigate these crimes?
What Google was doing to you is immoral, and should be illegal.
Yes, 'it stinks' to have low wages because one might not have much of an education - but there's absolutely no reason on earth not to have 'basic worker protections'.
I generally don't like Unions, especially those that are entrenched - but we wouldn't need them if people were not so greedy.
Google does this a lot, and I find it despicable that they take the 'moral high ground' on so many issues, but then treat people as commodities.
Google is massively rich, there's no reason they can't offer 'decent pay' with 'regular paid holidays' and 'sick days' and to ensure that their contractors are doing the same.
High tech has this weird duplicity: they want to 'save the world' and 'end disease' - when they fail to realize that the world would be a pretty good place to begin with if all of the actors - people and companies - just behaved conscientiously - and that they have a role to play in this.
Steve Jobs for example - with one single sentence, in one single email, could have ensured basic worker protections for every worker in his entire supply chain.
And I'm not talking about 'gold plated retirement packages' and 'can't get fired no matter what' - I just mean '2 weeks vacay, basic healthcare, 40 hours a week max' and 'actual bathroom breaks'.
We talk about intellectual things like UBI, heyzeus, we could make big inroads with just some basic things.
> High tech has this weird duplicity: they want to 'save the world' and 'end disease' - when they fail to realize that the world would be a pretty good place to begin with if all of the actors - people and companies - just behaved conscientiously - and that they have a role to play in this.
Agreed. They fail to realize this and saving the world and ending disease is far more glamorous than actually treating your employees well. Its much the same with organizations that focus on helping people in other countries while ignoring the fact that there are starving, homeless people in their own backyard.
Carnival is basically the bottom of the barrel in the cruise ship industry, cheap crap for the masses and they maintain this cheapness by poor working conditions, slapdash ship design (count how many ships caught fire in the past few years, almost all Carnival) and low quality amenities. Like no frills airlines, there is of course a market for cheap, but you get what you pay for. Even on much better lines it isn't an easy job, but my friends in the cruise industry note that it is a decent living for people from poorer countries, and can be fun if you land on the right ship/line. You do work 7 days a week but the commute is short, and on decent ships your life is not really that bad.
But as the article pointed out, that choice of where you work can make a huge difference if anything goes wrong like an injury, and that's where none of the lines are really all that great. Even there while there are always new people they can hire, word does get out who to work for, and if your rep takes a fall because you treat people like crap, you won't be able to hire good people, and the guests will see the quality drop to point where revenue gets hit. Cruise ships are enormously expensive to run, and competition is strong. But my family has been on enough cruises to know who we would rather be on, and how decently they treat the employees is a good indication of whether you should spend a little more and get a better experience.
In the early 90s, Carnival bought Premier Cruise Lines (or most them, at least). They were supposed to assumed Premier's role as provider of "Disney" cruises, though I can't confirm that happened.
Disney started running its own cruise line in 1998. TIL
This is why I am never ever going on a cruise ship (or any resort in Mexico, Dominican etc). Knowing that the guy serving you is basically a slave working for pennies while you are supposed to enjoy your vacation and relax- I couldn't, no thank you.
What surprises me to this day is how little it costs to buy American congress. 1,000,000$ lobbying costs? That's less than a lot of houses in SF or NYC.
Shouldn't it cost more to buy American congress decisions? Like 50 - 100 million USD price range? 1 billion perhaps? Why American politicians are so cheap? Raising lobbying prices would seem a logical conclusion Here :)
You realize that people work on cruise ships and in sweat shops because that is literally the best opportunity they have? Boycotting their meager employment will hardly make things better for them.
Until we have enough skilled workers in the world where we are regularly pumping out robots that can perform menial labour there will always be a need for this type of worker. We live in a time where hyper robot production is not happening, we also live in a time where actually there is a absolutely horrendously massive number of these types of workers.
What do you want to do about it? You want to put them all out of jobs so that companies are forced to spend more money developing robots? What? What is that going to solve? You act like people would rather not work. That's probably true but I hope you have a backup plan for them.
The "horrendously massive number of these types of workers" is the result of a violent imposition of a Capitalist ideology that masquerades as some inevitable, invisible, and inviolable logic. Robots and AI deployed by an oligarch class are just the newest incarnation of a truncheon waved in the face of the engineers who enable them. Better the poor be beaten with it than you.
