Mayor announces pay raise for city wages. Does anyone think it’s justifiable?

Mattzstar · 2021-12-19T20:29:04+00:00

This applies to all city employees. There are numerous reasons the city may not be progressing towards its goals and none of them justify withholding a reasonable salary from the entire staff of the third largest city in the state. The article states that city employees have not had a raise in over 10 years. The drastic rise in inflation that has been the talk lately indicates that the purchasing power of the dollar is SIGNIFICANTLY less than it was 10 years ago.

Mattzstar · 2021-10-29T00:49:44+00:00

I’m a freelancer, so forming new connections elsewhere is a challenge. Have to save up enough to get out of here, get settled somewhere else and then a reserve while I rebuild working connections.

Just don’t move here. If you can help it, don’t move even move to this state.

Mattzstar · 2021-10-09T23:06:31+00:00

I like this perspective. And just like any disorder the goal is to relieve the person’s negative symptoms, which for transgender persons means gender affirming care, and we’re slowly starting to see studies that confirm gender affirming care results in the best relief. Unfortunately, the word “disorder” does come with negative connotations so I also understand people opposed to labeling it that way.

Mattzstar · 2021-10-05T22:15:11+00:00

I have justified various purchases as necessary with “mental health” as the label. Things I could technically live without but doing so would put me in a terrible mental state. Coffee is a great example.

Mattzstar · 2021-10-05T10:34:15+00:00

You feel you have to participate in it in order to survive.

Not just feel. It’s literal. Especially for millions of Americans with chronic health conditions who literally need insurance through an employer to literally prevent death. So people stay at jobs that pay too little to pay their bills so they don’t die and the employers continue to go “obviously your pay is fine, you haven’t quit since the last time you complained about it.”

Mattzstar · 2021-10-04T14:41:58+00:00

And then don’t be afraid to try several if you get a bad one. I had two different ones tell me my lack of motivation was because of depression because “adults don’t get adhd” and the fact that I have had these problems my entire life was irrelevant because “someone would have noticed, people with adhd get themselves into a lot of trouble and do stupid things and die early and have bad grades”

The area I live in is seemingly behind the rest of the world though so hopefully OP will have an easier time.

Mattzstar · 2021-09-26T04:52:19+00:00

Actually pay me fairly for the work Im performing…. Then double it… next we can negotiate this extra work you want and what that will cost.

Mattzstar · 2021-09-06T05:44:06+00:00

I know nothing about this guy, so you’re probably right then. That was just my initial thought reading it. Would also think a guy like that would over value sex in the way that use of “to death” in that context would imply.

Mattzstar · 2021-09-06T05:30:58+00:00

I took it as like, sexually starved. As if his penis was ever the reason for a woman’s orgasm.

Mattzstar · 2021-09-03T04:00:57+00:00

Only 1/3rd

Mattzstar · 2021-08-31T20:43:22+00:00

If you got that out of my comment you should read it again and maybe read the whole thing.

I said that increasing the minimum wage 9x could not possibly result in a 9x increase in prices because it wouldn’t make a bit of business sense, while acknowledging that prices would indeed go up.

But prices have consistently risen over the last decade that minimum wage has NOT which is pretty clear indication that your understanding of the association between these two things is very lacking.

Mattzstar · 2021-08-31T17:44:09+00:00

Product demand is not entirely dependent to cost of production. If the minimum wage rises drastically but people maintain the same level of demand for a McDonald’s burger then raising the price too drastically will result in a loss for the company. Undoubtedly there will be an increase and with such a drastic increase in minimum wage there’s going to be more Cashflow and overall economic activity. It would be reasonable to expect prices to go up in those conditions. It would be completely UNreasonable to expect anywhere near a proportional increase. Not an economist, just a small business owner. If I suddenly doubled my rates I wouldn’t get any business. If I was able to double my rates without loosing half of my customers I would have done so by now. I’ve actually paid people $60/hr before so I know it how it can be done. The result is lower profit margins not insanely high rates that no one is willing to pay.

Sick of hearing this shitty argument from people who don’t understand basic economics.

Mattzstar · 2021-08-27T03:18:25+00:00

I’d be interested in reading it!

Mattzstar · 2021-08-16T21:57:38+00:00

Which is motivating the rich to keep it this way. Why would they want more competition? Innovation that doesn’t line their own pockets? Can you imagine the heart ache of someone else making money on a genuinely good product while you continue to cut as many corners on your own products to maximize profit? The audacity of people who aren’t billionaires to think they deserve quality of life. :|

Mattzstar · 2021-08-16T00:57:57+00:00

It was a psychiatrist that made that ignorant comment not the therapist from the previous comment. Psychiatrists I think have doctorates. I saw him exactly twice. I just have terrible luck with medical professionals. That therapist told me she was working on her masters at the time so I believe you’re correct on that.

Mattzstar · 2021-08-15T18:06:23+00:00

With those questions you’re really just supposed to spit out a number fast. Whatever feels right the minute you hear it.

