Tony on 29/6/2006 at 15:55
I've written a computer program that will determine by very basic algorithms the exact course any particular thread will take in this forum. Unfortunately, it seems to have destroyed itself. I must have accidentally programmed in sentience.
aguywhoplaysthief on 29/6/2006 at 16:12
Quote Posted by Turtle
Bullshit.
Those are jobs typically held by teenagers who are just getting into the workforce.
Working in the kitchen in a restaraunt or doing landscaping aren't the most prestigious jobs out there but it's what many of us do when we're starting out.
That doesn't work when they won't hire kids because undocumented workers will work for half what they're required to pay American citizens.
I agree with you to a point, but I think some jobs teenagers wouldn't do, like farm work, or construction.
Gorgon on 29/6/2006 at 17:14
Quote Posted by aguywhoplaysthief
America would turn right into Africa, and let's face it, most of Africa sucks. Same goes for pretty much any other third-world country that we'd get these hypothetical immigrants from. A country isn't the way it is through magic. A country is the way it is because of the people who live there.
Most of Africa sucks because Europeans used and abused those countries while they were there and when finally driven out those countries were in shambles. I'm portuguese and we had four colonies in Africa (among others in the rest of the world): Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique and Bissau Guinea. After the wars those countries were devastated; no infrastructures, no education, no nothing. And they are still ruled economically by foreign interests, like the USA, who go there rip them off of their riches with the agreement of their corrupt governments who are just puppets of those same foreign powers. Add to that the fact that the borders of those countries were literally drawn on a map by the europeans, with no respect for the tribes that lived there, without taking into account those tribes own politics and relations to each other, their historical rivalries, etc, and what you have are "artificial" countries with no cultural and ethnic homogeneity. Pretty difficult to bring a country up in that situation.
All that to say that sometimes a country is not only the way it is because of the people who live there, but also what other stronger countries make of them for their own interests. No wonder then that the USA is facing so many terrorist problems, they are just collecting the fruits of their own wrong doings all around the world while serving their own interests. The "war on terror" or my favorite "the war on EEEVVVIILLLLLL" is a phrase used to manipulate people so that a government can have it own way while being backed up by their own people. The USA has been "terrorizing" many 3rd world countries on their own for a great part of the 20th and 21th century. Wake up, for the sake of your own country.
Rug Burn Junky on 29/6/2006 at 17:15
Quote Posted by apussywhoplaysthief
I think some jobs teenagers wouldn't do, like farm work, or construction.
Maybe for a pansy ass like yourself, but I spent summers in high school and college doing landscaping, carpentry, construction, and hell, even lumberjacking, all for between $5 and $8 an hour.
aguywhoplaysthief on 29/6/2006 at 17:35
That's nice.
If you can go to a mall and look at the 16 and 17-year-olds there with their pants falling off, and posture like paper clips, and tell me that they'll cure tobacco for minimum wage, then fine. Outside of the real lower end of the economic scale, I don't think it would happen, and there would be a pronounced labor shortage.
Pyrian on 29/6/2006 at 18:44
Quote Posted by aguywhoplaysthief
Outside of the real lower end of the economic scale, I don't think it would happen, and there would be a pronounced labor shortage.
Like that's so horrible. Oooo, rich investors might get less money while poor working folks get more. Scare me.
Rug Burn Junky on 29/6/2006 at 18:48
Quote Posted by aguywhoplaysthief
That's nice.
If you can go to a mall and look at the 16 and 17-year-olds there with their pants falling off, and posture like paper clips, and tell me that they'll cure tobacco for minimum wage, then fine. Outside of the real lower end of the economic scale, I don't think it would happen, and there would be a pronounced labor shortage.
Jesus fuck, what are you, like 70? Aren't you too young to be pulling that retarded "Kids today..." shit? Fuck, you must have a shitty life. You're just bitter because those were probably the same kids that used to beat you up for your lunch money in high school.
I'm sure when I was 16, stupid fucks like yourself passed judgement because I dressed like *gasp* a teenager, at a time in my life when I didn't have to worry about it.
And you know what? FUCK THEM. Because not only does that sort of shit not make a damn bit of difference, but I was plenty responsible then regardless of how I looked/dressed, and I'm sure I'm way more successful than any of them now.
And I'm sure the overwhelming majority of the kids you're mistakenly looking down your nose at will grow up just fine as adults. A damn good number of them will even probably end up doing better than you do and pissing on you someday. And I'm sure all of them will have more friends.
