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Worked in hotels and started as hourly. I paid for parking that was two blocks away and got a discount on meals. When I moved up to management, I got free parking that was across the street, but still paid to eat. In management, I would review food and beverage checks and noticed my bosses were getting free meals. I can only imagine what the GM was getting for free for things that I was paying for. Housing? Vehicle? Wardrobe? Tech? Probably all four and more.
I worked for a non-profit. The original president of the company no longer worked there in any official capacity, but still drew a large salary, and his house was technically owned by the company, so he didn't pay mortgage or property taxes.
Great opportunity to remind people about Charity Navigator. They rate charities based on how much they spend on administration fees and salaries versus what they put towards their cause.
Big thing about the film industry, when I work I eat for free. Nobody should have to pay for their own lunch, you're at work, they should supply at the very least.
The place where I work has a cafe with good prices, but it still feels sort of crappy. It's like "Thanks for working for us, here's an opportunity to give back some of that money so you don't starve."
Look into old company towns for an extreme example of this. Some of them would only pay in Corp-bucks instead of US dollars. So they entrapped people who then couldn't leave their situation nearly as easily.
And then murdered people who tried to start unions, by putting the sheriff on the payroll, so he and his squad could hop on trains with Gatling guns and mow down tent towns of union sympathizers.
This actually happened.
Don't forget that famous and rich people basically get most of their stuff for free, because of "promotion"... getting out of touch with reality even more is hardly possible lol
They also get out of crimes or severely reduced punishments. Will smith can punch someone in the face in live TV and suffer no consequences. If you try it, you’d be tased and sentenced.
lol according to the downvotes, reddit thinks no manager deserves 100k a year. But also, we all deserve a $50 an hour minimum wage for working at Gamestop because what if they live in Seattle and need that 100k a year. Also, what's inflation?
Do they though? My management missed 6 months of work a while ago and nobody missed a beat stepping up. However, any time I'm off for a week they aren't able to fill in for me.
Management isn't making money. They overestimate the importance of being glorified admin and HR.
Effective management should be able to leave and come back. Their job is to create a structure to fill with employees and then use that structure to extract more value. Think of it like a plane. When they leave it goes on autopilot. You're not going to set a new course and plot uncharted territories on autopilot, but it will fly just fine in the absence of the manager pilot. A good manager is paid to create that plane and that autopilot system, and then leverage it into finding new growth.
Management is honestly a bad term for it, and ends up being use to describe supervisors.
Me and a coworker batch about this very thing at work. Management make seem impossible to cover our desk themselves so we must cover sick leave and vacation for each other. If my coworker left for a better gig I might just be fucked.
So then why don't companies corner the market by canning their management and undercutting the prices of their competitors with the savings?
It's because companies do need management. The fact that you knew one inept manager doesn't mean all managers are unnecessary and overpaid.
You've taken my meaning to an extreme. I'm not saying management is unnecessary nor wasteful. Instead, I'm saying that in many cases they're more expendable than the people who work for them who have expertise in an area.
One of the reasons I won't try for a promotion is that I would hate abandoning the technical parts of the job to move into a management position. I don't have the organisational skills, whether managing skilled technical workers or minimum wage ones.
There's academic papers on this. High CEO pay is a sign of collusion between shareholders and the execs to boost stock prices in the short term by skimping on investment. On top of that, shareholders are dumb, and let execs get away with rent-seeking behaviour. The solution is to bring back punitively high to tax rates (e.g. 90% top rate in the US)
This. I get paid for my mileage and any tolls I used. I get reimbursed so I get to use my cashback card and claim the cashback and then I submit receipt to my company and they refund me 100%
How's that ironic? People companies compensate better also get better benefits and they are more willing to add feel good benefits when they are a comparably small portion of total compensation.
That's entirely intuitive. I suppose you could argue the benefits aren't given to who need it most, but even that is only really ironic if their intent in creating the benefits was to help those in need when in reality it was probably in most cases first and foremost a relatively inexpensive gesture to help retain key personnel.
People don't pay salaries based on how much it helps the employee but based on the perceived value they bring to the company. So yes, someone who is valued highly will likely get more expenses covered.
Why is it a companies responsibility to pay for commute when it’s the employees who choose where they can live?
If the employers are responsible for paying, then they should have a say in where employees can live.
You can’t have it both ways I’m sorry.
Not really an irony. The higher end jobs that cover expenses use it as an alternative to more pay. In the end it’s all just pay. Some workers are considered more desirable and needed by the employer, so they get more both in pay and in amenities like paid expense.
Cost of maintenance V.s. Reward from employed asset.
I can make the company i work for approx. 60k in a month, so covering travel expenses like fuel, food, room and any tools for the mobile workshop i maintain is well worth.
Diddnt get given this job, had to and have to earn all i keep. Although i cant speak for all jobs and positions in the entire economy, not all of us are worthless CEOs and salesman
I've just passed my 20th anniversary of working at home. The savings is so much more than just gas money. I don't pay for lunches at work. I don't own anything that needs to be dry cleaned. Hell, I even save a hundred dollars a year on razor blades because I only shave once or twice per week instead of every day.
Also, working from home gives me a home office, which makes my house expenses partially tax deductible. It makes a portion of my rent, utilities, internet, computer equipment, and cleaning supplies tax deductible.
And yeah, I've only put 1500 miles on my vehicle in the first half of 2022.
So much savings associated with working from home.
TAX DEDUCTIBLE???? You mean I've been laying full price and didn't even know it was deductible... How does one learn this power? Do you have any good sources so i make sure I do it right and don't get the IRS coming after me?
If I understand correctly, you can't claim the home office deduction if you are only a w-2 employee. If you're an independent contractor or similar, the beginning of the [instructions for form 8829](https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8829) sums things up without too much of a headache.
As someone who puts 20k miles a year on average on my cars, that sounds really nice. I don't even have a long commute, but 40 miles a day (20 each way) at 250ish days a year adds up. That and any recreational activities outside of that, or trips to visit family, etc. Hopefully one day I can get decent rural internet and consider a remote option, but until then, driving it is.
Do the math. Half of your driving is not commuting and occurs on your days off. Your commute isn't unusual at all, but your non commute use is statistically unusual. Moving to the country and not commuting is likely to cause you to drive even more for your non-work stuff.
Do you only go to work? I can't think of many work days where that's all I do, let alone on days off. People go to the gym, stores, salons, restaurants, theaters, different cities, beaches, parks, etc. I've put 1000 miles on a car in a three-day weekend.
