Pujols must be licking his chops at the prospect of the Nats’ pitching staff coming to town… they have given up more home runs than anyone in MLB. In fact, the next gopher ball will be 200 in 2022. Good times.
Proudly from a union family. Mom was a lifelong member of the NYC teachers' union, which took and still takes good care of her, including a great pension plan and health care. When she was laid off during the 70s budget crisis, they had her back. My wife is currently a member of an union, and was thrilled to discover this was the case. I was in an union briefly long ago, and was gratified to discover that my old employers found themselves confronted with a desire to create a new union (though I have no idea if my old position would have been covered).
PS: In honor of Labor Day, I will pretend that the Mets didn't play over the weekend. In point of fact, I am not sure they did.
Out of respect for your choice for how to honor the holiday, I’ll refrain from posting standings showing ATL only one game back after once trailing by double digits. As a further show of my generosity, I will not comment on Scherzer’s early removal from his last start. I’m just that nice!
Scherzer is actually the only decent news of the weekend since he seems to have wisely left before anything got worse, and is reporting he's fine. Plus he will get an extra day off due to the schedule. (Wondering if the Mets go with six starters both to spare Max and Jake and to maybe get more innings from the starters since the bullpen is so meh.)
Also, Max is one of the leaders of the players union, so it is totally appropriate to sing his praises today.
"They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high." In other words, the working poor choose their place in society...
That is not my position. However, I taught labor studies for over a decade and the amount of undergraduates who totally miss Ehrenreich's point has led me to despise that quote. It should have been better worded to make clear that the working poor are forced to do those things to survive.
"I will be convinced that America is not in decline only when our de-cluttering guru Marie Kondo learns to speak English."
Ehrenreich then deleted that tweet and "apologized":
"I confess: I hate Marie Kondo because, aesthetically speaking, I’m on the side of clutter. As for her language: It’s OK with me that she doesn’t speak English to her huge American audience but it does suggest that America is in decline as a superpower."
"It was devastating. I had done a stupid thing. I found there was no way to apologize, because any apology would ignite a new wave of criticism, .... Oh yes. It was a stupid thing to have said. Or stupidly put."
She’s not wrong that our culture is not equipped to process an apology from a public figure, i imagine as a result of the same atomizing forces that undergird the exploitative system she spent her career documenting.
This will eventually be resolved dialectically, but right now it’s a tough spot.
2. Calling a person with the track record of Ehrenreich "arguably a racist" solely on the basis of what is at worst a poorly worded tweet is asinine.
3. What is the point of bringing this up? Even if we grant the premise that the tweet was bad, what is the purpose of defining someone by the worst thing they have done?
It was not a joke or at the very least it was an absolutely horrible joke. And if it was a joke, an actual sincere apology would have been nice. Her track record is open to debate (there is quite a lot of criticism of her most famous book amongst the socialist left). And the point of bringing it up, is because Craig noted her death. And whether the tweets were the worst thing she has done is once again debatable, but people do often get defined by the worst thing they have done.
Yeah. I have problems with Kondo, but that's not one of them.
However, discarding things that don't spark joy, because they can be easily replaced if it turns out they were in fact needed bespeaks economic privilege. My mother was raised in the Depression, and, despite subsequently leading a very comfortable middle class life, she never got over saving and reusing aluminum foil, because, in her childhood, not having to buy another roll might leave room in the budget for another loaf of bread.
Do you really think she doesn't understand that and communicate that throughout her work? Just because she doesn't explicitly state it in every paragraph? The book references the term "wage slavery" on literally the second page. Come on.
Was pointing out that undergraduates (who always read the entire book; right?) would always use that quote when arguing that the working poor choose their position in life.
You said "it should have been better worded." I can empathize with people misreading things and being frustrated with that, but your post explicitly put the onus on her for that, which is silly.
Wonderful post and looking forward to reading the comments today. My wife is a union organizer, and we're also involved in pushing our city to increase the minimum wage to 18 an hour over the next 3 years, which is still way too low.