I say we change the trajectory of the future instead of embracing a nightmare of our own invention as an inevitability.
Oh so this fatuous teleology extends back throughout all human time and history, now? All of history culminates in Filipinos being exploited by cruise lines because cave men? That's quite an interesting take on Hegel.
Alternatively, you could simply vote with your wallet and not increase demand for exploitative industries.
The world is rife with stories of menial workers who were lured to international job roles that turned out to be lies. One common one is subcontinental workers lured to the gulf states to work on construction, and when they arrive they have their passports confiscated and a treated like slaves. Another common one is southeast Asian women lured to first-world countries and similarly tricked, but into sex slavery. These are the worst-case scenarios, but there's plenty of versions without the idea of 'slavery' - the international 'maid' industry, for example. A lot of south east Asians go to other countries and become maids, where they are frequently abused - and it's hard to get home when you haven't been paid since you arrived, may not have your passport, may be physically isolated, and don't speak the local language.
Ah, but no, "it's a job and someone's doing it, so clearly they were fully informed before they went in and no-one is exerting undue leverage over them"...
Those stories involve immigration. Cruise ship workers don't do that. They will the world and return home to tell all their friends about the experience.
I like going to touristy resorts in Mexico. I just tip generously and make sure it goes right in their hand. You can tell from the reaction that it's making a meaningful impact, perhaps more so than boycotting the trip.
I love cruises, I think you're missing out on some wonderful vacation memories!
I bet you very much could relax, considering there's almost no way you have problem typing on your computer made by "slave" labor, while wearing your "slave" labor generated clothing, eating your "slave" labor trafficked food, etc.
Some very poor people live their lives because you bought the stuff in the room you're in now, there are no two ways around that.
>This is why I am never ever going on a cruise ship [...] Knowing that the guy serving you is basically a slave
I'm not doubting your sincerity and principles but I'd like to go beyond this particular injustice of cruise workers and understand how consumers reconcile all the "slave" inputs for the other products they buy.
In the USA, many fruits and veggies are collected by cheap labor from Mexico.[1] In UK, the analogous group is Africans. Those strawberries in the supermarket are not collected by white middle-class teenagers working the field as a fun summer job. It's back-breaking work with terrible pay. Similar situation for many foods like coffee beans, beef/poultry/pork processing.
Or the shoes for your kid to run or play soccer in. Made by sweatshops (many staffed with children) in Asia.
Or how about smartphones?[2] This includes kids mining for minerals so we can have iPhones.[3]
Yes, some of these happen because many consumers are oblivious to how products are made. (You mean the strawberries don't come from a magical strawberry fairy?!?)
Or maybe why we tolerate many of these scenarios is "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics"[4] which has been discussed by HN before. If I don't physically have to touch or lay my eyes on that child labor in Africa, my iPhone is fine.
What would a lifestyle that avoided all use of "tainted" products used look like? (No iPhone, no cheap produce from the supermarket, no affordable shoes or clothing. etc.)
I've not seen a really good essay discussing all the inconsistencies of ethics applied above and advising us how to live guilt free without retreating to a remote monastery and minimizing oneself to an ascetic life like a monk. Refusing cruise ships is easy -- a lot of HN readers don't like them in the first place. Giving up smartphones is hard. Relevant to this moment, the ability to type up comments on HN means I'm taking advantage of the global supply of "slave labor" around the world. There's no way I could have the luxury to do that if I had to harvest my own strawberries or pay a white person $20/hour to do it for me.
It's always possible to make arguments like these, and their appeal is that they're impossible to refute. It's not evident that the conditions of the Filipino cruise ship worker are worse than the Foxconn worker, the strawberry picker or the factory worker in Vietnam.
However one should never turn moral consistency into a prerequisite for action - otherwise we get paralysis and inaction and nothing gets done at all. CP is perfectly able to reconcile voting with his or her feet on this and accepting that in other areas he or she is tacitly accepting slavery.
>It's not evident that the conditions of the Filipino cruise ship worker are worse than the Foxconn worker,
That may be true but it's not relevant to my comment. I was focusing on the rationale given ("knowing the guy is a slave") and not the severity.
