We were outside the Apple Store in Georgetown early for the launch of the iPhone 5. Traffic was bad.
A black bus driver leaned out of his window and nicely asked the old white guy in the sports car blocking the bus stop if he could please just move forward enough to let him get the door to the curb. For his troubles he got a tirade of abuse along the lines that this was America, this was his bit of the road, for which he paid with his taxes, and he wasn't going to move for anyone.
All he had to do was move a couple of metres.
My wife and I just looked at each other. Nobody else even thought it was out of the ordinary and ignored it.
I see. And you immediately assumed that was an example of "racial strife" in America? LOL!
No, we saw it as the contempt that many people in America have for people (usually black and underpaid) in subordinate positions.
Because we saw a lot of it.
On the bus coming back from Washington to New York some idiot as usual had ignored the sign on the toilet door and locked it.
A (white) woman, and I have some sympathy for her as a woman, went up to the bus driver in the middle of the freeway and demanded he stop the bus immediately and let her off. The driver was a very large black man with enormous patience but when he couldn't stop her carrying on, he had to pull up in fast traffic in the middle of the freeway to go back and try and force open the door.
Another bus story from my parents when they were going to the Grand Canyon:
They sat immediately behind the coach driver, also black (how do they score these jobs?) and keep talking to him to keep him awake because he was forced to work 3 jobs to break even.
We also noticed that on many buses we were the only non-hispanic or black passengers. How do you do it?
Lastly we couldn't work the insane rules for tipping in the States but knew we had to because the workers are usually massively underpaid.
So I googled it and hit a NYT article which discussed the history and morés of tipping. The gist of which I gathered was endemic corruption where you try and bribe people to give you better service than everyone else or something they are not supposed to let you have.
Interestingly sociological studies have been undertaken to see if there was a correlation between the supposed "reward" for good service, good service and whether it worked. First they pointed out it could only work if the same person repeatedly serviced the same tipper over and over again to establish the relationship between quality of service and the reward. But despite that, the only definitive connection they could make was if you are black and offering the service you consistently get 15-20% less tips.
And also that people cheat and undertip, (in my nieces' case by just paying twice the tax) for two reasons, they can't do the maths and they don't really want to pay, they are just forced to. By having a "formula" that assuages their guilt.
Employees in the crappiest, lowest paid and abused jobs, like bus drivers and Macdonalds don't get tips.
People not being able to afford to buy what you sell, will drive you out of business faster than that.
Hey, you can always give people loans that they can't afford to service and onsell them as valuable assets.
That worked out well, didn't it.
You employ hundreds to thousands and you sell to a market of millions, competing with others who have LOWER wage expenses than you do. No one just sells to their own employees. That's the argument for a level playing field BTW, something sector based unions used to do and government regulation does somewhat (environmental laws, OSHA etc.)
Simply pointing out businesses are reluctant to voluntarily raise their expenses when in competition with businesses that won't: hence a resistance to unionize.
I assume the Murdoch reference is a Fox News reference? I don't watch or like Fox News, genius.
No, but voters do.
They are putty in Rupert's hands, in Australia, in the UK and in the US.
Rupert's outdated economic ideas are fed to the masses, who unfortunately lap it up.
Everything that Murdoch does with his extensive media empire has one sole purpose, to benefit himself.
Anti-union, keep wages low, tax cuts for the wealthy, trickle down economics is a failure the US economy has been stagnant since the Reagan years.
Your minimum wage hasn't changed for fifty years.
Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said, "the typical inflation-adjusted income of a US household was lower than it was 25 years ago. The typical inflation-adjusted income of a male full-time worker was its lowest in 40 years."
No wonder all you do is buy cheap s**t from China which will be the number one economy as people there earn more and consume more, Apple knew this and have positioned themselves very well in the Chinese market.
You employ hundreds to thousands and you sell to a market of millions, competing with others who have LOWER wage expenses than you do. No one just sells to their own employees. That's the argument for a level playing field BTW, something sector based unions used to do and government regulation does somewhat (environmental laws, OSHA etc.)