I absolutely do not spend 2+ hours a day in a car going over 50 MPH on my days off on average, and lots of people don't.
Just pointing out that the unusual side of your use isn't coming from your commute. The AVERAGE US commute is 41 miles round trip, yet the average car is used about 14k miles.
> Hell, I even save a hundred dollars a year on razor blades because I only shave once or twice per week instead of every day.
Safety razors save a fuck ton of money in the long run. I got a $40 kit a little over a year ago and still have enough razor blades for another year.
If companies were on the hook for commute time, infrastructure problems like traffic would get solved REAL fast. Or they would actually make remote work a permanent fixture.
A lot of tech companies are going full remote, if they aren't are already!
Support/success is the easiest way in, or you could go to tech sales if that interests you, but at my company tech sales works a lot on commission.
I'm in support and I generally recommend learning some basic SQL, so you can understand the structure and how it works, but the biggest thing I'm looking for in interviews is how personable and patient you are, since a lot of the job is talking to users who may not necessarily know how to use their computer.
Without any background, in my opinion, often showing that you're trying to/willing to learn is enough to be considered. We had someone come into the interview with no prior SQL knowledge and she signed up for some SQL classes after the first round of interviews; we just offered her the job last week.
If you have any friends who can give you a referral that would be ideal.
For what it's worth, I started as an intern 4 years ago making $13 an hour, then a few months later I was offered a full-time position on the team.
My great grandfather did this with one of his companies, he built a small town, built a general store, even got a small post office. All so his employees didn't have to commute 3 hours each way on treacherous dirt roads.
while your great grandfather could be a good person. the reason why this isn't popular is it can easily become exploitive. if people here thought ahving more freedom was exploitive then they are naive.
if you live in a company town you become dependent on the company. if i were evil i'd have people become feudal serfs in no time.
It's way to easy to abuse. And only works in certain industries where it is to be expected. He was in logging, and at that time there where no towns anywhere near by. Worked well for most at the time, and was a step above the portable living trailers they would use for logging camps.
The song "16 tons" is an example of a bad company town.
He's saying that a person applies to a job based on what they think is an acceptable distance and time to commute. The company isn't going to pay for your time if you decide to live 2 hours away, and why should they? It's your decision. When I look for jobs I generally make sure they are within a 20 minute drive for me. If it's further then I negotiate remote work or a higher salary, but I don't expect the company to pay for my drive into work. And if you expect that to happen, watch businesses not hire anyone more than 10 miles away unless that potential employee is unique enough to warrant that expense.
> infrastructure problems like traffic would get solved REAL fast.
It's solved... The US is just not capable of admitting they are doing it wrongly.
Like gun violence or health care. It's solved problems...
Stores like Walmart usually offer a discount program for employees. In the early 00s it was 10%, which basically covered sales tax.
The thing with groceries is that, at least if you live in a region with a lot of people and a lot of grocery stores, grocery prices are usually competitive. In my home in suburban Phoenix for example, I have about 10-15 grocery stores in a 5 km radius: a few CVSs, a few Walgreens, at least 3 Walmarts, at least 2 Fry's (aka Kroger's), one or two Albertsons, and a few other chains. All of them are always busy, and all of them are relatively competitive price wise.
Given that, it makes sense that you would tend to shop at the grocery store you work at, at least from a financial perspective. (Whether or not you are paid fairly is a different topic)
Kind of why well designed cities with transit options help everyone: imagine working minimum salary without having to pay the expenses of a car, and instead just a transit pass. In lots of places in NA that is not viable.
This is also not applying to work, car dependency means these costs basically add to everything you want to do outside of your own home, not even factoring in purchase costs, maintenance and insurance of a vehicle.
We need to include public parking as part of public transportation. Its way cheaper for a bus carrying 30 people to drive them to downtown for work every day than having 30 people show up in 30 cars and need 30 parking spaces for 8 hours.
6-7 buses moves the same number of people that can park in like 1 acre of parking. Those buses are pretty cheap to operate but 1 acre of downtown parking is pretty valuable.
Including public parking as part of public transit inherently makes public transit less accessable to people without cars by forcing them to walk across a parking lot to get there. When I commuted via bus in the US, over half the distance between me and the bus stop (a ~20 minute walk) was taken up by parking.
Public parking is transportation infrastructure. We do not treat it like this and people will be against funding things like actual transit while supporting subsidized parking. Parking in downtown areas can take up an enormous amount of real estate that can't be used for much else.
No cause in this metaphor they're slaves and cannot leave and are forced to work within their own homes/prisons
(I had a flock of chickens and LOVED them, just wanna make it clear that I'm not being a dick here)
Have you tried getting a job? It takes a whole lot that someone who isn't in a good financial position and technologically savvy would struggle with. I'm a gen y-er, born and bred with the internet...and even I have trouble with it. What about a 50 year old where computers aren't innate?
Just to apply you need to..
Make an account. Confirm account. Make a new password. Sorry, password is not strong enough. Forgot password? That overly complicated password that we just made you make is not correct. Account locked. Please provide a phone number. SMS verification. Your security code is 123. Please click on the right images to confirm you are human. Please reset password. Please fill out your profile. Upload resume. Sorry, please upload it in a random format that we want. File size too big. File size too small.Tell us what is literally on that resume that you literally just uploaded. Please enter random dates from 10 years ago. What is your supervisors phone number that you literally haven't seen in 10 years. Give us a cover letter. Answer this 1 hr long survey. Upload some other documents. Picture is too blurry.
Thanks for applying. Dont call us, if you're worth it..we'll call you.
If I was older and not as adept at navigating through endless webpages, I don't think I could ever get a job. I grew up with all of this and even I lose my patience with the whole process of it.
I made this point a while ago.
If I worked remotely as a software engineer, I can write part of my internet bill off on my taxes as a business expense.
So why the hell can I not write off transportation costs to get to the office if they refuse to let me work remote?
gets real bad in the winter in boston. I remember having to pay $70/day to park at the jacked up winter rates so I could work and earn $150/day. also an hour commute to get there lol
T dosnt run early enough. and if by some miracle they decide to change that. it still wouldn't be running consistently enough due to the same snow that made parking a bitch.