But if you are stuck inside today due to rain (like I am) and can find it streaming somewhere (it's on Criterion, if ya got it), the 1978 classic Blue Collar is an amazing look at working class issues in 1970s Detroit, and also has one of the most nuanced views of corporate unionism I've seen in film. Not only that, but it stars Harvey Keitel, Richard Pryor, and Yaphet Kotto. Filmed in Detroit and Kalamazoo, it's a heck of a film: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077248/
Here's a quote from Smokey James, played by Kotto, about auto plant management: 'They pit the lifers against the new boy and the young against the old. The black against the white. Everything they do is to keep us in our place. '
And if you are more of a reader, Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line by Ben Hamper is as entertaining as it is heartbreaking.
On this Labor Day, I want to say thank you to the front line of the medical profession: nurses, aides, cleaners, food service and other people who make the awful experience of being sick and/or dying a little less miserable. I am sure they, too, are underpaid and underappreciated - but regardless they are my heroes.
This Labor Day I am celebrating the workers at Starbucks and Amazon and newsrooms and all the other companies who are organizing and forming unions, even as they risk being fired and sometimes worse. Somewhere, Woody is smiling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1g4ddaXRs0
One would think that after an intense weekend of september baseball, a baseball commenter would have a ton of things to say about it (to his paying customers).
The political stuff is there on twitter all day long for *"free"*
Just as you are free to be disappointed, Craig, as all workers, are free to withhold their labor. He knows there are consequences to doing this, as he alluded to in the first two paragraphs of this piece. The fact that he didn't write about baseball and, instead, wrote something about labor that generated some thoughtful discussion here, I suspect, was what he was trying to do. And hey, if one doesn't want to hear about labor issues, mental health issues, the struggles of moving your kid to college, travel, soccer, and what have you, plenty of other newsletters about baseball out there. This newsletter is unique in its mix of all of these things, the writing is great, and lots of folks are here for it, but it's not for everyone. And hell, if I'm disappointed once a week, it's still a lot better record than the White Sox or Cubs are putting up at the moment.
"This newsletter is unique in its mix of all of these things, the writing is great, and lots of folks are here for it, but it's not for everyone. "
Absolutely. My political and economic POV is far, FAR, from that of our host and most of our commentators here. But I come anyway for the writing and humor while, mostly, just skimming past weightier topics that are ill suited for a meaningful reply on a medium that effectively has the shelf life of raw trout.
I worked 38 hours in the last 3 days and signed a lease on a new apartment. I'm off today & I was looking very much forward to Craig's concise and numerous observations on what happened to catch me up.
If you’re relying on Craig to catch you up on weekend baseball, then you are clearly subscribed to the wrong newsletter. He almost never mentions anything from the Friday/Saturday games unless something really significant happened. So instead of his first recap of the week covering Sunday games, it’ll cover Monday games. Not sure how you’ve managed to make it to September without knowing what happened every Friday or Saturday, but I think you’ll be okay turning to ESPN or MLB.com to find out what happened on Sunday, September 4, 2022.
(And in case it wasn’t obvious, this was not a criticism of Craig, but an observation about what is definitely not a “baseball blog”.)
But if you were making your living from the blog, perhaps you wouldn't mind occasionally hearing some criticism from your subscribers without said subscriber unsubscribing.
Never said you should unsubscribe. But if your “criticism” of a newsletter that leans ~pretty~ heavily into socialism and worker’s rights is “you take too many days off” on LABOR DAY of all days……not really sure what to tell you at that point.
I get three weeks of paid time off, plus 10 holidays. I don't know how many days Craig has taken off this year, but I guess you do if you know it's "too many."
I wasn't going to say anything, because I figured I would just get shouted down, but I agree with Dale Baker. Craig gives himself a LOT of days off, such that I would bet there are full posts approximately half the time (3.5/7, and not 5/7).
All of the days off, taken as individual cases, are quite reasonable. But in the aggregate, they add up to a LOT of days off. And the fact is that most workers have to triage and choose which days off are truly essential, and which ones are merely desirable.
Or worse, they convince people their handouts will trickle down to benefit those at the bottom, so those at the bottom will continue to vote for policies that ensure their poverty.