>However one should never turn moral consistency into a prerequisite for action
I'm also not advocating or justifying continuation of any economic evils just because one cannot have perfection of morals. Your last sentence finally gets what I wanted to discuss: "CP is perfectly able to reconcile [...] tacitly accepting slavery."
Yes, obviously millions of people _do_ reconcile the inconsistencies that but it would still be interesting to dissect how people really think.
If one is to loudly and publicly say that "I won't buy X because of slavery" but there are lots of other instances where "slavery didn't stop me from enjoying Y", doesn't that mean the more complete moral rationale would actually be:
- "I won't by X because of economic slavery -- unless my desire for X is more important than the slavery."
Doesn't the extra conditional clause at the end makes the public morality stance somewhat empty?
Being a hypocrite on these issues is basicly unavoidable in the modern world, but the critical point here is that does not make you wrong, nor is it a refutation that such things are bad and should be changed.
Its just an easy trite dismissal to avoid examining the situation.
I wasn't dismissing the Filipino worker. I was trying to expand the discussion to other areas similar to the cruise worker. People may be unaware how many other workers in other industries the "slavery" criteria applies to. Or they are aware and don't care. I haven't taken a survey and don't know.
These people usually choose these jobs because they're the best option available. I'd rather lower my lifestyle, send as much as I can towards development NGOs, and vote for candidates trying to build mutually beneficial trade agreements, rather than using our strong economic position to force unfavorable rules unto developing countries.
I know that this is not limited to the cruise ship industry and I do "vote with my dollar". Just as with avoiding cruise ships and resorts of this type I avoid cheap manufactured products coming from countries with questionable labor laws. It is hard to completely avoid this in our everyday life but I do as much as I can. I'm being mindful about it unlike some people who completely ignore these issues.
Food, clothes, energy ... The human slavery did not stop with the abolition almost 200 years ago.
Everything is connected, and you cannot hold yourself responsible for every perceived injustice in the world. You'd need to go full Amish to do that even semi-seriously.
Filipinos who work these jobs are better off with them, not without. That's what counts imo.
I visited Olongapo a number of times in the late 80s with the US Navy. As the article mentions we had a very large number of Filipinos in the USN and there were whole departments completed dominated by Filipino leadership (at the enlisted level).
It's interesting that as our bases shut down and we left that our cruise lines started picking people up.
I think this article should be a cautionary tail to those who would think that large businesses can be trusted to treat people properly on their own.
Not unique to the cruise industry. Filipino crews make up a lot of the maritime industry's labor force. Container ships, tankers, offshore drilling, you name it. Some of the best food I've eaten offshore was on vessels with Filipino catering crews.
The cruise ship guys, comparatively, have it good. There are innumerable stories of entire freighter crews being marooned in third world ports by shipowners who didn't want to pay them.
The global shipping industry is, unfortunately, a race to the bottom. Every time that John McCain proposes the repeal of the Jones Act, I cringe with the thought of what it would do to what's left of the American merchant marine.
I worked for Carnival as a pianist for a couple years after college to save money and it was an excellent physical reminder of how many people are in this world.
I saw those ships turn over ~3,000 people every 5 - 7 days and according to Carnival that would be the first and only cruise for 75% of those guests! That's across a fleet of 25 ships! Needless to say it cured my number numbness for conceptualizing the size of the 'masses.'
> The three logged their hours on the ship’s time-sheet software, called “Fun Time” (Carnival Cruise Line’s motto is the “Fun Ship”). But when the number exceeded ten hours, it appeared red on the screen. No matter how many extra hours they tapped in, their pay slips rarely showed that they worked more than ten or 11 hours a day. Regie didn’t understand why he wasn’t paid for the extra work, and when he asked management, no one provided an answer. “What’s your proof?” Regie says his supervisor shot back. Many tip-earning Carnival Cruise Line workers told me that when they raised the issue, their managers would punish them by assigning them fewer guests, which meant fewer tips.
I wonder why they do this. The $$$ savings for the lesser hours are peanuts given the low wages. Only reason I can think of is to break the will of the workers. If they feel powerless to complain about the hours they've worked, they're less likely to complain about the rest of their conditions.
