Talia Jane and Yelp

[Kwing]

I'm almost two years late on this, but it was one of the more interesting reads I've sat through. Talia Jane is a journalist who was working for Eat24 and published an open letter to her CEO which got her fired:

https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73df021e7a

To summarize, the letter details Talia moving to San Francisco for work, and the financially struggles of her and her coworkers. She notes that her coworkers are mostly eating snacks provided at work - in her case she can't afford to heat her apartment, only keeps rice at home, and has sleep problems due to hunger, while the CEO of Yelp has a net worth of over $100 million. In an addendum she also points out that the minimum wage was originally intended to support a family of three (interesting factoid, I had no idea about that.)

The other half of this story comes from Stephanie Williams, who wrote an attack piece on Talia in response:

https://medium.com/@StefWilliams25/an-open-letter-to-millenials-like-talia-52e9597943aa

The general idea of the response is that Stephanie had been in a similar position too, but survived by picking up a gig as a hostess and now makes a comfortable living. Her argument is effectively that Talia's lack of having found another job makes her situation her own fault, and berates her for posting an image of expensive bourbon on her Instagram, asking for money via Venmo, not getting a roommate, and being an "entitled millennial."

* * *

With all of that out of the way, I'll kick off the thread with my own opinion. In short, I side with Talia. Her letter opens a dialogue on very real and serious issues about labor in this country. Are Stephanie's points valid? Some of them, but I don't think they matter that much. Talia probably had options. Maybe she could have gotten a new job, brought back a roommate, moved somewhere cheaper entirely, etc. Then again, maybe there are reasons she didn't. She seemed to be struggling with stress and depression. Maybe there were psychological factors that made it healthier for her to live alone, maybe she did just feel 'entitled' to her own apartment, or maybe she lacked the proper judgment to think of getting a roommate. So what? All of Stephanie's arguments target Talia, rather than addressing the concerns she's raising about the work force. No one that's working full time should be living like that. Everyone that does work full-time SHOULD be able to afford material comforts like bourbon at least once in a while.

Are people entitled because they express dissatisfaction with their situation? Only in extreme cases - more prominently, when the person complaining is already comfortable (perfect example being when wall street banker Deeb Salem complained about his $8 million bonus being too small.) It's not uncommon for me to see people that have overcome bad or difficult situations only to come away with a kind of Stockholm syndrome, saying that their experience "built their character" or trying to normalize what happened to them. Either that or they have some indignant, jealous assertion that because they had to live through something shitty, everyone else should too. In Stephanie's case I think the Schadenfreude is pretty clear:

"I dealt with the pitying looks of my former classmates or their parents when they would see me at the hostess stand or walking into the service station in my heels, laughing to myself knowing their child was addicted to coke and hating their “amazing” job."

Do I think that people should be able to live comfortably without doing anything? If I'm being completely honest, yes. No one chose to be alive - it doesn't make sense that they're obliged to give back when they never consented to existing in the first place. Of course this ideal is vastly different from the reality. Material comfort and goods require labor. If that amount of labor is more than we can produce, we're screwed and everyone has to work overtime. If that amount happens to be less, great! Some people can be freeloaders and it doesn't hurt anyone (or everyone can work part-time.) That said,if the math doesn't work, it doesn't work. For instance, I'll be the first to admit that UBI is almost certainly unaffordable, even if we cut welfare and unemployment:

11,770 (poverty line) * 323,100,000 (US population) = 3,800,000,000,000 (basically our entire budget)
3,800,000,000,000 - (current amount of welfare/unemployment) 1,275,700,000,000 = 2,524,300,000,000 additional revenue
In other words we'd need $2.8 trillion of additional revenue needed without cuts to anything else, still about $600 billion if we cut defense COMPLETELY

Of course, we're not even talking about UBI here, but rather what a person should be getting for working a full-time job. No one that's working full-time should be living off of rice and handouts. Hell, even if they can afford it, no one working full-time should be forced to be that frugal. These conditions are not normal - they are clearly below a comfortable standard of living. Studies also say that there is a ceiling of about $70,000 a year for how much happiness money can bring you, so it should be easily within the capability of any big business to pay their employees more without anyone being less happy for it.

Newgrounds has gotten a lot more conservative since I joined so I imagine my opinion is going to garner quite a bit of backlash. For those of you about to rebuttal me (and those that agree with me too, why not?), I have a question: What is the correspondence between the amount of work someone does and what they are entitled to? In other words, based on how much someone works, how much can they ask for before they become entitled? You can say it's up to every person to find an employer that pays them what they feel they deserve but I'm speaking in ideals here.
* Is someone not working entitled to anything?
* What is someone working 20 hours a week doing unskilled labor entitled to?
* What about 20 hours a week after having been to a trade?
* What about 20 hours a week after completing a Bachelor's in arts or history
* Or a Bachelor's in science or engineering?
* What about the above four questions, but for someone working a full 40 hour week?
etc. etc.

