Amazon To Build Homeless Shelter In Its New Seattle Headquarters (cnn.com) 238
Amazon is trying to do its part to help the homelessness problem in its hometown of Seattle. The company announced on Wednesday that it would donate more than 47,000 square feet of space within its newest Seattle headquarters building as a permanent location to house homeless people. CNNMoney reports: "Mary's Place does incredible, life-saving work every day for women, children, and families experiencing homelessness in the Seattle community," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement. "We are lucky to count them as neighbors and thrilled to offer them a permanent home within our downtown Seattle headquarters." Amazon is partnering with local nonprofit Mary's Place to create 65 rooms, which will house more than 200 homeless people every night. The new Mary's Place shelter will open in early 2020. It will also have a resource center like those the nonprofit offers in North Seattle and White Center, where 40-plus local nonprofits and volunteers work with staff to help families obtain employment and permanent housing.
And you can order one today! (Score:5, Funny)
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It is their battery solution to compete with Tesla. Save us Neo.
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He needs cheap workers that will work for pennies and be thankful for his next packing warehouse, now that outsourcing into Mexico isn't feasible anymore.
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Expendable human subjects that nobody would be missing if they vanish...
Say, wasn't Bezos one of the guys that wanted to build a rocket to Mars?
Amazon Science! (Score:2)
. . .we do what we must, because we can. . . .
For the good, of all of us. . .
Well, the ones that own stock. . .
Question is, when will Prime deliver via Amazon Science Portable Hand-held Portal Devices ???
Re:And you can order one today! (Score:5, Funny)
He needs cheap workers that will work for pennies and be thankful for his next packing warehouse, now that outsourcing into Mexico isn't feasible anymore.
Based on what I've heard about how much Amazon pays, I think most of the people in the homeless shelter will be Amazon employees. If they were honest they'd call it Employee housing.
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equal opportunity homelessness (Score:5, Interesting)
"...life-saving work every day for women, children, and families experiencing homelessness..."
Well, at least men got included as long as they support a family. Wouldn't want all of those useless, disposable freeloading homeless men taking up a shelter slot.
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This is going to be great, in 2020 - too bad it's 2017.
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This is going to be great, in 2020 - too bad it's 2017.
Agreed. How dare they take the necessary time to build something great.
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They should have signed up for Prime before they ordered it.
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The shelter exists today, it's just in a temporary location (a hotel building that will eventually be demolished to build an Amazon building).
Re:equal opportunity homelessness (Score:5, Insightful)
The "homeless problem" in Seattle isn't really represented by transitory homeless, like are describe here, families with women and children, although certainly that does account for some percentage, of course. The bulk of the problem is a bit tougher to deal with: the perpetual homeless, mostly men (roughly 6:1 men/women ratio, with under 1% being minors, out of an estimated 10,000 pop, of which about half are "unsheltered" [homelessinfo.org]), many with some form of mental illness, and many with substance addictions. Unless we as a society decide that some people are unable to live responsibly on their own and should be institutionalized, we'll have permanent homeless. Even if you build free housing, you can't force someone to live there if they choose not to, for whatever reason.
So for the past few decades we've been shuffling them around from temporary site to site. Or a few entrepreneurial homeless find little niches in a tent nestled in some bushes in an industrial park somewhere, and no one wants to try to kick them out for fear of getting knifed by a semi-crazy person (and because it's effectively a crime to evict them now). And my sister-in-law has to passes by a homeless man on her way to work who's sunning himself on a public lawn and masturbating to a magazine, and everyone else has a similar story. And on it goes.
It's an ugly truth, and we've been kicking this can down the road for a generation now, because we're apparently too "compassionate" to institutionalize people that need it. Who knows... maybe it *is* more compassionate to let these people live as they want... If there were an easy answer, I suppose we've have already solved it.
