From: matt@cray.com (Matthew Marchese)
Subject: Re: shopping hours
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Date: 21 Aug 92 05:41:33 CDT

In article <1992Aug20.124054.20189@dragon.acadiau.ca> alan@dragon.acadiau.ca (Alan W. McKay) writes:
>matt@cray.com (Matthew Marchese) writes:
>
>> I write:
>>>the people are not forced to take these types of jobs, and thus there
>>>is no demand for them.
>>>
>>Whose *forcing* people to take low-paying jobs? If they're so many 
>>terrific jobs in Germany why are people working at Tankstellen?
>>What's lacking in the States is proper education and training in
>>the workforce, not good jobs. Besides, working in "fast-food"
>>joints helped put me through college. It wasn't great work but it
>>helped pay the bills.
>
>Oh, c'mon, surely you can't be that nieve?  The whole *damn* system,
>that's who!  It creates an almost slave-class of the lower class.
>No good paying jobs, no social security, no medical insurance.  They
>are made to feel as though they are damned lucky to have what they
>have, and that it is there own fault that that don't have more.
>
I'm probably going to be sorry for answering this since you sound like
you have a serious axe to grind. No, i'm not *naive* in this respect.
Every culture has it's *slave* class if you want to define it that way.
Germany is no exception. The only significant effect is that the
basic wage structure is higher than that of the US. What this results
in (in case you are unfamiliar with basic economics) is that prices in
Deutschland are correspondingly much higher than those of the US because
of the higher costs of doing business which German employers pass on to 
their customers. Agreed, the German system takes *much* better care of
the basic health/social needs of it's people but there are quite a number
of people here who fall through the cracks, nevertheless.

What I was responding to in your original post is this: You seem to be implying
that there's some grand conspiracy in the US to keep people under-employed
and miserable. I spent several years working as one of your so-called *slaves*
of the lower-class and I can't relate to your depiction of it at all. I
never felt like it was some sort of endless cycle that I would never escape
from. I put myself through school and wound-up with better jobs. I viewed
the experience as a stepping-stone to something better not a trap. And
as for feeling "damned lucky to have what I have" i've never felt that the
US government *owed* me a job or a handout. A person's employment should
depend upon the quality of their work IMO, not upon the largesse of the
government. I think that after absorbing all of the former state-owned 
industries of the GDR after reunification most Wessis would agree with me

>Geesh, some people just don't see the writing on the wall.
>
So you're saying that anyone who doesn't agree with your gloom-and-doom
view of the US employment system is somehow *naive* (not to put words in
your mouth)? Why don't you shine that light on yourself first, pal, before
you start flashing it around the Net. Now if you'd like to continue this
off-line feel free. As we seem to be straying from the bounds of soc.culture.
german let's refrain from wasting more bandwidth on topics related to America.

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*  "Supernatural perhaps...Baloney, perhaps not!" - Bela Lugosi               *
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Matt Marchese	    The opinions expressed here are not those of my employer, *
Cray Research  	    my wife, my church, or myself...But they are the opinions *
DKRZ                of Elvis as revealed to me through the medium of my pet   *
Hamburg, Germany    hamster, Lee Harvey Oswald...                             *
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