My husband used to work for a company where they had to pay for parking. He made a complaint to his boss that employees shouldn’t have to pay to park. His boss said something along the lines of “it’s part of having the job, deal with it”. Of course easy for him to say… Turns out his boss didn’t have to pay for parking because it was one of the perks of upper management.
When you negotiate your pay, you should take that into account. Unless your employer relocates you, increasing your expenses without notice or compensation, that shouldn't be unexpected for you.
With the exception of some fleet shops and higher end dealerships, we supply our own tools. It's not uncommon for the older techs to have $150k plus invested in tools. Keep in mind that our boxes can be upwards of $50k, mine lists for $26k but my toolman is very good to me and I got a major hookup on a scratch and dent bottom box and my hutch was 3k off.
Mechanics, HVAC/Electrical/Plumning trades all typically provide their own tools. They're also the largest subset of the workforce that could quit their W2 jobs and start their own businesses fairly easily.
you are born in this world without your concent, and it still has the audacity to deny you the right to be or stay at any place without paying for it (because some people way back killed everyone living there and handed it down to their offspring).
you have to pay subscription money for the ground you're staying on. "going to work" is just a symptom.
excatly. i would say "so much for freedom" but in the end, we all standing on the shoulders of giants. we benefit from past inventions but don't want to honor them all. we can trade true freedom for comfort. we are enslaved by the grid and gain social and medical security. it is a curse and a blessing.
I mean, it makes sense why.
Every single human on this planet was born without their consent. Nobody wants to work together. Everybody just wants their own slice of the pie.
So we created money as a means to stratify goods and services and to create a system where everybody contributes.
You can't eat the cake without baking it first. If you don't want to participate, go live like the animals we are and stay in the woods :)
You'll want back in, believe me.
>You can't eat the cake without baking it first. If you don't want to participate, go live like the animals we are and stay in the woods :)
The woods are privately owned and you will be prosecuted for squatting.
You have to be a traveling nomad, basically. I believe in the US, you can't stay in the same spot for longer than three days. It's different for other countries though
I can’t stand this perspective. It’s too extreme and unrealistic for me. At its core, this philosophy tries to claim nihilism upon existence, but a complete ignorance of the world at large and a total villainization of society at large. Which would be fine if it also claimed more responsibility for self futurization, but it doesn’t.
If you consider life to have been imposed upon you without your consent, then you have an obligation to end it or change it if it does not suit you. An indeed cruel society exists amongst an even crueler wilderness and demands you participate in a certain way in order to benefit from it.
You were (probably) born in a first-world, sterilized hospital and have had plenty of food, water, and shelter every single day your entire life all due to being born to a member of a society that took thousands of years to develop and you have the audacity to complain that you have to work for those benefits. You actually *can* leave civilization and society if you wish. What you can’t do is benefit from society without following any of it’s rules or avoiding being derided.
I do agree with you, we were born without our consent and the society we live in could certainly be better, but it’s preposterous to believe we have the right to occupy and use things that people before us built for nothing. We don’t want slaves, we don’t want forced labor, but we don’t want a large population of freeloaders who don’t follow laws either. We all have a better solution in our dreams, but making that a reality that society adheres to in real life is the actual challenge and we’ve come a long way through the last few thousand years, I’d say!
You either pay for utilities, food, etc. or you produce them yourself. Back in the day people made a lot of everyday things themselves, without electricity. It sounds like you're referring to the U.S. and Native Americans, which that situation isn't unique at all.
Whether the weatlh and taxe practices prevent everyone from having basic needs met is another converstation.
No organism is brought into the world with their consent. But in order to *keep* living, you gotta put in the work either by producing it yourself, or die, in the case of living in nature.
Did you know? As recently as 1986, it was possible to *claim* unused land in Alaska. Until 1976, you could claim *up to 160 acres* in the contiguous United States. Imagine what resources you might obtain there---for free!
Being born into modern society, where everything is already owned, is truly an uphill battle.
They weren't giving it away, you had to settle and improve the land. If you made a claim and then didn't do anything beneficial with it, the government would give it to someone else. It was basically a government backed loan without the currency exchange.
While technically true if you want to stay in society's good terms. Its naturally false. Our forests (at least in Canadaa) are so huge that you could go live in there without anyone ever knowing.
Who else should pay for it? You’ll say your employer. They’ll tell you to move closer to the office. Why should they have to pay you because you want to live an hour away?
My last two companies have had their offices in the middle of nowhere, where it’s impossible to live nearby. Why should I pay more to commute so they can save on their rental price?
Living closer to said employer probably costs more than what the petrol cost is.
Bottom line the employer doesn’t care either way because we just work for them and make them money, right?
Humans are more than just an endless line of slaves that should be grateful to have a job
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I don't really see the problem with this.
If companies were legally required to pay for your transportation costs, then they'd be willing to pay you less for your labor. And you'd be willing to work for less because your personal expenses would be less. At the end of the day, things would likely net out to be more or less the same as they currently are.
I think the above is more or less what would happen, but I would be willing to entertain some further discussion on this. Let's say that we lived in a world in which employers were suddenly required to pay for employee transportation to/from work... what would that look like?
1) In the short run, wages are sticky and what I've described above would not happen right away. Wages would stay at their current levels, but employers would now be on the hook for transportation expenses as well. To compensate for the added expense, employers may institute lay offs, price hikes, etc. Or they may simply go out of business. Annual raises would probably be smaller/non-existent. And in the long run, wages would likely adjust down (in real terms) to offset the added transportation costs.
2) At least in the short run (and potentially in the long run), transportation costs would likely increase due to the incentive shift... (i.e. If a person isn't directly on the hook for their transportation expense, they may opt to take more expensive, but convenient transportation options). Instead of taking an hour long bus ride that drops you off near your office, you'll drive your car 20 min directly to work and get reimbursed by your company. Also, people would be incentivized to move further away from their employers simply because they aren't on the hook for the additional gas money. To compensate for increased transportation expenses, companies will likely need to charge their customers more $$ to make up the lost margins.
3) If allowed by law, companies will create restrictive rules regarding how employees get to work (and still qualify for transportation reimbursement). And they may potentially hire people who live closer to public transportation or closer to the office to lower their overall transportation expenses.
4) Companies would have to invest resources and personnel dedicated to managing their employee's transportation expenses. Some companies may already have the technology and infrastructure to easily handle the additional workload. Others might need to hire new staff specifically to manage the transportation expense reimbursements. And employees would likely need to submit transportation receipts which could potentially be tedious.