So, kudos to Amazon for being willing to help, I guess, but it's not going to put much of a dent in Seattle's larger homeless problem if they're only going to take homeless families. I certainly don't blame them for this, because few people want a large population of the "ugly" homeless housed near them. Seattle's government is really the only ones who have the authority to rectify the situation, and all they've done is to talk endlessly about the problem. A year or two ago the Seattle mayor declared some sort of "homeless state of emergency", but like a lot of things he does, it's more about political perception than actually getting everything done. So far, it seems like its been private charities [ugm.org] and organizations that have done the most and best work in helping these people.
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Far too much truth telling in your post. Few will want to listen to it. There's a lot we could do for treatment, but it would have to be involuntary - and that is just not going to happen now. They either have to be willing to get treatment, or they have to be an immediate danger.
The saddest part - is that the people who are able to get on government disability, end up being worse off because it just enables their addictions.
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1. Setup large dormitory style structures with staff (social workers, mental health, etc) for homeless transitional housing.
2. Vigorously enforce laws on trespass and vagrancy
3. Give repeat offenders of #2 a choice to go the homeless shelter and get evaluated or go to jail for two weeks
4. Create a separate section of the jail for homeless people, but make it more like boot camp. Mandatory wake times, showers, and labor.
At the homeless shelter, screen for mental illness and commit people with serious ment
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1. Where is the money going to come from to build and staff these large dormitory style structures? Unless there's a tax surplus, who or what will be taxed or fined to pay for it? If based on a fine, does the party have money for the fine and likely to pay it?
2. Who is going to pay for the increased police, jails (food, bed, staff), lawyers for defendants, court costs, jury fees, etc if we more vigorously enforce misdemeanor trespass/vagrancy laws? Also in some cases police can't do more than tell vagrants
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And now they're not homeless, at least for two weeks. Problem solved—maybe not in the way you intended....
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I think the idea would be you'd decide to go to the homeless shelter or leave.
I don't know any rational person who would choose to live in a restricted, boot-camp type of environment if their choices were leaving completely or a less restrictive and supportive environment.
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One quibble re free housing (Score:2)
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Because the shelter won't let them _stagger_ in and out. They almost all have rules against being constantly, completely fucked up in the shelter.
How about we put them on 'public land' right in front of your house? They're not hurting anyone, right?
The problem is that if you give government the authority to 'commit' loonies, they use it to 'commit' dissidents.
I say recriminalize bumming. Put them in jail if they can't maintain. For objectively bad behavior: roadside bumming, drunken walking in traffi
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Nice post. But it doesn't explain why the problem is biggest on the west coast.
Economies are booming. Lots of people are moving here. Housing is getting more expensive by rising rents or by being replaced with new builds. Almost all of the homeless are locals that have been displaced because even cheap housing is being taken up by professionals now. People are falling through the cracks and have nowhere to go.
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Repeat the myth, yet again.
When Reagan closed the loonie bins they were already empty as a result of the ACLU making the commitment procedures of the day, illegal. Not that I disagree with the ACLU. When government has the power to use the nut houses as political jails, it does.
Now please ignore this post and go on repeating some more mythology on another thread.
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men have different needs (Score:2)
I think we can handle it.
Men, at least stereotypically, have better survival skills and can live in a tent somewhere while they do temp construction work to afford a shitty apartment where they can then live while they get hired on full-time at a fast-food restaurant.
Some men of course have mental illness and/or addiction and that is relevant.
I think we need more money for men's rehabilitative services...well al
that's not feminism (Score:2)
Wrong. That's not what "feminism" is...and it's not what progressive policies are based on.
Well, I'll grant you that if you are a GOPer/Conservative who willfully misrepresents what "feminism" is then your definition is the approved definition from your overlords.
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How do you account for the difference in answers between the questions 'Do you believe the sexs are equal?' and 'Are you a feminist?'
Most people know that 'believe sexes are equal' is not the definition of 'feminism' and hasn't been for living memory. GP is exactly right
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Mary's Place is a womens' shelter, so yeah you'd expect them to primarily mention women and their children.
Homeless Shelter (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that what they're calling employee housing nowadays?