> But arbitration in the Philippines is nothing like the American judicial system. In the United States, seamen can file for damages on the basis of dangerous working conditions or shoddy medical care, for example. They can receive payments that cover any future loss of wages and ongoing medical expenses, which can span a lifetime. In the Philippines, on the other hand, seamen are offered payouts based on a predetermined compensation chart, in which each body part has a price tag. If there’s a spinal injury and the company-sponsored doctor says a seafarer’s back has lost a third of its mobility, it’s valued at $7,465. If a crew member loses his penis, he’s paid $20,900. If a worker dies: $50,000. The maximum payout, for permanent disability, is capped at $60,000. Unionized workers can receive more, but Carnival Cruise Line crew members are nonunion.
I'm not sure how one "loses his penis" but I'm damn sure I'd demand more than $20,900 in compensation from the party responsible.
> Recently, the cruise industry has pushed to pass a law that would prevent all foreign cruise workers in U.S. waters — not just Filipinos — from any protection under U.S. law.
Sounds like they want it both ways. If you're docking at US ports and picking up US customers, you should be expected to follow some level of US law. It's hard to say what protections should apply though as it's possible they could conflict with foreign laws as well. My internal sense of justice says it should be something though.
When I worked retail, management was always ruthless about avoiding overtime at all costs.
When I was an assistant manager at a little food place in the mall. We'd get a stern talking to by the corporate office in the sky if there was >15 minutes of overtime. That meant that either we didn't finish cleaning or I wouldn't count the drawers and safe. So I didn't get paid to count.
They would reward you with a $50 bonus if you had no OT on your shifts for a month. The odd part is that for 90s teenage mall workers, that occasionally exceeded the value of payroll saved.
Its all profit maximization as far as these companies are concerned, at the cost of their employees. Realistically, if a cruise ship primarily docks at a US port, they should have to abide by our laws. Same if they primarily dock in another country. Flags of convenience have been used for tax evasion and law breaking, which needs to be reigned in.
>I wonder why they do this. The $$$ savings for the lesser hours are peanuts given the low wages.
Managers and supervisors always work for achievements, which are usually made on the back of the lower rungs by saving money and increasing performance by any means necessary.
> I wonder why they do this. The $$$ savings for the lesser hours are peanuts given the low wages. Only reason I can think of is to break the will of the workers.
It's more about regulations I believe, if management can "prove" that you did not work more than the allowed hours, they cannot be fined for it.
Probably the 91 hour per week limit the article mentioned, if they were clocking 12 to 14hr shifts they would meet or break that maximum hourly limit often. Those are insane work hours!
"Rest hours: rest hours should be implemented in national legislation. The maximum hours of work in that legislation should not exceed 14 hours in any 24-hour period and 72 hours in any seven-day period, or: at least ten hours of rest in any 24-hour period and 77 hours (rest) in any seven-day period. Furthermore, the daily hours of rest may not be divided into more than two periods and, at least six hours of rest should be given consecutively in one of those two periods."
All of the replies from Carnival give the same impression: we have rules against that sort of thing, and would punish anyone caught breaking those rules. We also do not go looking for anyone breaking such rules, because we make more money this way.
Having rules is meaningless if you aren't trying to enforce them.
Filipinos are often amazing workers. They seem to be generally happy (which I generally believe they are). Are fairly diligent. They speak English and communicate well.
And work hard.
The biggest issue I have seen is that they can be naive. I have had to talk a few of my Filipino friends out of some scams.
But carnival spends hundreds of millions developing their medallion app to deliver the highest level of guest experience. I'm all for profit but they have the money to treat their workers humanely.
Carnival, and all their princess subsidiaries should be boycotted
This read made me respect the cruise workers who have made my vacations so good over the years.
About 13 years ago I took my first cruise, and from that point forward, about yearly or more, I cruise (though it's been two years since my last). I prefer Royal Caribbean (and Carnival is low on my list, though I've cruised with them many times). I always joke that it's the perfect vacation for geek decompression: it's on a ship where getting in contact with me is very difficult and expensive. Internet is expensive and only somewhat works on board. You don't have to think much -- very little upfront planning is required -- and there's a lot of time spent being left alone with your thoughts. It's very uncomfortable, at first, having to wait in lines without being able to pull out your smart phone and be distracted by Facebook/Reddit/Twitter, but after a day of it, you're forced into a form of relaxation that's missing from life these days.