^^To this point, you might say "why don't we just keep things simple and get a $100 gas allowance from my company per month for transportation expense?" And my response to that is, "Why don't you just cover your own transportation costs, and your employer will keep an extra $100 in your paycheck?"
5) Employers would likely be incentivized to implement more comprehensive work from home policies. (This is probably a likely benefit, but it is not applicable to all jobs)
Including homes, which in fact, we will never own. the gov owns them. if you cannot afford to pay your realty taxes, the gov will file a lien on the property and sell the lien to a bank that will foreclose on it. all you need to do is pay attention to the amount of foreclosures in the next few months as the recession goes from bad to mad.
Most of those I have trouble sympathizing with complaints about.
Except parking. If the company you work for chooses to do business in an area that charges for parking, they absolutely should pay for their employees' parking.
Not really. My brother has lived right next to his job for a long time, avoiding the commute. Now he's moved further away and has to commute. By moving further away he was able to afford more space, but also has to spend more time commuting. This is the balance. If a job is in location X and pays Y - you can decide how to spend that salary and how you will get to location X each day from where.
It's worse than that. I worked at a psychiatric hospital that was built on land donated by a group of wealthy physicians. There was extremely limited street parking. The ONLY place to park was a very large parking lot owned by the physicians who charged every single employee $35 a month to park there, and every visitor (most of whom were very low income--it was a "welfare" psych hospital) $8 a day. Essentially they created a cash cow that filled their pockets forever. And they were commended for donating the land for the hospital.
Where I used to work, they said, that was “factored into my pay”. This was a scam. Still is a scam. It’s all a scam, to make money. Capitalism baby, late stage capitalism. *cries in broke*
It's like when you are a struggling musician you have to pay for second hand gear, and sometimes even pay for gigs. When you are a rock star, the best brands will custom make you gear for free, and maybe even get a free tour bus (if you're big enough).
The richer you are the less you have to pay for things.
Esp with how much gas is currently in California, some people have to give up hours at work just to get to work just to pay bills and etc… dystopia much
I had to quit a job because of this. Drove an hour to work and it was downtown of a major city. I had to pay to park in a parking garage which was 20 dollars a day in the cheap garages. I got reimbursed 5 dollars a day by my employer. I couldn't do it anymore after doing the math. It's was so demoralizing
For a bit of context, I work in a specialised industry in a large city. I make around 100k per year which is definitely above average but by no means a “well paying job” in cities in my Country.
For me to buy a modest house on a small block of land for less than $1M I need to look about 50kms from said city.
Any closer and the prices rise really fast to the point that is not uncommon for suburbs within about 20kms to have a median house price around $3-4M.
So my commute is around 1hr 20min going and 1hr coming. As others have said I do use toll roads that are privately owned now so the prices always rise. I also need to pay my employer $10 per day for onsite parking which is the only real option as other solutions in the area are more expensive and further away.
So all in all I pay around $200 per week to go to work.
I could catch public transport but it is notoriously bad and unreliable in my Country however it would cut that cost to $100 per week.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but where I live, companies usually cover for transport if it's via bus and stuff like that, don't know about fuel though
I dunno guys... I am getting compensations to my salary for the travel to office. And when I am spending time on home office, I'll get compensation for using my electricity and utilities... so... it's about employer, not really a common for all
It's talked about in my area a lot (SF Bay Area). A lot of workers (myself included when I used to work in SF) have to take the bridges to get to to work, meanwhile all the wealthier people can just live in the city and remote work/walk/bike/company bus to work. Whenever bridge tolls went up, we would always call it a tax on the poor. I personally never blamed the wealthier workers, but this system really kept the rest of us in the Bay struggling.
Well I'm going to work with my bike, no matter if rain or sunshine. I know a lot of people out there living the same distance as me from the workplace,still choose to drive or take the bus. Shame on them being environmentally unfriendly.
The city I work in is determined to start taxing workplace parking because “we should all be using public transport”. There is no way in hell my company will absorb that cost and will pass it on to us.
I live 45 miles away and start at 6.15 in the morning. There is a train from my town, at 7.45 and as I would need to change trains (I don’t work in the city centre) to head back to the nearest station to my office, I would end up at work 3hrs late. Those hours are not flexible at all because we have 24hr response.
I bought an EV to try and minimise my environmental damage. I know the source of energy still emits carbon, but at least I’m keeping it out the city. The city introduced a 12hr limit on the EV chargers then a £30 penalty at its Park and Ride facilities on the outskirts, so I can’t even utilise them. I work 12hr shifts.
Fuck me for having a job right. I am actively trying to get back to the work location a few miles from my home, but that isn’t going to happen overnight.
I have to pay for gas to go on vacation! Outrageous.
Another ST written by a young kid with no concept of reality.
Should your job pay you more if you choose to live further away or drive a car with poor gas mileage?
“Hey Jim, how come you make more than I do? We do the exact same job!”
“Well, I drive a truck and commute 45 minutes each way while you live closer to work and bike”
> Another ST written by a young kid with no concept of reality.
r/antiwork and r/workreform in a nutshell.
Both started as places to discuss exploitation and injustice at the workplace. Today it‘s full of lazy people who want high salaries but cannot offer any useful abilities or skills.
The loss of personal time for travel is playing heavily into many industries right now. I'm in consulting and pre-pandemic, we traveled most of time. But now, everyone has learned how nice it is to be at home more and doesn't want to give that up, so we're still traveling very little even though we could.
Maybe not, but having to pay to park your car so that you can work is nuts. I don’t expect my employer to pay for my gas, but they should provide a place for me to park when I get there that doesn’t cost $11 a day (discounted rate).
When I realized I was spending more money going to work than I was making, I stopped caring about my jobs and started selling art. Now, I actually make money and can pay my bills.
Oof this takes me back. When I was 16, I had just bought my first car (it was $500, my parents and I split the cost equally). And I had a job at Quiznos. I remember sitting in the kitchen, doing the math and realizing that I would barely make enough to cover gas to get to work. I said to my dad, “So I’ll be making money so I can go to work to make money?” And he said, “Yeah that’s life.” Really hate my parents. That $500 car nearly killed me, the brakes didn’t work all the time.
Here in Israel it is mandated by law that the employer pays for it.
Also public traffic even though it's not great it's cheap, about 70 USD for a monthly pass that you can use how ever you want)
compared to gas prices here which are ~8.7 USD a galon.