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Building a company town, owning the company store, paying your workforce in scrip... who doesn't dream of this?
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That you have to explain. What's communist about ripping off your workers to make yourself even richer?
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Most company towns in the US were built and run by very large corporations. I'm in western PA; there were a lot of those in the area. Company towns are a capitalist problem, not a communist one.
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Communism is just scaling the 'company town' to a national level. It's worse.
Hmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Or! Or! (Score:5, Funny)
Amazon could pay a living wage!
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Good one, if you got more bombs like that you have a stand-up program going. Maybe try to tie-in a routine around suggesting them paying their company taxes instead of stashing it away into tax havens.
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Problem is: in Seattle, Amazon is paying way more than a living wage and even the median wage; both have sharply risen due in part to Amazon. This has been one cause of the sharp increase in homelessness in Seattle (the others being drugs and mental illness).
WAT?!
Re:Or! Or! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, he's close. Just missing things by a few blocks. Down the street from Amazon is the Allen Brain Institute [wikipedia.org].
Brain. Institute.
Once they take your brain (for science, of course), your only options are either the homeless shelter or politics. The vast majority of people, even after being pithed, would apparently prefer homelessness rather than politics.
There is some hope for mankind.
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Problem is: in Seattle, Amazon is paying way more than a living wage and even the median wage; both have sharply risen due in part to Amazon. This has been one cause of the sharp increase in homelessness in Seattle (the others being drugs and mental illness).
So, your theory is: a company paying its employees more causes poverty. Really? That's what you're going with?
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So, your theory is: a company paying its employees more causes poverty. Really?
No, he said it caused homelessness. If the cost of housing goes up because landlords/sellers can charge more because Amazon pays a premium, and your salary doesn't go up too, eventually you reach a point where you cannot afford to rent or buy a house and you become homeless. Your salary doesn't go down, but the amount of house you can get for that money drops drastically.
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Or, you know, you commute from farther away, like the rest of us, and look for a job close to where you now have to live.
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And the result is: life gets better for everyone. That's what happens when successful companies pay their employees more. Life is not a zero-sum game.
So in other words (Score:3, Insightful)
As a homeless man you're only worth something if there's a family attached to you.
Isn't male privilege great!
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Isn't male privilege great!
Welcome to the oppression olympics!
The point of equal opportunity is not to make sure everyone has an equally shitty life. The point is if there is a problem you try to fix it. That means if, hypothetically, you spot that women have been systematically discriminated against in tech jobs then you try to fix that. What you don't say is "oh that's OK because men have it worse here so it evens out". Likewise, if you spot that, hypothetically, men are more likely to be homeless, you tr
Troll (Score:3, Informative)
Discriminating is not "equal opportunity" at all. When nationally 80% of the homeless population is men, having a program which discriminates against men is flat out evil. That you attempt to claim discrimination is fine because "bogey man" makes you evil.
Real numbers show that gender discrimination is not a problem in the workplace. 61% of all college graduates are Women who are _CHOOSING_ not to go into STEM jobs. The graduation numbers have favored women for well over a decade, and were pretty close
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Well look who's a fragile snowflake.You're so ready to take offence that you seem to jump at any opportunity, imagined or not. Here's a free clue: at no point did I say discrimination was OK. So... Well your entire outraged screed was based on something you invented rather than read.Kinda entertaining that you then accuse me of being impervious to reality. That's what I call ironic.
Re:So in other words (Score:5, Informative)
The problem, and I think you missed this, is that no one is even trying to solve the male homeless problem. Instead we see shelter after shelter set up for women and children, who represent the minority of homeless.
Homeless men have effectively been told they have no value to society UNLESS they are in service to a woman or a child.
This, and literally hundreds of other things, is what goes through most men's minds when we're being lectured about our privilege.
Hence, Kokuyo's joke.
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What you're missing is: no one gives a shit unless they have some compassion for the ones you claim are oppressed in some area. People who are themselves actually oppressed sometimes find that compassion hard to come by.