The biggest reason I love cruising is the staff. Reading an article like this, you'd expect the staff to appear unhappy or otherwise be less than stellar. And while this is anecdata, at best, in the 15 or so cruises I've taken, I've not only never encountered a member of staff that had a bad attitude, I've never encountered a member of staff that was willing to ride an elevator with me without smiling and asking how my vacation was going. It's been impossible for me to find a member of staff who appears, at all, to not be having fun, even though we know full well that they're very underpaid and treated poorly by the western standards that almost all of their guests come from. I've stayed in high-class hotels in specialty suites for work and haven't experienced the quality of staff that I've received staying in an interior, windowless state-room in a small ship. This very personal interaction, with unbelievable attention to detail[0], is why I keep cruising.
These men and women not only work hard under poor conditions, they do so with a work ethic that you'd be hard pressed to find in the best paying jobs in the US. Part of this was pointed out in the article -- in a lot of cases, this is the best job they can get to support their family back home. My wife and I are very extroverted and a ship filled with people who, at worst, are pretending to want to get to know you and make your vacation better is a guarantee that we're going to make friends (genuine or not, though I've never gotten the sense that it was anything but genuine). We got to know a few members of maintenance staff (one of them broke several rules[1] to show us parts of the ship that were off limits, including crew quarters, pre-9/11). These folks know the best places to visit on the islands and where to go to get goods and services inexpensively[2]. One point that was made is if you want to reward a member of staff, cash is king and conceal cash tips from view. They do everything they can to make extra money on the side (and I chuckled because our guy was "a Christian who rented DVDs" and DVD players though I doubt it was the same guy from the article). On one of the cruises we took, we were told that the mandatory tips that are included in your bill (it wasn't always this way) are pooled and your room steward/waiter aren't going to be rewarded directly from any extra generosity you offer[3].
[0] My daughter once worried that the towel animals were not comfortable sleeping in the room because they were placed on the covers -- this was said to us within earshot of the room steward. The next time we arrived in our stateroom, the towel animal was snuggled into the bed with its head on the pillow. Seriously.
[1] We were told that many of these rules can be broken without consequences if they're being broken at the wishes of the guest.
[2] We ended up on a tour on St. Thomas, paid for with a ten dollar bill for the two of us, that was filled with Royal Caribbean customers who had dropped $55/ticket for the same tour. We were told, wait until the afternoon and show up when they're loading customers on. Someone will be standing outside selling off the rest of the seats. Our "bus" was half-empty, to boot. In another case, we were pointed in the direction of a restaurant off the beaten path, filled with locals, where we were fed two large meals with appetizers and bottomless drinks for about $7.50 and it was the best food and drink we'd had off-ship that week.
[3] We learned some more disturbing things, as well. Casual sex is rampant. We were told of several stories that made the lower decks sound like they have a frat house/orgy atmosphere (this is something I've heard from folks who work at Disney and other resorts).
You do realize that the employees have to do this. They spend hours and hours in training where they're told to always smile and greet guest. It's like strippers. The companies are taking money out of the pockets of crew by considering the gratuity included. Giving them cash is the only way to make sure they actually are rewarded for their hard work, but make sure to not do it in front of management. Actuaries are doing their best to pinch pennies, and many of those are coming from the pockets of these people.
Of course -- If you've read anything about the industry (this article, in particular), it's very clear this is part of training and "a requirement" of the job. It's also a very strict requirement -- they fire people for failing to do the tiniest of things and I've heard stories (I'm not sure if they're true) that entire categories of staff were fired due to a small number of reviews that didn't land in the highest review category -- anything other than perfect is failure. Fill those things out, mark 'em high if you care about the staff, and write in the names of people who made things pleasant for you.
The point I was making there is that it's really impressive and a testament to the work ethic of the staff that it's done so well. You'd expect someone working under the condition of fear to do this "just well enough to not get fired" but I've never detected even the slightest hint that the attitudes of staff are not genuine (I'm not saying they are genuine, just that they're quite good at hiding that fact). The work ethic is, in a word, impressive.