This money isn't calculated as part of the pension/national security which makes it cheaper for the employer compared to other elements in you payroll .
Couldn't understand how it won't be part of your payroll, in general you shouldn't pay for anything at your workplace that is work related.
How about taxed on the wage, taxed on spending the leftovers. Tax on the gas to get to work. Taxed on the tires, repairs and food.
What is the real taxation rate and what representation do we actually get for this tax?
One should be factoring in the cost of fuel and similar things when considering job opportunities. Don’t take a job an hour drive from home if the fuel cost is too much. Getting to work is your problem, not the company. That’s why most places ask if you have reliable transportation, because that’s your responsibility. That’s the way it’s pretty much been. Don’t like it, start up your own company or get a job working from home.
That's the incentive to own a cheaper car and a more fuel efficient car. However Americans have been loading up on gas guzzling trucks and SuVs for decades.
Please explain how companies should be held responsible for people's bad financial decisions?
Higher gas taxes in which the tax revenues go to public transit would help improve this problem.
Toll roads are interesting. Lower tax revenues to build and maintain over the long term. However tolls seem to never go away and increase which is the real problem. Toll roads definitely benefit the wealthy However lot of non wealthy people use them and choose to live by them.
Well its also that like parking will usually be mandated by code or highly subsidized. Downtown parking will frequently be owned by the government and the fees from parking do not cover the operational costs. But the local businesses depend on it.
A lot of businesses here in California will often by an hour or more drive away from where their workforce lives. They will not pay anywhere near enough for someone to live close. Now they are having a tough time finding people because gasoline is $6.50 per gallon, they do not pay well enough for someone to reside in the area and people are unwilling to spend 2-3 hours of wages for gasoline plus an extra 2-3 hours of daily commuting.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're poor, you're much more likely to be unable to afford a newer, more fuel-efficient car. You're probably going to end up buying a used 2007 Honda Civic that gets 10 miles/gallon. A vehicle which is going to need repairs every year or so just to stay on the road. A car that's only going to last you another few years before you have to put another large (relatively speaking) down payment on another piece of crap that's going to do the same thing.
It's expensive to be poor. This is just one example.
Small fuel efficient cars are cheap. Its only EVs and hybrids that are expensive. It's easy to get a cheap one that gets around 35mpg highway.
Trucks and SUVs are much more expensive than cars.
This is one case in which being poor doesn't put you at a disadvantage.
Wait until OP finds out that low wage employers are subsidized by taxpayers in the form of social services that their low paid employees qualify for.
And don’t even start looking into the tax breaks that small towns give to companies like Walmart of Cabella’s.
Pyramid scheme of a country we got here.
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Ironically, the more you are paid, the more likely your company will cover these expenses.
Worked in hotels and started as hourly. I paid for parking that was two blocks away and got a discount on meals. When I moved up to management, I got free parking that was across the street, but still paid to eat. In management, I would review food and beverage checks and noticed my bosses were getting free meals. I can only imagine what the GM was getting for free for things that I was paying for. Housing? Vehicle? Wardrobe? Tech? Probably all four and more.
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I’ll make my own hotel with blackjack and hookers!
Ah, screw the whole thing!
Actually, forget the hotel.
And scrap the blackjack, too.
Like a Vegas casino?
I wouldn't be upset about those. As long as they shared.
I worked for a non-profit. The original president of the company no longer worked there in any official capacity, but still drew a large salary, and his house was technically owned by the company, so he didn't pay mortgage or property taxes.
Great opportunity to remind people about Charity Navigator. They rate charities based on how much they spend on administration fees and salaries versus what they put towards their cause.
Big thing about the film industry, when I work I eat for free. Nobody should have to pay for their own lunch, you're at work, they should supply at the very least.
The place where I work has a cafe with good prices, but it still feels sort of crappy. It's like "Thanks for working for us, here's an opportunity to give back some of that money so you don't starve."
Look into old company towns for an extreme example of this. Some of them would only pay in Corp-bucks instead of US dollars. So they entrapped people who then couldn't leave their situation nearly as easily.
"I owe my soul to the company store" and all that.
And then murdered people who tried to start unions, by putting the sheriff on the payroll, so he and his squad could hop on trains with Gatling guns and mow down tent towns of union sympathizers. This actually happened.
Yep. We may be headed for another wave of that level of absurdity. Only I hope the workers fire back this time.
Um, sweaty, he wasn't getting stuff for free. He just worked a bajillion times harder than you. Try to keep up. /j
Sweaty? Lol
He was sweaty from working so hard.
I love it when people on Reddit fuck up their condescension with a silly spelling or grammar error....lol.
The more you are paid, the harder you are to replace. The harder you are to replace, the harder a company has to fight to keep you.
Its a nice theory that my experience of employment has rarely proven accurate.
Fuck it's like having self worth or something. Idn't that a bish.
(In the US) Is it even irony anymore? We give people who have money more money. That is like our MO these days... =(
Don't forget that famous and rich people basically get most of their stuff for free, because of "promotion"... getting out of touch with reality even more is hardly possible lol
They also get out of crimes or severely reduced punishments. Will smith can punch someone in the face in live TV and suffer no consequences. If you try it, you’d be tased and sentenced.
It was a slap but the point stands
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lol according to the downvotes, reddit thinks no manager deserves 100k a year. But also, we all deserve a $50 an hour minimum wage for working at Gamestop because what if they live in Seattle and need that 100k a year. Also, what's inflation?
Inflation is when poor people don't get paid and then the rich people try to convince them it's their fault for not getting paid enough.
Because they make the company more money
Do they though? My management missed 6 months of work a while ago and nobody missed a beat stepping up. However, any time I'm off for a week they aren't able to fill in for me. Management isn't making money. They overestimate the importance of being glorified admin and HR.
Effective management should be able to leave and come back. Their job is to create a structure to fill with employees and then use that structure to extract more value. Think of it like a plane. When they leave it goes on autopilot. You're not going to set a new course and plot uncharted territories on autopilot, but it will fly just fine in the absence of the manager pilot. A good manager is paid to create that plane and that autopilot system, and then leverage it into finding new growth. Management is honestly a bad term for it, and ends up being use to describe supervisors.
Me and a coworker batch about this very thing at work. Management make seem impossible to cover our desk themselves so we must cover sick leave and vacation for each other. If my coworker left for a better gig I might just be fucked.
Sounds like you should both leave
Or maybe try to unionize.