Aplaud the intent... (Score:4, Informative)
Amazon is partnering with local nonprofit Mary's Place to create 65 rooms, which will house more than 200 homeless people every night. The new Mary's Place shelter will open in early 2020.
But this will have no effect on the homeless population until 2020, how does this help the homeless community today?
Re:Aplaud the intent... (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon is partnering with local nonprofit Mary's Place to create 65 rooms, which will house more than 200 homeless people every night. The new Mary's Place shelter will open in early 2020.
But this will have no effect on the homeless population until 2020, how does this help the homeless community today?
It doesn't, and it obviously isn't supposed to. But not to worry, there will probably still be homeless people in 2020.
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You can't reasonably everything anyone does to have an immediate effect on the entire population, and to do that instantaneously to boot.
Now I worked in non-profits for many years, so I know that the closest thing you can do to that is to give a substantial amount of money to an organization that is already working in the field and has a reasonable plan for using that money. But what you don't see is that such gifts don't usually come out of the blue, they're the result of a process of courting that takes
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It doesn't help today unless you expect the shelter to be built in the next few hours.
Otherwise, Mary's Place's other locations are still around.
Amazon Lunchables... (Score:2)
Every night? (Score:2)
200 people every night? Like they have to stand in line every night to get a bed? This is one reason that all the temporary shelter solutions don't work. Every evening, the homeless have to stand in line for the chance at getting a place. And every morning they get tossed back out on the street. And maybe they don't get one, so they have to find a warm doorway quickly. Pretty soon they just say, "Fuck it. Not worth the trouble." And move back under the freeway where they can stake out a (relatively) permane
Re:Every night? (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it amusing that this comes to 235sqft per person, and I've taken flack for designing apartment microunits at 224sqft per single individual as part of a universal social security plan. People stopped arguing that it wasn't affordable and started arguing that I'm trying to shove people into prison cells or something (never mind that they're allowed to go anywhere outside)--to which I'd typically respond with something about cardboard boxes, bad weather, and food from dumpsters.
People don't seem to care about making the lives of others better; they just want to win a moral victory so they feel good.
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200 people every night? Like they have to stand in line every night to get a bed? This is one reason that all the temporary shelter solutions don't work. Every evening, the homeless have to stand in line for the chance at getting a place. And every morning they get tossed back out on the street. And maybe they don't get one, so they have to find a warm doorway quickly. Pretty soon they just say, "Fuck it. Not worth the trouble." And move back under the freeway where they can stake out a (relatively) permanent campsite.
I in no way admire or support ISIS in any way, they're scum of the earth. However, with that said, they treat their homeless better.
ISIS consider it their responsibility to feed, house, and clothe anyone in their territory who is unable to do it themselves. They consider themselves religious bound.
If you're homeless in ISIS territory, they give you a home. Granted, the home probably belonged to a previously homeless man who was used as a suicide bomber before you arrived and they'll probably pressure you
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Maybe a better example is something like Catholic Charities. There are lots of religious organizations with the mission to help the poor. One problem with this is that decades ago, a good chunk of the wealthy were also highly religious and felt duty-bound to help out. More well-off people also lived in cities and saw on a daily basis what happens when you don't do something.
These days, religion and charity seem to be more a domain of the poor, who have fewer resources to give. Most growth in Catholic parish
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ISIS consider it their responsibility to feed, house, and clothe anyone in their territory who is unable to do it themselves.
But you know what they do with their booze/meth/heroin users? Seattle's streets would be cleaned up pretty quickly if we used the machete method. Heck, we'd make serious inroads into the problem if we just forgot to restock the Naloxone.
Will they get paid in Amazon dollars? (Score:2)
I sold my soul to the company store...
A place for the mentally unbalanced population? (Score:2)
We call this an insane asylum. Let's see if Bezos can come up with a workable new way of running something like this. He might surprise us.
Separate entrance on a back street (Score:2)
So that employees, customers and business contacts won't have to experience homeless people first hand.