Simply pointing out businesses are reluctant to voluntarily raise their expenses when in competition with businesses that won't: hence a resistance to unionize.
The minimum wage in Australia is $15 an hour, yet a Big Mac costs the same as in the US.
The desperation of some people in the USA is what struck me most when I was there. That and the lack of building activity which is a mark of economic activity.
In NY there is a chain of 99¢ pizza slice outlets. Basically holes in the wall with Indians/Pakistanis working like steam engineers shovelling endless pizzas into ovens. The pizza is very basic, a smear of tomato paste on the base topped with mozzarella. I tried it but opted for the mushroom topping as an extra because otherwise it would have been too bland and cheesy (like most US food). I was the exception though. I observed how locals, who looked like manual workers, would buy a pizza slice, already very cheesy, then pile grated parmesan on top of that from the shaker provided. Obviously they are going for the maximum (unhealthy) calories for their money, combining it with the overly sugary Coke and, judging by their familiarity with the staff, they were regulars. This was their diet, the one they could afford. No wonder there are several magazines in the States solely devoted to diabetes.
Sad. My brother-in-law also exasperated me with his obsession with cheap, maximum, food no matter how bad. He would almost dance in delight, going on about how much you get! and I would say and yet so crap and virtually all the same, just the pretence of variety.
The corrupt agribusiness in the States extracts massive taxpayer subsidies from the government, feeds part of that back as kickbacks and political funding to the politicians who give them more subsidies and grants. The rest goes to producing massive quantities of cheap but low nutrition products such as corn, grain, soybeans, rice, dairy products, corn syrup and sugars that goes into everything. The grain even gets feed to the cattle who don't graze, just are sedentary in feedlots. Even worse for the caged pigs and chickens. I didn't see a free roaming animal in all the time I was in the States.
There seems to be a fat obsession with Americans. If the food doesn't have it already, and most does, it is topped up with the greasy cooking and heaps of mayonnaise or other manufactured grease. This piles in cheap calories especially to the poor and malnourished, which explains the weight problems of the underpaid or unemployed masses.
Similarly the low wages fosters a class of working poor propped up by government support, food stamps and tax exemptions. They become the vast pool of cheap labor, wages suppressed, that do the endless menial work. Businesses are subsidised or given exemptions and grants by all levels of government, and play them off one against the other until ultimately they shaft them like Detroit.
There was a State election going on in NY when I was there and despite I could see no difference between the candidates I was constantly pestered by people on street corners in Brooklyn, where I was living, to vote. Typical for Americans they don't listen when I said I couldn't, "Of course you can, you're in America now! You are free!" Yeah, like you are the only ones!
I talked to one of the more sensible quieter helpers who actually appeared to listen and asked her how many people actually voted in the NY elections and she said 23%! So the outcome was being decided by 1/8th of the population (probably the extremists or those in it for something), the rest didn't care or had given up. In the circumstances I thought the later was probably a sensible conclusion.
Not that they could make a sensible decision as there seemed to be a general remarkable lack of knowledge about anything even their own affairs. The news was vacuous and parochial. A minor car accident in the suburbs would get more time than major stories. Policies or major events would get a lot of opinion, with some jokes thrown in, but not much actual meat from people who actually knew anything. Newsreaders and journalists looked like they'd gone through cosmetology class or simply won a popularity poll. They could just as easily have been doing the dumbed down quiz shows. In fact if they had, they would be asking more penetrating questions than they were as 'journalists'.
Murdoch has driven this even further with his jingoistic bigoted Fox networks and yellow papers like the New York Post. I can see why the John Stewarts, Bill Mahers and other comedy/current affairs shows have become so popular. They are the only real source where news actually gets the attention it deserves, like there is a real world out there, that actually needs to be paid attention to and not hidden from.
I was reminded of the Jamie Oliver series and his battle against the US Educational system, which has been subverted by the big AgriBusiness lobbyists to use government money to push food waste products down kids' throats. When I hit Macdonald's USA site they are denying that they use pink slime or worms in their burgers.