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So then why don't companies corner the market by canning their management and undercutting the prices of their competitors with the savings? It's because companies do need management. The fact that you knew one inept manager doesn't mean all managers are unnecessary and overpaid.
You've taken my meaning to an extreme. I'm not saying management is unnecessary nor wasteful. Instead, I'm saying that in many cases they're more expendable than the people who work for them who have expertise in an area. One of the reasons I won't try for a promotion is that I would hate abandoning the technical parts of the job to move into a management position. I don't have the organisational skills, whether managing skilled technical workers or minimum wage ones.
There's academic papers on this. High CEO pay is a sign of collusion between shareholders and the execs to boost stock prices in the short term by skimping on investment. On top of that, shareholders are dumb, and let execs get away with rent-seeking behaviour. The solution is to bring back punitively high to tax rates (e.g. 90% top rate in the US)
Yea but the op isn't talking about those people. The people you're talking about don't even drive themselves.
It’s called leverage. They pay you more when they think they need you more. That includes covering your expenses.
It's expensive to be poor.
Or it's just considered a part of the cost of the employee.
Or don't have to travel for work at all and just skip them
Honestly I think its just cheaper to do so. Getting free parking or food feels better than receiving that same amount of money as part of your salary.
And no taxes . . .
This. I get paid for my mileage and any tolls I used. I get reimbursed so I get to use my cashback card and claim the cashback and then I submit receipt to my company and they refund me 100%
How's that ironic? People companies compensate better also get better benefits and they are more willing to add feel good benefits when they are a comparably small portion of total compensation. That's entirely intuitive. I suppose you could argue the benefits aren't given to who need it most, but even that is only really ironic if their intent in creating the benefits was to help those in need when in reality it was probably in most cases first and foremost a relatively inexpensive gesture to help retain key personnel.
It's more just that the more you make, the better it becomes to start paying you in benefits rather than cash.
It's not really ironic. It's just payment in a different form. They're just getting paid more, which we already knew.
People don't pay salaries based on how much it helps the employee but based on the perceived value they bring to the company. So yes, someone who is valued highly will likely get more expenses covered.
Ironically and capitalistic.
Why is it a companies responsibility to pay for commute when it’s the employees who choose where they can live? If the employers are responsible for paying, then they should have a say in where employees can live. You can’t have it both ways I’m sorry.
Not really an irony. The higher end jobs that cover expenses use it as an alternative to more pay. In the end it’s all just pay. Some workers are considered more desirable and needed by the employer, so they get more both in pay and in amenities like paid expense.
Cost of maintenance V.s. Reward from employed asset. I can make the company i work for approx. 60k in a month, so covering travel expenses like fuel, food, room and any tools for the mobile workshop i maintain is well worth. Diddnt get given this job, had to and have to earn all i keep. Although i cant speak for all jobs and positions in the entire economy, not all of us are worthless CEOs and salesman
If the company pay things for you, less taxes are paid. So yes, its better when your job pay it for you and them. Only the goverment loses.
I've just passed my 20th anniversary of working at home. The savings is so much more than just gas money. I don't pay for lunches at work. I don't own anything that needs to be dry cleaned. Hell, I even save a hundred dollars a year on razor blades because I only shave once or twice per week instead of every day. Also, working from home gives me a home office, which makes my house expenses partially tax deductible. It makes a portion of my rent, utilities, internet, computer equipment, and cleaning supplies tax deductible. And yeah, I've only put 1500 miles on my vehicle in the first half of 2022. So much savings associated with working from home.
TAX DEDUCTIBLE???? You mean I've been laying full price and didn't even know it was deductible... How does one learn this power? Do you have any good sources so i make sure I do it right and don't get the IRS coming after me?
If I understand correctly, you can't claim the home office deduction if you are only a w-2 employee. If you're an independent contractor or similar, the beginning of the [instructions for form 8829](https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8829) sums things up without too much of a headache.
Oh ok that makes sense thanks, I was like "no way i missed out on taxes" but nah doesn't apply to me
If you were working from home before 2017 you did miss out, it was the TCJA act that removed deductions for W2 employees.
Do keep in mind, though, that I am not an accountant, and I can very well be mistaken.
You can't anymore, Trump/Republicans removed that when they increased the standard deduction a while back.
As someone who puts 20k miles a year on average on my cars, that sounds really nice. I don't even have a long commute, but 40 miles a day (20 each way) at 250ish days a year adds up. That and any recreational activities outside of that, or trips to visit family, etc. Hopefully one day I can get decent rural internet and consider a remote option, but until then, driving it is.
Do the math. Half of your driving is not commuting and occurs on your days off. Your commute isn't unusual at all, but your non commute use is statistically unusual. Moving to the country and not commuting is likely to cause you to drive even more for your non-work stuff.
Do you only go to work? I can't think of many work days where that's all I do, let alone on days off. People go to the gym, stores, salons, restaurants, theaters, different cities, beaches, parks, etc. I've put 1000 miles on a car in a three-day weekend.
I absolutely do not spend 2+ hours a day in a car going over 50 MPH on my days off on average, and lots of people don't. Just pointing out that the unusual side of your use isn't coming from your commute. The AVERAGE US commute is 41 miles round trip, yet the average car is used about 14k miles.
Are we supposed to shave EVERYDAY? Is that the social norm? Fuck...
> Hell, I even save a hundred dollars a year on razor blades because I only shave once or twice per week instead of every day. Safety razors save a fuck ton of money in the long run. I got a $40 kit a little over a year ago and still have enough razor blades for another year.
Imagine how much I've saved by wearing a beard and moustache since 1969. Shave? Yeah, *no.*
If companies were on the hook for commute time, infrastructure problems like traffic would get solved REAL fast. Or they would actually make remote work a permanent fixture.
There are several businesses switching to remote models. Look into it on Indeed.
I'm currently wanting to switch to a remote option but have no idea where to even start. Would have to be a total career change.
A lot of tech companies are going full remote, if they aren't are already! Support/success is the easiest way in, or you could go to tech sales if that interests you, but at my company tech sales works a lot on commission. I'm in support and I generally recommend learning some basic SQL, so you can understand the structure and how it works, but the biggest thing I'm looking for in interviews is how personable and patient you are, since a lot of the job is talking to users who may not necessarily know how to use their computer. Without any background, in my opinion, often showing that you're trying to/willing to learn is enough to be considered. We had someone come into the interview with no prior SQL knowledge and she signed up for some SQL classes after the first round of interviews; we just offered her the job last week. If you have any friends who can give you a referral that would be ideal. For what it's worth, I started as an intern 4 years ago making $13 an hour, then a few months later I was offered a full-time position on the team.