This is how NYC real estate developers have managed requirements for affordable housing when they build developments targeted at the wealthy. A small, separate entrance with its own elevator to the floors with the few affordable rentals in the building is part of the building.
While I guess it's laudable to gesture by our e-commerce overlords, if they run the homeless people through an invisible side entra
Maybe we should focus on fixing the root cause (Score:5, Insightful)
Most chronic homelessness is caused by mental illness and addictions. Instead of putting up shelters, why not spend a little extra and reopen public mental hospitals? Before the deinstitutionalization movement in the 70s, states had huge mental health treatment systems in place. Admittedly, part of that was because there was nothing that could be done to treat mental illness before the 50s and the only thing to do was to lock them away. But, we've seen that treatment isn't 100% effective, people relapse, they self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, etc. Why not operate facilities where people who need treatment can be placed until they're stable enough to actually live in the community?
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Why not operate facilities where people who need treatment can be placed until they're stable enough to actually live in the community?
Well, IIRC, a large part of that deinstitutionalization movement was because the courts decided that people can't normally be institutionalized against their will. Unless there is a crime involved, if they say they want to leave, they get to leave. Add in that the Republicans won't want to pay for it. So, now, they just walk and are homeless till they commit a crime and get jailed which is where most of those deinstitutionalized people went.
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Because the ACLU legal cases that emptied the loony bins (before Reagan closed them) have not been reversed.
And from a social POV that's good. The cost of homelessness is less than the cost of government locking up 'inconvenient people' with committal powers.
What about non-homeless? (Score:3)
This is great for the homeless population, but for those that aren't employed by high-tech. They just can't afford to live in Seattle anymore. Teachers, fire-fighters, police, food service workers, etc can't afford to pay $2000 for a 1bedroom apartment. What we all saw in SanFrancisco/Silicon Valley area, is happening in Seattle.
Hope these high tech workers don't plan on having kids, there will be nobody to teach them. Maybe Amazon can buy Khan Academy and launch Amazon-School. "Alexa, teach my child to read."
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Megacorps (Score:4, Funny)
I have played too much Shadowrun to think this can be anything good.
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Didn't trump just make America great again? How can we still have homeless people?
As noted, this won't be available until 2020, just as President Trump is up for re-election, two years after Democrats "take back the congress" in the 2018 mid-term.
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[...] so give trump at least 2-3 years to fix the problems of trump.
FTFY — Who knew that governing was so complicated for a businessman?
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Didn't trump just make America great again? How can we still have homeless people?
If they live at Amazon, they aren't homeless. You see? American is great again, thanks to be big business.
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Re: Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not give them jobs?
You have a deep misunderstanding of what causes homelessness and why it is such an intractable problem. They are not "just like you and me" except without homes. Most homeless people have mental health issues, substance abuse issues, and are in general very dysfunctional people. If they were employable, then they wouldn't be homeless in the first place.
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There's a lot of homelessness in NYC and the overwhelming majority falls into two camps: those with mental issues and those with substance abuse issues. The percentage of able bodied and able minded people (is that a word?) who are homeless is a small.
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Re: Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
when you got no job, any job is better
Hiring managers are reluctant to hire higher-skilled people for minimum wage jobs because they know that people will leave when a better opportunity comes along. When I was out of work for two years, hiring managers told me I was overqualified for minimum wage jobs and recruiters told me I was unemployable for everything else. I ended up working for a moving company on the weekends for six months until I found another full-time job.
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Bullshit.
No bullshit. There was seven applicants for every job opening when I was out of work for two years. Hiring managers and recruiters would only hire people who had still had a job, writing everyone else off. When I got my full-time job in mid-2011, there was three applicants for every job opening, When hiring managers and recruiters couldn't fill out the head count, they started hiring anyone they could find. I spent the next two years working seven days a week.
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But you've always had contracts that forbade overtime and limited you to 40 hours a week. So you were working 5-1/2 hours a day then?
I was working for three contracting agencies during that time. A weekday assignment with the prohibition not to work more than 40 hours a week for that contracting agency. A weekend assignment that could start on Friday night from one of the two other contracting agencies.