Couldn't see anything like that on the Australian Macdonald's site, so not even a prospect there, although they seem to have an obsession with "100% Angus beef" down under. Also according to the nutrition information only 13.4% of an Aussie Big Mac is fat with only 5.3% saturated.
Those photos of the Macdonalds burgers should win a Photoshop CGI award or be filed under fiction.
PS The U.S.A. Macdonalds posts their nutrition information in grammes, but food in pounds. I am guessing this is a cynical manoeuvre to make it hard to compare and comprehend for the average American. You don't have to be too familiar with maths though to spot that almost half of a U.S. Big Mac is fat (48%, with half of that saturated) and that they are still putting transfat in their burgers in the USA, none in Australia. So the price maybe the same for both countries but the Aussie burger wins hands down on quality (if you can say that about a Big Mac).
PPS I couldn't drink the sodas in the USA. They are sickly sweet. When I checked the labels they are almost 25% more sugar, 1/8th of the tin is sugar! Checking on the U.S. Big Mac nutrition information it looks like they are also dosed up on sugar, and salt. What is sugar doing in a burger?
I don't hate the USA. There is lots to like about the U.S.A., but I sure don't swallow the B.S. and extremism, which is so over the top someone has to speak up. Including quite a few Americans, unfortunately not enough. Frankly I see most current Americans as spineless twerps who don't stand up for themselves and just believe and do what they are told. That will anger them because they don't perceive themselves as such.
They used to be so much better.
As someone else has said here, the attitude of many to the bus drivers, who are just trying to live a decent life is quite offensive.
I have spent time in many countries, even behind the Iron Curtain when that still existed, it made me realise that propaganda is ubiquitious and comes in many styles and degrees. Americans don't realise they are just on the other side of the coin. They are inundated with commercial propaganda and have a terrible, compliant media that mostly doesn't do its job. Not helped by the ubiquitious flag waving, and accusations of anti-Americanism any time anyone says something they don't like to hear, then comes the knee-jerk turn to censorship and shouting down opposing views.
You mention human rights. The USA has exempted itself from all the international treaties on the subject. Over 2 and a quarter million Americans are in prison with almost another 5 million on parole or doing some other service. Doesn't that ring alarm bells? And torture? For heavens sake what era are we living in? America ruined its moral superiority all on its own, without anyone else having to lift a finger.
The biggest problem, and the most dangerous, is the ignorance and frankly weird beliefs that are prevalent in the States and in very few other places. Where else is there such an anti-Science, anti-Rational majority unless amongst the muslim nations they are currently butting heads with?
Feel free to counter anything I have said if I am wrong or made errors. But don't give me the usual ad hominems.
Comments
I see. And you immediately assumed that was an example of "racial strife" in America? LOL!
No, we saw it as the contempt that many people in America have for people (usually black and underpaid) in subordinate positions.
Because we saw a lot of it.
On the bus coming back from Washington to New York some idiot as usual had ignored the sign on the toilet door and locked it.
A (white) woman, and I have some sympathy for her as a woman, went up to the bus driver in the middle of the freeway and demanded he stop the bus immediately and let her off. The driver was a very large black man with enormous patience but when he couldn't stop her carrying on, he had to pull up in fast traffic in the middle of the freeway to go back and try and force open the door.
Another bus story from my parents when they were going to the Grand Canyon:
They sat immediately behind the coach driver, also black (how do they score these jobs?) and keep talking to him to keep him awake because he was forced to work 3 jobs to break even.
We also noticed that on many buses we were the only non-hispanic or black passengers. How do you do it?
All bus stories so I've kept them all relevant.
Is this what they still teach in Russia?
See, and there you thought I was mistakenly labelling Americans as clueless!
Lastly we couldn't work the insane rules for tipping in the States but knew we had to because the workers are usually massively underpaid.
So I googled it and hit a NYT article which discussed the history and morés of tipping. The gist of which I gathered was endemic corruption where you try and bribe people to give you better service than everyone else or something they are not supposed to let you have.