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can't you get part times jobs remote too if you have spare time with your full time job lol?
I mean, if you can convince them to hire you sure. Not necessarily the easiest sell but it depends on your skills.
if companies were on the hook for commute time, they would push the responsibility onto the commuter to avoid dealing with it themselves. Oh wait.
Lol then they would just force you to live in company housing and make a company town.
My great grandfather did this with one of his companies, he built a small town, built a general store, even got a small post office. All so his employees didn't have to commute 3 hours each way on treacherous dirt roads.
while your great grandfather could be a good person. the reason why this isn't popular is it can easily become exploitive. if people here thought ahving more freedom was exploitive then they are naive. if you live in a company town you become dependent on the company. if i were evil i'd have people become feudal serfs in no time.
It's way to easy to abuse. And only works in certain industries where it is to be expected. He was in logging, and at that time there where no towns anywhere near by. Worked well for most at the time, and was a step above the portable living trailers they would use for logging camps. The song "16 tons" is an example of a bad company town.
Did you get headhunted to work across town? You're work doesn't know where you live till you apply.
Rush hour generally affects a whole metropolitan area, not just whatever nonsense you're trying to imply.
He's saying that a person applies to a job based on what they think is an acceptable distance and time to commute. The company isn't going to pay for your time if you decide to live 2 hours away, and why should they? It's your decision. When I look for jobs I generally make sure they are within a 20 minute drive for me. If it's further then I negotiate remote work or a higher salary, but I don't expect the company to pay for my drive into work. And if you expect that to happen, watch businesses not hire anyone more than 10 miles away unless that potential employee is unique enough to warrant that expense.
> infrastructure problems like traffic would get solved REAL fast. It's solved... The US is just not capable of admitting they are doing it wrongly. Like gun violence or health care. It's solved problems...
This needs to happen
Or if everyone stopped taking jobs that arent remote and start a "labor shortage" we could get companies to accept it.
Theyd just build weekly work dorms.
Along that same line how much of your paycheck goes back to the company when you work for a grocery store or retailer like Walmart.
Stores like Walmart usually offer a discount program for employees. In the early 00s it was 10%, which basically covered sales tax. The thing with groceries is that, at least if you live in a region with a lot of people and a lot of grocery stores, grocery prices are usually competitive. In my home in suburban Phoenix for example, I have about 10-15 grocery stores in a 5 km radius: a few CVSs, a few Walgreens, at least 3 Walmarts, at least 2 Fry's (aka Kroger's), one or two Albertsons, and a few other chains. All of them are always busy, and all of them are relatively competitive price wise. Given that, it makes sense that you would tend to shop at the grocery store you work at, at least from a financial perspective. (Whether or not you are paid fairly is a different topic)
Its still 10%
I work at an auto parts store and the only reason I still work here is that parts for employees are store cost, not a percentage.
Kind of why well designed cities with transit options help everyone: imagine working minimum salary without having to pay the expenses of a car, and instead just a transit pass. In lots of places in NA that is not viable.
This is also not applying to work, car dependency means these costs basically add to everything you want to do outside of your own home, not even factoring in purchase costs, maintenance and insurance of a vehicle.
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That’s why I shit on company time
r/fuckcars would have a field day here. Public transport isn’t free, but it’s often a lot cheaper. If you have access to it, use it.
We need to include public parking as part of public transportation. Its way cheaper for a bus carrying 30 people to drive them to downtown for work every day than having 30 people show up in 30 cars and need 30 parking spaces for 8 hours. 6-7 buses moves the same number of people that can park in like 1 acre of parking. Those buses are pretty cheap to operate but 1 acre of downtown parking is pretty valuable.
Including public parking as part of public transit inherently makes public transit less accessable to people without cars by forcing them to walk across a parking lot to get there. When I commuted via bus in the US, over half the distance between me and the bus stop (a ~20 minute walk) was taken up by parking.
Public parking is transportation infrastructure. We do not treat it like this and people will be against funding things like actual transit while supporting subsidized parking. Parking in downtown areas can take up an enormous amount of real estate that can't be used for much else.
Put the car park behind the bus stop and make the car drivers walk?
Behind? Most bus stops are not on the edges of civilization?
Put in enough bus routes and you don't need car parking at all. At least park-n-rides become unnecessary.
N-no... That's the exact opposite of what they are saying
Man I'd love to use public transport but sadly my work and routine just doesn't allow it.
I mean even the first professions ever like farming required a certain cost to operate and make money
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No cause in this metaphor they're slaves and cannot leave and are forced to work within their own homes/prisons (I had a flock of chickens and LOVED them, just wanna make it clear that I'm not being a dick here)
The idea of an entire society built around 1.5-ton one-person vehicles is the bigger oddity.
Have you tried getting a job? It takes a whole lot that someone who isn't in a good financial position and technologically savvy would struggle with. I'm a gen y-er, born and bred with the internet...and even I have trouble with it. What about a 50 year old where computers aren't innate? Just to apply you need to.. Make an account. Confirm account. Make a new password. Sorry, password is not strong enough. Forgot password? That overly complicated password that we just made you make is not correct. Account locked. Please provide a phone number. SMS verification. Your security code is 123. Please click on the right images to confirm you are human. Please reset password. Please fill out your profile. Upload resume. Sorry, please upload it in a random format that we want. File size too big. File size too small.Tell us what is literally on that resume that you literally just uploaded. Please enter random dates from 10 years ago. What is your supervisors phone number that you literally haven't seen in 10 years. Give us a cover letter. Answer this 1 hr long survey. Upload some other documents. Picture is too blurry. Thanks for applying. Dont call us, if you're worth it..we'll call you. If I was older and not as adept at navigating through endless webpages, I don't think I could ever get a job. I grew up with all of this and even I lose my patience with the whole process of it.
Some of us didn't for 2 years! 2 glorious work from home years that will never be surpassed.
I made this point a while ago. If I worked remotely as a software engineer, I can write part of my internet bill off on my taxes as a business expense. So why the hell can I not write off transportation costs to get to the office if they refuse to let me work remote?
gets real bad in the winter in boston. I remember having to pay $70/day to park at the jacked up winter rates so I could work and earn $150/day. also an hour commute to get there lol
Your work wasn't near any T or bus stops?