Like many of my coworkers today, I work 40 hours for my weekday job and another 40 hours for my side business.
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Like, maybe, you come across as an obnoxious twat to every hiring manager you meet?
Nope. I wasn't hired because I wasn't working. Discrimination against the unemployed was a huge problem in 2009-10.
So you mean to say that once employers had hired *literally* everybody else they could tolerate more than they could tolerate you, EVEN YOU were able to find a job? That's great!
When the economy turned around in mid-2011, there was fewer working people looking for jobs and employers had to hire unemployed people to fill out the head counts.
Recruiters saying "you're overqualified for these jobs"
Hiring managers were telling me that I was "overqualified" for their minimum wage jobs. Recruiters were telling me I was "unemployable" for anything else. They were wrong. From 2011 to 2013, I worked seven days a week for 30+ short-
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And you could not fake your CV accordingly to the problem?
That would be unethical. If I have done that, it might have compromised my chances of getting a security clearance for my current job.
You could not show yourself on paper as a less qualified person?
I'm not my brother. He was out of work for two years as well. He committed perjury every two weeks by claiming he was looking for work. He was using his unemployment benefits to start a landscaping design business.
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Pray tell - what fucking sort of "minimum wage" jobs are you applying for that they asked for, or reviewed, a CV?
Restaurant, retail and warehouse. I did these jobs before I started my technical career. Keep in mind that there were seven applicants for every job opening in 2009-10.
Starting a business" isn't necessarily a disqualifying circumstance. As long as he:
1) "Looks for work";
2) "Doesn't work full time for his own company, even if it's unpaid";
3) "Declares any income he may receive from such work,";
1) Nope
2) Nope
3) Nope
There's no particular issue with collecting unemployment while you work on starting your own business.
We had an uncle who ran his own landscaping business while his family collected welfare. Cash under the table. Never filed taxes in 30+ years. Lived as well as my father who worked 50 years for three generations of owners.
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Yeah, we know. Well, we know that is what you tell us. Only you know if it is the truth.
It's on the Internet, so it must be true.
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The problem is that a lot of the homeless are mentally ill and can't hold any job.
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Try again. Chicago's main problem is a history of rampant corruption. And Detroit's poverty is largely the result of white flight in the 1970s, which was largely a reaction to race riots. Besides, Detroit didn't turn so strongly Democrat until the late 1980s
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The mayor is not the only elected official in a city. In fact, it is arguably the least important.
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Same for San Francisco. But that probably could be handled by a company out of the valley...
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Gotta move them further than that. I suggest the Utah wilderness, far from roads, water sources (or liquor stores).
Re:Portland Oregon (Score:5, Funny)
Hey Amazon: They need a huge one in Portland Oregon too. I visited once and haven't seen so many homeless people in my life.
What you saw in Portland were the political activists.
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'Portlandia' is a documentary.
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Now, why would not Amazon suggest to and outright push those people into jobs at Amazon? Warehouse workers make about $13/hour [glassdoor.com]?
I'm assuming they have all the workers they need already hired.
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Paid a pittance and they still aren't worth it...sucks to be them.
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That used to be popular, at least until the pesky government had to butt in and demand that workers get paid in actual money instead of food, shelter and scrip.
Damn government, ruining the economy!
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Slight correction... The government demanded that workers get paid in THEIR scrip instead of companies printing their own...
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I'm fairly sure the workers like that better, considering that it's legal tender in way more areas than just the company store with the insane prices.
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What would you choose if your only options were performing labor in exchange for food & shelter or sleeping on the street and begging? And was it government that fixed the abuses with company towns and company stores or was that the genesis of the union movement?
Government also passed laws which mandate "minimum standard of habitation" for rental property. A living space must have all of the modern conveniences or it's illegal to rent on a long-term basis. Such amenities come with a cost. People are h
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Can Amazonians wear trash bags and burlap sacks to work now?
Only if they bought them online.