Interestingly sociological studies have been undertaken to see if there was a correlation between the supposed "reward" for good service, good service and whether it worked. First they pointed out it could only work if the same person repeatedly serviced the same tipper over and over again to establish the relationship between quality of service and the reward. But despite that, the only definitive connection they could make was if you are black and offering the service you consistently get 15-20% less tips.
And also that people cheat and undertip, (in my nieces' case by just paying twice the tax) for two reasons, they can't do the maths and they don't really want to pay, they are just forced to. By having a "formula" that assuages their guilt.
Employees in the crappiest, lowest paid and abused jobs, like bus drivers and Macdonalds don't get tips.
I've been to France many times and I've never had a bad interaction with anyone and I don't speak a word of French.
How would you know?
I was in Dubrovnik for a while and went into the local travel agent to line up a flight to Maribor.
I had to wait behind an American couple who did what they always do, immediately demand loudly: "Do you speak English?"
The man behind the counter replied to them in perfect English, interspersed with the occassional Croatian obscenity, all the while smiling helpfully.
The Americans were very happy with his efforts and tipped him as they left. I thought should I tell them? Nah!
Now that is an odd thing to say unless that is stay at home resentment coming out.
Must be something lost in the Google translation, because none of that made sense.
Spit it out. What is it you are trying to say?
You know you can if you really try.
^^^ Please feel free to stay in your country, which I'm sure has as rich and interesting a history as your own.
It's gotta be better than the "history" Rupert Murdoch is creating for you now.
Muslims are his latest target, muslims who just happen to own a lot of oil.
Surprise, surprise Rupert just invested heavily in shale oil alternatives to Muslim owned oil.
Outdated and misleading economics and idiots just lap it up as their standard of living falls.
Heaven forbid that we pay taxes to help ourselves.
It's gotta be better than the "history" Rupert Murdoch is creating for you now.
Muslims are his latest target, muslims who just happen to own a lot of oil.
Surprise, surprise Rupert just invested heavily in shale oil alternatives to Muslim owned oil.
Outdated and misleading economics and idiots just lap it up as their standard of living falls.
Heaven forbid that we pay taxes to help ourselves.
I assume the Murdoch reference is a Fox News reference? I don't watch or like Fox News, genius.
People not being able to afford to buy what you sell, will drive you out of business faster than that.
Hey, you can always give people loans that they can't afford to service and onsell them as valuable assets.
That worked out well, didn't it.
You employ hundreds to thousands and you sell to a market of millions, competing with others who have LOWER wage expenses than you do. No one just sells to their own employees. That's the argument for a level playing field BTW, something sector based unions used to do and government regulation does somewhat (environmental laws, OSHA etc.)
Simply pointing out businesses are reluctant to voluntarily raise their expenses when in competition with businesses that won't: hence a resistance to unionize.
That's clearly not the case. Apple is completely focused on middle and upper income customers and it has served them very well.
AND they sell to a hell of a lot more people than simply those in their own employ.
I assume the Murdoch reference is a Fox News reference? I don't watch or like Fox News, genius.
No, but voters do.
They are putty in Rupert's hands, in Australia, in the UK and in the US.
Rupert's outdated economic ideas are fed to the masses, who unfortunately lap it up.
Everything that Murdoch does with his extensive media empire has one sole purpose, to benefit himself.
Anti-union, keep wages low, tax cuts for the wealthy, trickle down economics is a failure the US economy has been stagnant since the Reagan years.
Your minimum wage hasn't changed for fifty years.
Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said, "the typical inflation-adjusted income of a US household was lower than it was 25 years ago. The typical inflation-adjusted income of a male full-time worker was its lowest in 40 years."
Source
No wonder all you do is buy cheap s**t from China which will be the number one economy as people there earn more and consume more, Apple knew this and have positioned themselves very well in the Chinese market.
You employ hundreds to thousands and you sell to a market of millions, competing with others who have LOWER wage expenses than you do. No one just sells to their own employees. That's the argument for a level playing field BTW, something sector based unions used to do and government regulation does somewhat (environmental laws, OSHA etc.)