So yeah, messy thread, I know. Respond to the initial letters, my opinion, my ideology on labor, what people 'should' be entitled to, etc. I feel like whatever direction this thread takes it'll probably be interesting and worthwhile.

[Kwing]

At 1/1/18 11:31 AM, SolidPantsSnake wrote: The world owes you absolutely nothing, and you don't deserve anything just because you exist.

You completely took my words out of context. Literally the next two sentences in my post - not even separated with a line break - was this:

Of course this ideal is vastly different from the reality. Material comfort and goods require labor.

The fact that you purposefully cropped this out suggests you've already decided you're not interested in what I have to say.

My argument that everyone should be comfortable is based on idealistic and moralistic values. I'm not saying that some people should work and produce resources for the rest at their own detriment - that would defeat the purpose since the few people working wouldn't be comfortable themselves. What I'm saying is that our need for labor comes from our practical need for resources, not some abstract idea that hard work makes you a good or "deserving" person.

The only realistically achievable form of true financial equality would be a world were we are all hungry, or living in starvation.

Straw man fallacy. I never said I wanted complete financial equality (although I wouldn't abandon the complete abolition of money as an eventual goal.) What makes more sense to me is that everyone is given the resources to survive, and a person's work determines the quality of their life with the poverty line being a hard lower bound.

When one person argues about how the world should be, and the other argues about how the world is, the latter is always going to win because of that harsh thing called reality.

Not going to argue too hard with this point since in practice Stephanie's advice produced results, but I noticed you haven't responded to anything about the fact that Talia was still working full-time and barely making ends meet. She may not be perfect, but were her working conditions fair?

[EdyKel]

I knew people who would work 3 jobs, just to scrap by. I knew people who were screwed by their boss on pay and overtime. I knew bosses who were batshit insane, and you wouldn't know if you would have a job the next day. I have talked to a lot of people who use to work for terrible, self-serving, bosses.

The current atmosphere towards workers is definitely not tilted their way, as jobs continue to be outsourced to foreign countries because of cheaper labor; and no matter the amount of begging or tax incentives are going to bring them back. Unions are in decline, attacked constantly by the conservative majority of the Supreme court, so worker representation in government will always play second fiddle to corporations and the wealthy, who can buy off the ears of politicians.

I always get tired of the argument from people who defend the corporations, or big business, and think workers are too entitled, and lazy, in an era where we have the highest health care costs and a growing gap between rich and poor. I have heard many stories about how the top management screws their workforce to save a few bucks to give generous bonuses to themselves, even if they do a terrible job performance. And a lot of theses people, presidents of corporations, or head of a business, we hear about, mostly inherited their wealth, and were able to go to the very best schools, having the very biggest advantages, without really working to hard for it.

However, I can't say that I'm sympathetic towards Talia. San Francisco is a terrible place to live. The Cost of living there is astronomical. Houses there can go for a few million, and this affects everything from gas prices, and food. You can go to McDonalds and pay almost 10 dollars for a meals, while almost half that in central California. It's why 10's of thousands commute there from cheaper areas, outside the region. You have to be a small millionaire to comfortably live there. So, her trying to rent an apartment on here own there was not to smart.

[ADR3-N]

Nice thread idea, poor execution. Although to be fair I wouldn't do much better.

Talia has a point. Minimum wage WAS supposed to support a family of 3, but I can't say her decision-making or financial management skills are great from what we see. The hit piece against her was, as you observed, full of unnecessary character attacks and schadenfreude.

My thoughts on the matter, universal basic income is untenable and in general ridiculous. Welfare already accomplishes what UBI seeks to do, and I don't think we want anyone who is capable of living comfortably without UBI on the payroll. Case in point, the rich CEOs and businessmen we're taking the piss at right now.

What should be done is properly scaling welfare and minimum wage to the cost of living and making it clear to businesses that price hiking every time the minimum wage so much as hiccups will result in the minimum wage going up again and thus less profit for everyone involved. The problem in reality lies outside of that, though. Corporations and banks again think they can create more money, just like they did in the 20's. Inflation is choking us.

Simply, we need to stop printing so much damn money and make like bitcoin with its finite maximum number of bitcoins. The more we print, the less each individual dollar is worth. We keep printing, and soon enough we'll be carting a whole buggy full of worthless paper notes just to get a sack of bread and a gallon of milk at the store.

Printing dollars only as needed won't fix the corrupt corporation problem, but it will help stop some of the bleeding, not to mention force the government to stop thinking that the solution to any problem is to hand it a bottomless wallet to throw our money into.