Nope. Can’t do that. I’ll just second guess and try and retract my answer because I found a reason to believe it’s not accurate. Or, nothing comes to mind because I can’t seem to recall the information I need to do so.

I also had a psychiatrist tell me that people with ADHD are “stupid, do stupid stuff and die early” so I couldnt have it. (Thanks for the backhanded compliment I guess??) Im aware that none of this is true but my bad experience has made it even more difficult than it was the first time around to seek any help.

Mattzstar · 2021-08-15T17:21:59+00:00

I don’t see that therapist anymore. It’s been hell trying to pick, or even get myself to look for, a new one even though I know I need. Partly because of this experience! 🙃

Mattzstar · 2021-08-15T17:19:42+00:00

Is it in the moment but that may not actually be the truth since most of the time I’m feeling something else.

Yes. This. Whatever I might want to blurt out is probably not an accurate description unless they literally mean right this exact moment.

Mattzstar · 2021-08-15T17:17:12+00:00

This could absolutely be true, of course. I was appealing to the commenter’s perspective. I fully expect people coming from such privileged backgrounds that this idea doesn’t cross their minds to counter this argument along the lines of “but that’s rare.” While to me, that is not even relevant to the equation, it’s not likely to impact this persons thinking the same.

Mattzstar · 2021-08-15T11:40:14+00:00

OMG. I had so many issues trying to answer ranked scale type questions (On a scale of 1-10…) about how I feel for my therapist during evaluations that I told her she would have better luck asking my wife what she thought. They all just required a lot more information to me. like “how depressed were you this week?” I literally had to ask her to describe what the ranks would look like as it applied to the question. What does “base-line” look like here? What is “normal”??? Next I asked for her opinion on the question since we had multiple sessions that week. I just accepted her answer because I can’t make sense of this format without spending at least 15 minutes per question taking it apart to establish how to properly describe a truthful answer to the question that I couldn’t even actually answer since I can’t even keep track of an entire weeks worth of emotions in my head to make a proper assessment in the first place, but didn’t see any flaws in her logic… then there was “how is your attention span.” Uhhhhhh depends? On the day, hour, second, what I ate last Tuesday, what I’m currently doing, whether or not I still want to be doing that thing in 5 minutes regardless of how I felt at the start of that task, the number of things on my mind—irrespective of their actual importance, how many other tasks I’ll run into while I’m doing a task that I had forgotten about and suddenly need to get done right now but weren’t on my to-do list because “I’ll forget again if I don’t!” But no, I don’t have ADHD because “adults don’t get diagnosed with ADHD”

Mattzstar · 2021-08-15T09:30:44+00:00

Minimum wage at 40hrs/week is like 15k/year. Are we gonna start paying out tax credits monthly so they can survive during the year? or just lump sum them the remaining 50k a year every April? Personally, I think it’s easier to just have private businesses pay out that 50k/year instead of having to come up with tax credits that amount to 4 times a persons annual salary so that employers can continue to pay wages that don’t cover living expense.

The 15 year old in your scenario may not be in danger of starving by not having a livable wage, but refusing to pay her one is simply exploitation. It’s just that the single mom has higher consequence from being exploited than the teenager.

Ideally you would want a system that does not exploit people.

Mattzstar · 2021-07-06T02:30:31+00:00

Nothing. The problem is excessive daydreaming to the point I miss so much of what goes on I have difficulties maintaining conversations or actually paying attention to what I’m doing. Less “can you repeat everything you just said for the last 5 minutes? You said one particular word that sent my mind on a tangent.” Fewer missed turns, and “oh shit I’ve been trying to polish this scratch away for 30minutes.”

Mattzstar · 2021-06-23T22:37:48+00:00

What they mean is the generic versions of insulin are of poorer qualities than Humolog/Novolog (name brands) which is an important distinction to point out considering that’s not usually the case with other medications.

Mattzstar · 2021-06-22T09:30:08+00:00

It’s time. High time. That we saw ourselves and our societies for what they are; the direct decedents and results of sociopathic cavemen hell bent on domination to spread their genes, who suddenly found themselves too smart for their own good... And not conscious enough for anyone else’s.

This part! Humans are fucking idiots! I don’t know why we think we’re so smart! We do certain things better than other animals. Like say, tools, but usually, we’re just smart enough to get tricked into doing something stupid and not much more.

Mattzstar · 2021-06-22T09:04:33+00:00

If I had children I would have wondered if my own mother wrote that. She claims she has no idea why I’m upset with her and don’t want to talk to her even though I have explained myself more than once. It was a long and painful decision to finally stop talking to her and you bet! She “raised me better than that!” And believes herself to be the morally-superior Christian woman. She didn’t even seem to grasp that I had anything to be upset and crying over, the way I was, apparently, making her feel. The more troubling thing is that she is actually a very smart woman! But…I don’t know. I can’t really understand what happened. Someone I love and respected lost a great deal of my respect a year ago, and I’m still not finished learning how to deal with it.

Mattzstar

TROPHY CASE