Simply pointing out businesses are reluctant to voluntarily raise their expenses when in competition with businesses that won't: hence a resistance to unionize.
The minimum wage in Australia is $15 an hour, yet a Big Mac costs the same as in the US.
How does that work out?
The desperation of some people in the USA is what struck me most when I was there. That and the lack of building activity which is a mark of economic activity.
In NY there is a chain of 99¢ pizza slice outlets. Basically holes in the wall with Indians/Pakistanis working like steam engineers shovelling endless pizzas into ovens. The pizza is very basic, a smear of tomato paste on the base topped with mozzarella. I tried it but opted for the mushroom topping as an extra because otherwise it would have been too bland and cheesy (like most US food). I was the exception though. I observed how locals, who looked like manual workers, would buy a pizza slice, already very cheesy, then pile grated parmesan on top of that from the shaker provided. Obviously they are going for the maximum (unhealthy) calories for their money, combining it with the overly sugary Coke and, judging by their familiarity with the staff, they were regulars. This was their diet, the one they could afford. No wonder there are several magazines in the States solely devoted to diabetes.
Sad. My brother-in-law also exasperated me with his obsession with cheap, maximum, food no matter how bad. He would almost dance in delight, going on about how much you get! and I would say and yet so crap and virtually all the same, just the pretence of variety.
The corrupt agribusiness in the States extracts massive taxpayer subsidies from the government, feeds part of that back as kickbacks and political funding to the politicians who give them more subsidies and grants. The rest goes to producing massive quantities of cheap but low nutrition products such as corn, grain, soybeans, rice, dairy products, corn syrup and sugars that goes into everything. The grain even gets feed to the cattle who don't graze, just are sedentary in feedlots. Even worse for the caged pigs and chickens. I didn't see a free roaming animal in all the time I was in the States.
There seems to be a fat obsession with Americans. If the food doesn't have it already, and most does, it is topped up with the greasy cooking and heaps of mayonnaise or other manufactured grease. This piles in cheap calories especially to the poor and malnourished, which explains the weight problems of the underpaid or unemployed masses.
Similarly the low wages fosters a class of working poor propped up by government support, food stamps and tax exemptions. They become the vast pool of cheap labor, wages suppressed, that do the endless menial work. Businesses are subsidised or given exemptions and grants by all levels of government, and play them off one against the other until ultimately they shaft them like Detroit.
There was a State election going on in NY when I was there and despite I could see no difference between the candidates I was constantly pestered by people on street corners in Brooklyn, where I was living, to vote. Typical for Americans they don't listen when I said I couldn't, "Of course you can, you're in America now! You are free!" Yeah, like you are the only ones!
I talked to one of the more sensible quieter helpers who actually appeared to listen and asked her how many people actually voted in the NY elections and she said 23%! So the outcome was being decided by 1/8th of the population (probably the extremists or those in it for something), the rest didn't care or had given up. In the circumstances I thought the later was probably a sensible conclusion.
Not that they could make a sensible decision as there seemed to be a general remarkable lack of knowledge about anything even their own affairs. The news was vacuous and parochial. A minor car accident in the suburbs would get more time than major stories. Policies or major events would get a lot of opinion, with some jokes thrown in, but not much actual meat from people who actually knew anything. Newsreaders and journalists looked like they'd gone through cosmetology class or simply won a popularity poll. They could just as easily have been doing the dumbed down quiz shows. In fact if they had, they would be asking more penetrating questions than they were as 'journalists'.
Murdoch has driven this even further with his jingoistic bigoted Fox networks and yellow papers like the New York Post. I can see why the John Stewarts, Bill Mahers and other comedy/current affairs shows have become so popular. They are the only real source where news actually gets the attention it deserves, like there is a real world out there, that actually needs to be paid attention to and not hidden from.
Your minimum wage hasn't changed for fifty years.
"Wages" not "wage", each State mandates its own.