At 1/1/18 10:43 PM, EdyKel wrote: I always get tired of the argument from people who defend the corporations, or big business, and think workers are too entitled, and lazy, in an era where we have the highest health care costs and a growing gap between rich and poor. I have heard many stories about how the top management screws their workforce to save a few bucks to give generous bonuses to themselves, even if they do a terrible job performance. And a lot of theses people, presidents of corporations, or head of a business, we hear about, mostly inherited their wealth, and were able to go to the very best schools, having the very biggest advantages, without really working to hard for it.

This. I could tell you another several more stories about just how corrupt management usually is in a corporate operation. Even small-time grocery chains like Bruno's FoodMax are cheap and dirty.

My mom was passed up for promotion to assistant manager because she wasn't screwing the general manager, who not only sexually harassed her but was caught doing it with the lady who was promoted in her place in the freezers.

Worse than that was that they underpaid her, had her working the bakery, deli, and seafood sections at the same time most of the week, plus closing up, and then had the nerve to lay her off after 29 years of back-breaking work because it was cheaper to hire some clueless dropout and shoehorn him into doing half the work with none of the know-how. The store went under not long after.

However, I can't say that I'm sympathetic towards Talia. San Francisco is a terrible place to live. The Cost of living there is astronomical. Houses there can go for a few million, and this affects everything from gas prices, and food. You can go to McDonalds and pay almost 10 dollars for a meals, while almost half that in central California. It's why 10's of thousands commute there from cheaper areas, outside the region. You have to be a small millionaire to comfortably live there. So, her trying to rent an apartment on here own there was not to smart.

And this. Well, minus that she had the misfortune to live in San Fran and expect to make an honest living. It's like the difference between me trying to live in Flowood, MS versus a smaller suburban community just outside the city. Commuting is cheaper. Doubly so if you buy food in bulk and eat smart. That being said, stories like Talia's are another reason I will never rent an apartment. You pay out the ass and have not shit to show for it.

[Kwing]

At 1/2/18 03:51 AM, SolidPantsSnake wrote: What idealistic and moral values? I don't see much morality in believing people are owed a comfortable existence for existing especially without giving back. Believing that you are owed something for doing nothing, and that you don't have to give anything back is amoral not moral. As for the idealism behind it it would help if you put forward what values your argument is based on.

Arguing any statement that resolves around 'should' or 'deserve' ultimately boils down to personal values, and logic is built on top of and relative to values, not the other way around. So I can say that I think people should be comfortable, but I don't have any objective "evidence" to back up that statement. What I can say (which may explain my point but does nothing to sway your opinion) is that there's no such thing as a "neutral" existence. If someone exists, they fall somewhere between being uncomfortable and comfortable. So if we speak with regard to ideals, why should that comfort be conditional? Saying that people have to earn their happiness might be reality, but saying that people SHOULD have to earn their happiness sounds like the hubris of someone trying to arbitrate what it means to earn something, or to have moral worth. It also sounds elitist.

Staw man argument maybe, fallacy no. There are not enough resources for everyone to live comfortably. No system has ever achieved a comfortable living standard for everyone despite many trying. Point to any system that actually did achieve this, and only then will my argument become a fallacy.

If we're talking fallacies, this is begging the question (and somewhat of a hasty generalization.) Just because comfortable societies haven't existed doesn't mean such a thing is impossible. There are also plenty of civilizations that have come relatively close - namely Scandinavian countries and technologically primitive tribes (Native American, African, Aboriginal.) I think the reason 'happier' societies are rare has more to do with colonization and globalization, which at best inflate the size of a culture to the point where the model becomes unsustainable and at worst completely dominates or wipes the culture off the map.

the fact that she was able to afford expensive alcohol while complaining about not being able to afford food is very suspect.

At this point I feel like anything I have to say would be extremely speculative - was the alcohol a present? Does she routinely buy alcohol? Does she have a drinking problem? Or is she simply careless with her money? We really don't know. I don't respect the decision of people that blast all of their money on booze, but I also think it's telling that alcohol and candy thrive when the economy gets bad. That doesn't lift responsibility from the shoulders of people that still give into their impulses, but since this is something that can be observed on a mass scale I definitely feel like it's part of a larger issue.

Free snacks are a luxury few employees provide.

This really depends on what qualifies as a snack. After going to a privately owned trade school, briefly working at the Hancock Tower, and living in a snooty high-end apartment, I can confirm that in most to all cases, free snacks are meant to give the APPEARANCE of luxury. From the granola bars that cost pennies in bulk to the obnoxiously corporate Flavia drink machines to the free popcorn every Friday, these are low-cost investments that charm potential students, workers, and tenants and distract from price gouging happening elsewhere.