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And you know what else? Plenty of kids also realize that working outdoors with a chainsaw/lawnmower/weedwacker doing manual labor beats the shit out of tossing onion rings into a deep fryer. So really, take your cranky old man act somewhere else.
TheGreatGodPan on 29/6/2006 at 19:42
I always laugh at how people bring up how all Europeans are really illegal immigrants who trespassed on Native American land. To me, it only strengthens the anti-immigration case. Europeans coming over worked out real shitty for the natives, being "anti-immigrant" to the Vikings worked out just fine. Am I supposed to feel bad that natives got screwed over and accept my fate in the karmic wheel of shit? You'd have better luck trying to convince the local home-owners association they should relax on zoning ordinance bullshit so more people can own homes in the area and decrease real-estate prices.
Africa sucked before Europeans got there, and places that didn't get colonized like Ethiopia sucked as well ((
http://www.exile.ru/2006-February-24/trading_places_liberias_pompous_slaves.html) Liberia was considered independent, but it was colonized by American ex-slaves, although they were the elite educated mullatoe type). Being colonized by the British is one of the best things that could happen to a place, as a comparison of Hong Kong vs Maoist China shows. Even in Africa the best off countries were South Africa and (
http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_oh_to_be.html) Rhodesia/Zimbabwe (the latter used to be the breadbasket of the region before Mugabe thoroughly fucked it over). No offense to countries like Portugal and Spain, but the limeys were just better colonizers. Of course, if I had been a brit, I would have been dead set against all this colonial nonsense that was draining money just to puff up egos, but as a citizen of a former colony that is now a superpower I have to hand it to them. As for the "raping of their natural riches", Africa has more natural resources today than any other continent, it's just hard for them to extract, especially when the government is so fond of killing and robbing anybody who does any actual work. When Idi Amin drove out those evil asians who'd been striking it rich before he turned the place into a horrific nightmare, they had nothing but within a generation or so they were striking it rich again in England. But of course England and Japan are tiny islands who've had all their resources raped years ago by evil emperors and kings, right? I think a closer examination of Africa will reveal that the shittiest places are the ones where nobody wants to come in to do any mining or whatnot because the only business there is killing, while the ones that do the most trade with those evil exploitative countries have the highest standards of living. And don't go trying to link poverty and terrorism, or colonialism for that matter. The British are the ones who dallied the most in the Middle East and America would be under attack from latin americans if intervention was the cause.
That labor shortage stuff is a myth. We got on fine before 1965 when the big immigration wave started. Produce costs were higher, but labor forms a pretty small portion of it and can be replaced with machines if those lazy Americans don't feel like doing it. Once again, that would be more expensive otherwise it would already be done, but immigrants have a social impact that robots do not which is why Japan has about zip for the former but is gaga over the latter.
aguywhoplaysthief on 29/6/2006 at 19:51
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Like that's so horrible. Oooo, rich investors might get less money while poor working folks get more. Scare me.
I'm not arguing that immigrants shouldn't get paid American wages. I'm arguing that some jobs just won't get filled, unless perhaps the wage gets so high that those industries suffer.
Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky
blah blah
That's all fine and dandy, but I'm sticking to my position because I think it's true. There are lots of jobs that just won't get filled by native-born Americans, no matter what their age, unless, as I mentioned above, the wages become unreasonable, and farm work is one of them.
People today just have more money than they did when you and your friends cut grass in the 80's. Sure, there will always be kids who want to make money and work, and there will always be those who need to to make money, but I don't think that most kids of the middle+ classes will voluntarily pick strawberries, and I don't think their parents will require them to do so.
Far more teenagers today just get a lot of loans to pay for school and living expenses, and then pay them back once they get out. And even if they did, with prices for school as high as they are, if they did work it wouldn't make a dent, so that major pressure to work is gone.
Rug Burn Junky on 29/6/2006 at 20:02
Your view is severely warped.
While I'm sure you enjoy being Mr. Crankypants, not every teenager in America is a spoiled brat. Plenty of kids still need more spending money than their parents will give them, and happily (or even begrudgingly) go out and look for jobs. And while sure, yeah you CAN take out loans, there are still college kids fiscally responsible enough to know that money you earn is still cheaper than money you borrow. Even an extra $2-3 grand that you can make during the course of a summer buys a lot of extra time to party during the course of a school year.
And actually, my sister did spend the better part of a year as (essentially) a migrant farm worker (and yes, that even included picking berries). That was only 8 years ago, and you can't tell me that the Republicans have fucked up the country so much that it's that different "nowadays."