Somebody took another shot at the working low wage jobs for a book bit - it was also quite good. On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How it Drives America Insane by Emily Guendelsberger. She worked at a couple of more "millennial" jobs, a call center and Amazon, as well as a stint at McDonald's in San Francisco. One point she made is the minimum wage type jobs tend to also be high stress and keep your body in fight or flight mode all shift, which is not healthy.
There is also Maid. The book is fantastic, I didn't bother with the Netflix adaptation.
I don't know that "tech sales" quite falls into the same category as what we think of traditional labor, but I leave for Boston today and will work from a family member's home Wed - Fri before heading to Acadia the following week. As always happens when I'm in Boston for work or family, the Red Sox are not in town. I think this is five of my last six trips to Boston that the Red Sox were somewhere else.
If you have any in insider tips for Acadia feel free to share. Assume I've heard of Jordan Pond and Mt. Cadillac.
Yes. Hotel housekeeping for example is a high stress job, with demanding productivity standards and little freedom or autonomy. I've seen it up close through a couple of jobs. The tip-based compensation economy is a travesty, but it's what we have. Take care of your housekeepers!
Would you not consider that “housekeeping”? If anything, cleaning up between customers is probably 100000% more important than straightening up my bed during a 2-night stay.
Yeah - I always ask for no housekeeping when I am there; I typically use the bed and bath - that's about it - I don't clean my house daily. But on the turnover as I leave they will clean and I leave a good tip.
I like the smaller towns on Mount Desert Island much more than Bar Harbor. Really any of them. Not saying don't set foot in Bar Harbor. But Bar Harbor is fancy stores and restaurants and the smaller towns will have the tiny bakeries with the $1 blueberry scones and the real small fishing boats used by locals.
You bet. There are few secrets in Acadia, but definitely check out Sand Beach and Precipice Trail. Thurston's is my favorite seafood place on MDI, and worth the trip if you like lobster, steamers, etc. And if you want to take a nice trip to Winter Harbor, the Schoodic Peninsula part of the park is beautiful and pretty much empty. The main part of the park will be busy in September and October due to heavy cruise ship traffic in Bar Harbor and leaf peepers from around New England and NY, so get there early in the day if you don't want to be stuck in traffic in a national park. It's much more congested than many other national parks due to size, layout, and proximity to major metro areas. If you are driving from Portland, Camden State Park is a very nice walk or drive to the top of the hill with great views, and if you want to go to one of the best delis literally in the middle of nowhere, go to Morse's near Camden. It's just a few minutes out of the way and well worth it for snacks for your trip. Check their hours if you go, but it's surreal.
I have always been for the worker with many of the feelings about the worker that Ehrenreich talked about in her quote. I was raised in a family business in a small town, worked for a large private company, worked for a large corporation, and now on to owning my second business. The one thing I learned and practice to this day is, treat your employees well. The American worker wants to do a good job, be a part of a successful business/company, they are some of the most loyal folks if treated with respect. I also learned from the corporation that when you walk on your employees the talent leaves and all that is left are the people who can effectively navigate their way through the bureaucracy without doing any work.
It is nice to see on this Labor Day, that the pendulum is swinging back to the worker. Watching the American worker get screwed from the late 70's through the 2000's was tough but now it seems like Unions are going in popularity and the worker is in the driver seat.
Finally "on hand outs to the poor", as we saw with the Covid money, the regular people got out of debt, made some savings, had security to get a new better job, then spent like Richard Pryor in Brewster's Millions putting our economy on steroids. To me this worked better as a give away than any tax cut for the job creators.
Not trying to diminish the point about the working poor, but it's not an easy problem that would be solved by just increasing their wages because to some extent it's a case of a dog chasing it's own tail.
Yes, the working poor would get more money, but everything would also get more expensive, decreasing their gains.
Using that quote from Nickeled and Dimed about substandard housing, well someone is going to be living in that substandard housing. Giving the working poor more money isn't going to substantially change the amount of available housing in the country. Though that substandard housing might get more expensive and, hopefully, some improvements made to it.
No matter how high you raise that first step of the ladder, it's always going to be the bottom rung. And people on the bottom rung are always going to have it bad. But maybe not quite as bad.
