KevinC
3698
That just sums up so many conversations I’ve had with various conservatives over the years.
Timex
3699
“some may think the price of my solid gold toilet is extravagant, but if you want to sit on a solid gold toilet, that’s just what you need to pay!”
Enidigm
3700
I can’t be part of the bourgeoisie! For one, socialism is dead, and for two, je ne parle pas français!
ShivaX
3701
The proposed contract that workers rejected would have given them immediate raises of 5% or 6%, as well as 3% pay bumps in 2023 and 2025.
Some workers told the Des Moines Register that the wage increases they would receive from the proposed contract seemed paltry in comparison to the latest pay raise for Deere CEO John May, who earned nearly $16 million in 2020, a 160% increase from the previous year. May has been with Deere since 1997; he became CEO at the end of 2019 and added the title of board chair in May 2020.
“They’ve long forgot who really does the work,” Diana Swartz, an assembly worker whose hourly pay would rise just $0.74 under the proposed Deere contract, told the newspaper.
I’ll always respect the hell out of the Deere people I’ve known. They knew exactly where their bread was buttered and who to blame when it wasn’t.
I dunno, but I would say 2 working parents living in a busy city don’t exactly “need” a 24/7 nanny.
And that nanny is taking 1/3rd of their crazy monthly expenses. Most expensive nanny ever.
ShivaX
3703
Ah, but they can do whatever they want. They basically don’t have children.
You can’t put a price on that freedom… well you can, but apparently it’s like $200k a year.
Have to find some way to enable that 2K travel budget.
The travel budget is the most sensible within the craziness that budget is, I’d say. It adds up to $24k a year, or say, 2 15-days vacations for 3 people (4 with the nanny) at 12k each trip. While definitely way higher than what most can afford, I find it’s even reasonable for a couple with a pre-tax income of $1M+.
Food and entertainment is crazy high as a monthly expense, but definitely easier to see the value, specially in NYC (by value I mean where the money goes, which I guess is 4-6 expensive dinners and a super premium seats at different shows a month. It’s just doing very often things other people do once a year, but it doesn’t require inaccessible stuff) than for the nanny (seriously, even if you want a 24/7 nanny, do you really need to pay a salary of $192k? That’s not a nanny, that’s a PhD).
The mortgage also seems high even for their income. Total housing expenses are over 25% of pre-tax income, but then again I suspect they don’t pay much in taxes…
Nannies are unfortunately becoming a requirement in many states during COVID for working parents who don’t have flexible or work-from-home jobs. Many of my colleagues who have two-working-parent families have found traditional daycares woefully ineffective during the pandemic. All it takes is one COVID case in a kid at the daycare and they have to shut down for days, at least under my states rules. So parents who end up having to take an unexpected week off for three months in a row start getting into trouble with their jobs. At that point a nanny starts looking really attractive even if it’s going to consume 50% of the monthly income for a family because the alternative is one parent potentially losing a job.
I’ve got all sorts of friends that one wouldn’t consider affluent enough to be looking for a nanny that are in fact looking currently or have hired one in the last few months.
Thrag
3707
I had to search several articles to fine one on this story that mentions a chief complaint the workers have about the proposed deal. John Deere is doing great. So great that their CEO is getting a 160% raise, while they are offering the workers 3-6%.
Alstein
3708
John Deere is going to force the office workers and engineers to work the assembly lines as strike-breakers (technically not scabs, as they can be forced to do this- they’re not protected by the union)
I suspect everything will be broke by lunch.
Thrag
3709
Having the office workers run the lines? Sounds like a busy day for OSHA.
Real fucking talk. It was just as well my wife’s job went away, because I don’t know what the hell we would have done.
That’ll probably go about as well as Boeing firing all their senior engineers because gosh they’re just so expensive, we can get the contractors and juniors to do this stuff, right?
LockerK
3712
Not clear if you mean the strike or the office workers’ body and spirit. I’d bet on the latter before the former.
KevinC
3713
Quite the nosedive in quality after they made those brilliant moves.
Alstein
3714
I meant the equipment. They’ll find a way to bungle it, perhaps on purpose.
When did this happen? Links would be helpful, but if I have a timeframe maybe I can track down this story.
Thanks. I did find that story in my search but there were several others, and that story is very recent, so I wasn’t sure if that’s the timeframe you were talking about.