As for tipping - I suggest catching them in the hallway on their way between shifts/responsibilities. Palm a sizeable bill and give it to them in a hand-shake. Do this on the day before debarkation, otherwise you risk obligating that person to feel like they need to "work it off" for you[0].
As for me, I cruise because it's inexpensive, but I plan for a big budget vacation[1]. I'm frugal by nature (4 kids, one income), so we end up way under budget without trying. After we had a long chat with a member of maintenance staff, we were touched by his kindness and circumstances, so we decided from that cruise forward to come home with the budget surplus spent this way and found it had a great effect of adding to the joy of our vacation.
[0] A gratuity is for something that was done, not something that is expected, later. The latter is a bribe. :o)
[1] Vacations are to fill a "need" to relax and it's hard to relax if you're spending your time worrying about how much you're spending, so we don't vacation until we have enough money to exceed what we expect to spend.
I love the high quality high res photos in this article! They take a while to load, but so much better than low res photos full of artefacts you usually get in articles, here you can actually see something
That's terrible man.
$190/month as a dish washer
$45/month as a waiter (with tips that could reach to 2k if you always work overtime and not complain about the lack of extra pay)
For someone working on a cruise ship to make 2x to 8x that and have a substantial portion of their living expenses covered is not at all "terrible" by their home country's standards, IMO.
You can't use generic statistics to obtain significant insight in to people's lives: those on minor incomes are probably dependent / semi self-sufficient / agrarian / fishing / unbanked, so simply do not appear to have or need much money. In addition, barter and sharing are still widely practiced amongst agrarian communities.
For some perspective, in a report from recent (last 2 months) research that I read this morning, the very lowest household income amongst Myanmar migrant workers (largely factory workers) interviewed in Thailand was almost exactly this figure (7kTHB), whereas 2-5x this figure (~20-35kTHB) was common.
Similarly, relocating Chinese villagers I met last month reported being given 290元 (~$42)/head/month + lifetime generous monthly rice/oil allowance + initial bulk hardship payment + free housing when relocated to facilitate a new hydropower project. A family of four Chinese farmers in this situation essentially receive this income forever without the need to work at all.
Filipino here. My father is a seaman and have been working for that job for more than 20 years. He does not have health problems and received a good pay that helped me able to graduate from college. Despite his age, he still continues to work because he still needs to sustain the family expenses.
Most of the Filipinos sees working overseas a special opportunity to bring good fortune to their families. But sometimes reality strikes hard for some and are lured into abusive employers. This is one of the reasons why we have a government body to handle such cases. Most of these problems happen on non-specialized jobs such as domestic helpers, waiter and care givers since they are the most vulnerable to abuses compared to engineers and nurses.
For a different perspective, conditions may have changed now...
I have about 6 cousins from the Philippines that are all around the world on various cruise ships, tankers, and cargo ships. Each one sending money back home, each one happy, they all love their jobs, and go back for reassignment.
So did the man profiled in this story and several of his friends until health problems and workplace conditions wore down their enthusiasm. Even if the vast majority of cruise ship employees are satisfied with their employment, one should worry about the effort to weaken laws and regulations meant to protect these vulnerable workers.
You're trying hard to be annoying, I suppose. You don't know this, but I've never worked for a startup. If you're looking for that attitude of "oh, he should have learned React and moved to SF", then you're looking in the completely wrong direction. Now, I know there are people on this board naive enough to believe things like that, but I'm definitely not one of them. And as far as "it's not my call to make", I'm not making this guy's call. The implication is that unless I have a job to provide this unfortunate fellow, in your view I shouldn't be commenting and suggesting that destroying his health by signing an employment contract that waives his right to collect damages is a bad idea.
No, I'm not. That's called 'disagreement' and it can happen.
The only thing I note is that you don't know what options this man has available to him since you are not in his shoes and you can simply assume that he's trying his level best to do the best he can - just like everybody else. So unless you wish to increase the number of options available to him I don't think you should be telling him what to do, just as he wouldn't have any standing to tell you what to do.
None of your other assumptions are relevant to this and besides I wasn't making them.