On further reflection, perhaps the price increases caused by wage increases wouldn't hurt the working poor as much as I fear. If only because the things the working poor might buy at Walmart or Family Dollar were probably made by the working poor in some other country who wouldn't be impacted by the US increasing its minimum wage.
Problem is that any wage increase is treated by business as a reason to increase prices whether it’s warranted or not. Sure, there’ll always be a ‘bottom rung’, but the bottom rung is frankly a lot better than the bottom rung 20,40,60,80 or 100 years ago.
Dad raised all six of us on retail clerks' wages (UFCW) while Mom stayed at home and performed no less important yet unpaid labor to get us fed, on our feet, and going in a positive direction (that is, out the door on our majority). Dad passed away in May and Mom is in rehab care (dementia) so she might be following him soon. Looking back. I don't know how the hell they could have done it without the union benefits. We'd have been sunk without them.
The Mets and Pirates will be taking the day off! OK, not to be good union members but because it's raining. But they deserve a day off to think about Marvin Miller's legacy.
Wait. The Cards won't be playing the Cubs in the playoffs?
Pujols must be licking his chops at the prospect of the Nats’ pitching staff coming to town… they have given up more home runs than anyone in MLB. In fact, the next gopher ball will be 200 in 2022. Good times.
Swing away, Albert!
Is he playing against righties, though?
I’m willing to bet they won’t pitch as well in St. Louis as they did against the Mets ;)
Proudly from a union family. Mom was a lifelong member of the NYC teachers' union, which took and still takes good care of her, including a great pension plan and health care. When she was laid off during the 70s budget crisis, they had her back. My wife is currently a member of an union, and was thrilled to discover this was the case. I was in an union briefly long ago, and was gratified to discover that my old employers found themselves confronted with a desire to create a new union (though I have no idea if my old position would have been covered).
PS: In honor of Labor Day, I will pretend that the Mets didn't play over the weekend. In point of fact, I am not sure they did.
Out of respect for your choice for how to honor the holiday, I’ll refrain from posting standings showing ATL only one game back after once trailing by double digits. As a further show of my generosity, I will not comment on Scherzer’s early removal from his last start. I’m just that nice!
I saw Dead Nat Bounce and Dregs My Ass open for Tightening Sphincter at Citi Field.
Scherzer is actually the only decent news of the weekend since he seems to have wisely left before anything got worse, and is reporting he's fine. Plus he will get an extra day off due to the schedule. (Wondering if the Mets go with six starters both to spare Max and Jake and to maybe get more innings from the starters since the bullpen is so meh.)
Also, Max is one of the leaders of the players union, so it is totally appropriate to sing his praises today.
"They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high." In other words, the working poor choose their place in society...
That is not my position. However, I taught labor studies for over a decade and the amount of undergraduates who totally miss Ehrenreich's point has led me to despise that quote. It should have been better worded to make clear that the working poor are forced to do those things to survive.
That aside, Ehrenreich was arguably a racist. https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2019/02/04/deleted-racist-tweet-author-barbara-ehrenreich-attacks-marie-kondo/2767585002/
She tweeted:
"I will be convinced that America is not in decline only when our de-cluttering guru Marie Kondo learns to speak English."
Ehrenreich then deleted that tweet and "apologized":
"I confess: I hate Marie Kondo because, aesthetically speaking, I’m on the side of clutter. As for her language: It’s OK with me that she doesn’t speak English to her huge American audience but it does suggest that America is in decline as a superpower."
That's unfortunate. :-(
To be fair to the dead, she sort of tried to apologize for the tweets here (I personally do not buy it, but others may feel differently):
https://www.gq.com/story/barbara-ehrenreich-author-interview
"It was devastating. I had done a stupid thing. I found there was no way to apologize, because any apology would ignite a new wave of criticism, .... Oh yes. It was a stupid thing to have said. Or stupidly put."
She’s not wrong that our culture is not equipped to process an apology from a public figure, i imagine as a result of the same atomizing forces that undergird the exploitative system she spent her career documenting.
This will eventually be resolved dialectically, but right now it’s a tough spot.