Despite the minimum wages are a joke, you can't live off them, several states don't even have one.
I can see right through the nonsense that the solution to everything is lower wages, the ultimate conclusion is slavery!
…and that is the target full employment, of the "good old days".
Some on the not so (for America) extreme right have recently and openly said black Americans were better off under slavery.
…and racism is dead?!
The minimum wage in Australia is $15 an hour, yet a Big Mac costs the same as in the US.
How does that work out?
This might be useful for those interested in research rather than F.H.B.s (Fondly Held Beliefs):
http://www.economist.com/content/big-mac-index
I was reminded of the Jamie Oliver series and his battle against the US Educational system, which has been subverted by the big AgriBusiness lobbyists to use government money to push food waste products down kids' throats. When I hit Macdonald's USA site they are denying that they use pink slime or worms in their burgers.
Couldn't see anything like that on the Australian Macdonald's site, so not even a prospect there, although they seem to have an obsession with "100% Angus beef" down under. Also according to the nutrition information only 13.4% of an Aussie Big Mac is fat with only 5.3% saturated.
Those photos of the Macdonalds burgers should win a Photoshop CGI award or be filed under fiction.
PS The U.S.A. Macdonalds posts their nutrition information in grammes, but food in pounds. I am guessing this is a cynical manoeuvre to make it hard to compare and comprehend for the average American. You don't have to be too familiar with maths though to spot that almost half of a U.S. Big Mac is fat (48%, with half of that saturated) and that they are still putting transfat in their burgers in the USA, none in Australia. So the price maybe the same for both countries but the Aussie burger wins hands down on quality (if you can say that about a Big Mac).
PPS I couldn't drink the sodas in the USA. They are sickly sweet. When I checked the labels they are almost 25% more sugar, 1/8th of the tin is sugar! Checking on the U.S. Big Mac nutrition information it looks like they are also dosed up on sugar, and salt. What is sugar doing in a burger?
"Wages" not "wage", each State mandates its own.
Despite the minimum wages are a joke, you can't live off them, several states don't even have one.
I can see right through the nonsense that the solution to everything is lower wages, the ultimate conclusion is slavery!
…and that is the target full employment, of the "good old days".
Some on the not so (for America) extreme right have recently and openly said black Americans were better off under slavery.
…and racism is dead?!
Why do you hate the USA so much? They're ok. If it's human rights you care about there are countries with far worse records you could be criticizing.
Why do you hate the bus drivers so much?
I don't hate the USA. There is lots to like about the U.S.A., but I sure don't swallow the B.S. and extremism, which is so over the top someone has to speak up. Including quite a few Americans, unfortunately not enough. Frankly I see most current Americans as spineless twerps who don't stand up for themselves and just believe and do what they are told. That will anger them because they don't perceive themselves as such.
They used to be so much better.
As someone else has said here, the attitude of many to the bus drivers, who are just trying to live a decent life is quite offensive.
I have spent time in many countries, even behind the Iron Curtain when that still existed, it made me realise that propaganda is ubiquitious and comes in many styles and degrees. Americans don't realise they are just on the other side of the coin. They are inundated with commercial propaganda and have a terrible, compliant media that mostly doesn't do its job. Not helped by the ubiquitious flag waving, and accusations of anti-Americanism any time anyone says something they don't like to hear, then comes the knee-jerk turn to censorship and shouting down opposing views.
You mention human rights. The USA has exempted itself from all the international treaties on the subject. Over 2 and a quarter million Americans are in prison with almost another 5 million on parole or doing some other service. Doesn't that ring alarm bells? And torture? For heavens sake what era are we living in? America ruined its moral superiority all on its own, without anyone else having to lift a finger.
The biggest problem, and the most dangerous, is the ignorance and frankly weird beliefs that are prevalent in the States and in very few other places. Where else is there such an anti-Science, anti-Rational majority unless amongst the muslim nations they are currently butting heads with?
Feel free to counter anything I have said if I am wrong or made errors. But don't give me the usual ad hominems.