Filipino employees are exploited because they have very little in terms options to resist signing such contracts. It's akin to victim blaming.
Hate to nitpick, but how is "Regie eventually settled for $25,000 — after attorney fees were taken out, roughly equivalent to a year’s middle-class income in the Philippines." factual if the GDP per capita of the Philippines is ~$2600?
The income distribution of the Philippines, like many developing economies is very uneven, which leads to great disparities between median and mean incomes. I'm not convinced that GDP is a reliable proxy for "average income" anyway.
Judging from my own time living in Manila I can vouch for this. The middle class has been slowly emerging since the 1980s - thanks to increased education and foreign investment - but it's still a tiny proportion of the country. I used to live in Makati and when touring the rest of the country it felt like the entire non-poor, but non-superrich were confined to just that part of Manila.
The Filipino middle class is developing in the same way that the Philippines is a developing country...very slowly and incrementally. So, for instance, you're starting to see things like Ayala malls, iStores, and more upscale cars. But those aren't hugely popular or mass-scale because most people in the Philippines cannot afford to buy them or shop there.
The sad thing is that while he was able to earn $1,500 per month, he apparently didn't invest into anything. No financial planning as if he can do this job forever. Sure he must have known stories what's going on and could prepare for this possibility. I don't understand why he didn't.
"Financial planning", in the western sense of the phrase (saving currency, investing in stocks, mutual funds, life insurance, 401(k), and various other pieces of paper that require trust and courts to be worth anything) isn't actually a rational thing to do in emerging Asia (or, to the extent that it is now, that's very recent).
We're talking about a country that was governed by a prolific kleptocrat (Ferdinand Marcos) for 20 years, and where the currency halved in value against the USD over the course of a few years during the asian financial crisis. Beyond that, there's generally a weak rule of law, and poor regulation of the financial sector.
In this environment, a more traditional Asian approach of spending money on housing, land, gifts to relatives to build up some social credit with them for times of need, makes a lot more sense.
You must be kidding. Did you even read that article???
It confirm that you need 100k€ to deal with Vanguard Europe directly, that you get double taxation (USA tax then home country tax) on your returns, and you take all the risks on the currency exchange, and that's just the beginning of the article...
So, I'll repeat it again, the USA investments are NOT available in Europe and the equivalents are mostly non existent or sub-par.
> Index funds, 401k and some stocks exist only in the USA.
I am not sure whether you are European making fun of the financial system of the USA or an American thinking Europe somehow lives in the stone age.
Of course we have those things. Also there are these things called stock exchanges, were even people from poor, underdeveloped nations like Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands or Germany are allowed to buy stocks. Even fancy American ones.
I am an European who is sad that Vanguard doesn't exist there, and there is no comparable local equivalent.
And no, an European either cannot and/or should not buy American stock.
1) Some stocks are simply not available for trades by your local brokers
2) You cannot use some remote products/brokers because they require you to be an US citizen or resident
3) There are taxations and constraints that makes international stock worthless. For instance, American stocks are taxed by the USA (by USA law) then taxed again by your home EU country (local country law).
P.S. I am sure there are loopholes to get it done if you have more than 10M€ to invest but that's not the case of the majority of people.
Still there are index funds in Europe, 401k equivalents and you can buy international stocks.
What kind of stocks do you need for your personal financial planning, that you cannot get in Europe? I have heard nice things about Vanguard on HN, but so far have not had any troubles with iShares and the like.
And where did you learn to do financial planning? Were you perhaps raised in an environment where you could see loans, investments, assets, mortgages, credit and debit in action? Or perhaps you even had it as a formal subject in school?
Now imagine you were raised in a bamboo shack living hand-to-mouth in a cash economy.
can confirm. filipino here now in US. my uncles were seamen. no fin planning in life. You just retire and hope your children will take care of you. It's like the equivalent of military here in US
I worked as an independent Google contractor before for less than $11 an hour with very stringent rules, ever increasing performance requirements, no holidays, no sick pay, no nothing.
If you're poor and uneducated you're disposable dirt anywhere these days, even though people would like you to think otherwise and it's obviously even worse in 3rd world countries, where people looking for relatively unskilled jobs far outnumber available positions.