1. It was clearly a joke at the expense of the decline of American empire, not Marie Kondo, and anyone engaging with it honestly knew this at the time. (see the meme it spawned for reference: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-did-a-racism-you-did-an-imperialism)
2. Calling a person with the track record of Ehrenreich "arguably a racist" solely on the basis of what is at worst a poorly worded tweet is asinine.
3. What is the point of bringing this up? Even if we grant the premise that the tweet was bad, what is the purpose of defining someone by the worst thing they have done?
It was not a joke or at the very least it was an absolutely horrible joke. And if it was a joke, an actual sincere apology would have been nice. Her track record is open to debate (there is quite a lot of criticism of her most famous book amongst the socialist left). And the point of bringing it up, is because Craig noted her death. And whether the tweets were the worst thing she has done is once again debatable, but people do often get defined by the worst thing they have done.
A sincere apology is never good enough for a lot of people. One strike and you’re out….for some people.
Yeah. I have problems with Kondo, but that's not one of them.
However, discarding things that don't spark joy, because they can be easily replaced if it turns out they were in fact needed bespeaks economic privilege. My mother was raised in the Depression, and, despite subsequently leading a very comfortable middle class life, she never got over saving and reusing aluminum foil, because, in her childhood, not having to buy another roll might leave room in the budget for another loaf of bread.
Do you really think she doesn't understand that and communicate that throughout her work? Just because she doesn't explicitly state it in every paragraph? The book references the term "wage slavery" on literally the second page. Come on.
Was pointing out that undergraduates (who always read the entire book; right?) would always use that quote when arguing that the working poor choose their position in life.
You said "it should have been better worded." I can empathize with people misreading things and being frustrated with that, but your post explicitly put the onus on her for that, which is silly.
Wonderful post and looking forward to reading the comments today. My wife is a union organizer, and we're also involved in pushing our city to increase the minimum wage to 18 an hour over the next 3 years, which is still way too low.
But if you are stuck inside today due to rain (like I am) and can find it streaming somewhere (it's on Criterion, if ya got it), the 1978 classic Blue Collar is an amazing look at working class issues in 1970s Detroit, and also has one of the most nuanced views of corporate unionism I've seen in film. Not only that, but it stars Harvey Keitel, Richard Pryor, and Yaphet Kotto. Filmed in Detroit and Kalamazoo, it's a heck of a film: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077248/
Here's a quote from Smokey James, played by Kotto, about auto plant management: 'They pit the lifers against the new boy and the young against the old. The black against the white. Everything they do is to keep us in our place. '
And if you are more of a reader, Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line by Ben Hamper is as entertaining as it is heartbreaking.
And a great book looking at the black working class movement in Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s is "Detroit: I Do Mind Dying", https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/458-detroit-i-do-mind-dying
Wonderful! Thanks and I just requested this from our library.
On this Labor Day, I want to say thank you to the front line of the medical profession: nurses, aides, cleaners, food service and other people who make the awful experience of being sick and/or dying a little less miserable. I am sure they, too, are underpaid and underappreciated - but regardless they are my heroes.
This Labor Day I am celebrating the workers at Starbucks and Amazon and newsrooms and all the other companies who are organizing and forming unions, even as they risk being fired and sometimes worse. Somewhere, Woody is smiling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1g4ddaXRs0
Too many days off during the season for a 5 day a week baseball blog imo.
Meh. I can get score updates anywhere - I'm here for the political musings and teenager shenanigans.
One would think that after an intense weekend of september baseball, a baseball commenter would have a ton of things to say about it (to his paying customers).
The political stuff is there on twitter all day long for *"free"*
Its all-good, I'm just disappointed again.
Just as you are free to be disappointed, Craig, as all workers, are free to withhold their labor. He knows there are consequences to doing this, as he alluded to in the first two paragraphs of this piece. The fact that he didn't write about baseball and, instead, wrote something about labor that generated some thoughtful discussion here, I suspect, was what he was trying to do. And hey, if one doesn't want to hear about labor issues, mental health issues, the struggles of moving your kid to college, travel, soccer, and what have you, plenty of other newsletters about baseball out there. This newsletter is unique in its mix of all of these things, the writing is great, and lots of folks are here for it, but it's not for everyone. And hell, if I'm disappointed once a week, it's still a lot better record than the White Sox or Cubs are putting up at the moment.
"This newsletter is unique in its mix of all of these things, the writing is great, and lots of folks are here for it, but it's not for everyone. "
Absolutely. My political and economic POV is far, FAR, from that of our host and most of our commentators here. But I come anyway for the writing and humor while, mostly, just skimming past weightier topics that are ill suited for a meaningful reply on a medium that effectively has the shelf life of raw trout.
I worked 38 hours in the last 3 days and signed a lease on a new apartment. I'm off today & I was looking very much forward to Craig's concise and numerous observations on what happened to catch me up.
If you’re relying on Craig to catch you up on weekend baseball, then you are clearly subscribed to the wrong newsletter. He almost never mentions anything from the Friday/Saturday games unless something really significant happened. So instead of his first recap of the week covering Sunday games, it’ll cover Monday games. Not sure how you’ve managed to make it to September without knowing what happened every Friday or Saturday, but I think you’ll be okay turning to ESPN or MLB.com to find out what happened on Sunday, September 4, 2022.
(And in case it wasn’t obvious, this was not a criticism of Craig, but an observation about what is definitely not a “baseball blog”.)
You guys are like, so unsubscribe.
But if you were making your living from the blog, perhaps you wouldn't mind occasionally hearing some criticism from your subscribers without said subscriber unsubscribing.
(I don't mind the criticism, FTR)
And I'm still subscribing, ftr!
Never said you should unsubscribe. But if your “criticism” of a newsletter that leans ~pretty~ heavily into socialism and worker’s rights is “you take too many days off” on LABOR DAY of all days……not really sure what to tell you at that point.
MasterClass in missing the point, Dale.
I get three weeks of paid time off, plus 10 holidays. I don't know how many days Craig has taken off this year, but I guess you do if you know it's "too many."
How many is just enough?
thus the imo part.
I wasn't going to say anything, because I figured I would just get shouted down, but I agree with Dale Baker. Craig gives himself a LOT of days off, such that I would bet there are full posts approximately half the time (3.5/7, and not 5/7).
All of the days off, taken as individual cases, are quite reasonable. But in the aggregate, they add up to a LOT of days off. And the fact is that most workers have to triage and choose which days off are truly essential, and which ones are merely desirable.
"You can't fool me,
I'm sticking with the Union,
Sticking with the Union,
Til I die...."
Well said. We in Pgh celebrate Labor Day with a parade in which President Biden has participated for many years.
Or worse, they convince people their handouts will trickle down to benefit those at the bottom, so those at the bottom will continue to vote for policies that ensure their poverty.
Somebody took another shot at the working low wage jobs for a book bit - it was also quite good. On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How it Drives America Insane by Emily Guendelsberger. She worked at a couple of more "millennial" jobs, a call center and Amazon, as well as a stint at McDonald's in San Francisco. One point she made is the minimum wage type jobs tend to also be high stress and keep your body in fight or flight mode all shift, which is not healthy.
There is also Maid. The book is fantastic, I didn't bother with the Netflix adaptation.
I don't know that "tech sales" quite falls into the same category as what we think of traditional labor, but I leave for Boston today and will work from a family member's home Wed - Fri before heading to Acadia the following week. As always happens when I'm in Boston for work or family, the Red Sox are not in town. I think this is five of my last six trips to Boston that the Red Sox were somewhere else.
If you have any in insider tips for Acadia feel free to share. Assume I've heard of Jordan Pond and Mt. Cadillac.
Yes. Hotel housekeeping for example is a high stress job, with demanding productivity standards and little freedom or autonomy. I've seen it up close through a couple of jobs. The tip-based compensation economy is a travesty, but it's what we have. Take care of your housekeepers!
Ever since COVID, I have not had any hotel housekeeping. They enter the room only to clean after you check out.
True that. Tip them on your way out! Because of my personal experience, I tip for as many days as I stayed even so.
$5 per adult per night. Double that if it's a real "upscale" hotel.
Would you not consider that “housekeeping”? If anything, cleaning up between customers is probably 100000% more important than straightening up my bed during a 2-night stay.
Yeah - I always ask for no housekeeping when I am there; I typically use the bed and bath - that's about it - I don't clean my house daily. But on the turnover as I leave they will clean and I leave a good tip.
An excellent book looking at low wage jobs in the UK is "Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain" by James Bloodworth.
I like the smaller towns on Mount Desert Island much more than Bar Harbor. Really any of them. Not saying don't set foot in Bar Harbor. But Bar Harbor is fancy stores and restaurants and the smaller towns will have the tiny bakeries with the $1 blueberry scones and the real small fishing boats used by locals.
You bet. There are few secrets in Acadia, but definitely check out Sand Beach and Precipice Trail. Thurston's is my favorite seafood place on MDI, and worth the trip if you like lobster, steamers, etc. And if you want to take a nice trip to Winter Harbor, the Schoodic Peninsula part of the park is beautiful and pretty much empty. The main part of the park will be busy in September and October due to heavy cruise ship traffic in Bar Harbor and leaf peepers from around New England and NY, so get there early in the day if you don't want to be stuck in traffic in a national park. It's much more congested than many other national parks due to size, layout, and proximity to major metro areas. If you are driving from Portland, Camden State Park is a very nice walk or drive to the top of the hill with great views, and if you want to go to one of the best delis literally in the middle of nowhere, go to Morse's near Camden. It's just a few minutes out of the way and well worth it for snacks for your trip. Check their hours if you go, but it's surreal.
Thanks!
I have always been for the worker with many of the feelings about the worker that Ehrenreich talked about in her quote. I was raised in a family business in a small town, worked for a large private company, worked for a large corporation, and now on to owning my second business. The one thing I learned and practice to this day is, treat your employees well. The American worker wants to do a good job, be a part of a successful business/company, they are some of the most loyal folks if treated with respect. I also learned from the corporation that when you walk on your employees the talent leaves and all that is left are the people who can effectively navigate their way through the bureaucracy without doing any work.
It is nice to see on this Labor Day, that the pendulum is swinging back to the worker. Watching the American worker get screwed from the late 70's through the 2000's was tough but now it seems like Unions are going in popularity and the worker is in the driver seat.
Finally "on hand outs to the poor", as we saw with the Covid money, the regular people got out of debt, made some savings, had security to get a new better job, then spent like Richard Pryor in Brewster's Millions putting our economy on steroids. To me this worked better as a give away than any tax cut for the job creators.
Not trying to diminish the point about the working poor, but it's not an easy problem that would be solved by just increasing their wages because to some extent it's a case of a dog chasing it's own tail.
Yes, the working poor would get more money, but everything would also get more expensive, decreasing their gains.
Using that quote from Nickeled and Dimed about substandard housing, well someone is going to be living in that substandard housing. Giving the working poor more money isn't going to substantially change the amount of available housing in the country. Though that substandard housing might get more expensive and, hopefully, some improvements made to it.
No matter how high you raise that first step of the ladder, it's always going to be the bottom rung. And people on the bottom rung are always going to have it bad. But maybe not quite as bad.
On further reflection, perhaps the price increases caused by wage increases wouldn't hurt the working poor as much as I fear. If only because the things the working poor might buy at Walmart or Family Dollar were probably made by the working poor in some other country who wouldn't be impacted by the US increasing its minimum wage.
Problem is that any wage increase is treated by business as a reason to increase prices whether it’s warranted or not. Sure, there’ll always be a ‘bottom rung’, but the bottom rung is frankly a lot better than the bottom rung 20,40,60,80 or 100 years ago.
Dad raised all six of us on retail clerks' wages (UFCW) while Mom stayed at home and performed no less important yet unpaid labor to get us fed, on our feet, and going in a positive direction (that is, out the door on our majority). Dad passed away in May and Mom is in rehab care (dementia) so she might be following him soon. Looking back. I don't know how the hell they could have done it without the union benefits. We'd have been sunk without them.
The Mets and Pirates will be taking the day off! OK, not to be good union members but because it's raining. But they deserve a day off to think about Marvin Miller's legacy.
Well said. Poignant. Enjoy the day, but remember.