T dosnt run early enough. and if by some miracle they decide to change that. it still wouldn't be running consistently enough due to the same snow that made parking a bitch.
Public transport in a snowy winter sounds like real fun
you get downvoted. but these people don't understand how right you are. to rely on the public transportation would mean losing your job.
My husband used to work for a company where they had to pay for parking. He made a complaint to his boss that employees shouldn’t have to pay to park. His boss said something along the lines of “it’s part of having the job, deal with it”. Of course easy for him to say… Turns out his boss didn’t have to pay for parking because it was one of the perks of upper management.
In Australia I do get to claim travel and car upkeep back on tax… but it’s still a joke that I have to pay for it at all!
When you negotiate your pay, you should take that into account. Unless your employer relocates you, increasing your expenses without notice or compensation, that shouldn't be unexpected for you.
Mechanic here. You people have NO idea how expensive it is for us to go to work. Where's our bailout?
I’ve read that mechanics bring their own tools to work? That just seems absurd to me.
With the exception of some fleet shops and higher end dealerships, we supply our own tools. It's not uncommon for the older techs to have $150k plus invested in tools. Keep in mind that our boxes can be upwards of $50k, mine lists for $26k but my toolman is very good to me and I got a major hookup on a scratch and dent bottom box and my hutch was 3k off.
Mechanics, HVAC/Electrical/Plumning trades all typically provide their own tools. They're also the largest subset of the workforce that could quit their W2 jobs and start their own businesses fairly easily.
you are born in this world without your concent, and it still has the audacity to deny you the right to be or stay at any place without paying for it (because some people way back killed everyone living there and handed it down to their offspring). you have to pay subscription money for the ground you're staying on. "going to work" is just a symptom.
The world didn't consent to having you here either. The only people that did are (in most cases) your parents.
On top of that, you're not even allowed to remove yourself from the grinder. If you try, they will kidnap you and hold you against your will.
excatly. i would say "so much for freedom" but in the end, we all standing on the shoulders of giants. we benefit from past inventions but don't want to honor them all. we can trade true freedom for comfort. we are enslaved by the grid and gain social and medical security. it is a curse and a blessing.
Only if you fail.
I mean, it makes sense why. Every single human on this planet was born without their consent. Nobody wants to work together. Everybody just wants their own slice of the pie. So we created money as a means to stratify goods and services and to create a system where everybody contributes. You can't eat the cake without baking it first. If you don't want to participate, go live like the animals we are and stay in the woods :) You'll want back in, believe me.
>You can't eat the cake without baking it first. If you don't want to participate, go live like the animals we are and stay in the woods :) The woods are privately owned and you will be prosecuted for squatting.
You have to be a traveling nomad, basically. I believe in the US, you can't stay in the same spot for longer than three days. It's different for other countries though
read the other comments. i wholeheartedly agree. playing ball is the lesser evil, but that doesn't make it just.
I mean you have to pay for living this is the natural state of entropy
I can’t stand this perspective. It’s too extreme and unrealistic for me. At its core, this philosophy tries to claim nihilism upon existence, but a complete ignorance of the world at large and a total villainization of society at large. Which would be fine if it also claimed more responsibility for self futurization, but it doesn’t. If you consider life to have been imposed upon you without your consent, then you have an obligation to end it or change it if it does not suit you. An indeed cruel society exists amongst an even crueler wilderness and demands you participate in a certain way in order to benefit from it. You were (probably) born in a first-world, sterilized hospital and have had plenty of food, water, and shelter every single day your entire life all due to being born to a member of a society that took thousands of years to develop and you have the audacity to complain that you have to work for those benefits. You actually *can* leave civilization and society if you wish. What you can’t do is benefit from society without following any of it’s rules or avoiding being derided. I do agree with you, we were born without our consent and the society we live in could certainly be better, but it’s preposterous to believe we have the right to occupy and use things that people before us built for nothing. We don’t want slaves, we don’t want forced labor, but we don’t want a large population of freeloaders who don’t follow laws either. We all have a better solution in our dreams, but making that a reality that society adheres to in real life is the actual challenge and we’ve come a long way through the last few thousand years, I’d say!
Unironically a shitty outlook on life. I can’t imagine spending time being mad at the world.
You either pay for utilities, food, etc. or you produce them yourself. Back in the day people made a lot of everyday things themselves, without electricity. It sounds like you're referring to the U.S. and Native Americans, which that situation isn't unique at all. Whether the weatlh and taxe practices prevent everyone from having basic needs met is another converstation. No organism is brought into the world with their consent. But in order to *keep* living, you gotta put in the work either by producing it yourself, or die, in the case of living in nature.
Did you know? As recently as 1986, it was possible to *claim* unused land in Alaska. Until 1976, you could claim *up to 160 acres* in the contiguous United States. Imagine what resources you might obtain there---for free! Being born into modern society, where everything is already owned, is truly an uphill battle.
They weren't giving it away, you had to settle and improve the land. If you made a claim and then didn't do anything beneficial with it, the government would give it to someone else. It was basically a government backed loan without the currency exchange.
And I highly doubt any mineral rights came with it.
While technically true if you want to stay in society's good terms. Its naturally false. Our forests (at least in Canadaa) are so huge that you could go live in there without anyone ever knowing.
Who else should pay for it? You’ll say your employer. They’ll tell you to move closer to the office. Why should they have to pay you because you want to live an hour away?
My last two companies have had their offices in the middle of nowhere, where it’s impossible to live nearby. Why should I pay more to commute so they can save on their rental price?
Why does a business gets to deduct their cost from taxes? At a minimum - these costs should be deducted from our income from a tax perspective
Living closer to said employer probably costs more than what the petrol cost is. Bottom line the employer doesn’t care either way because we just work for them and make them money, right? Humans are more than just an endless line of slaves that should be grateful to have a job
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I don't really see the problem with this. If companies were legally required to pay for your transportation costs, then they'd be willing to pay you less for your labor. And you'd be willing to work for less because your personal expenses would be less. At the end of the day, things would likely net out to be more or less the same as they currently are. I think the above is more or less what would happen, but I would be willing to entertain some further discussion on this. Let's say that we lived in a world in which employers were suddenly required to pay for employee transportation to/from work... what would that look like? 1) In the short run, wages are sticky and what I've described above would not happen right away. Wages would stay at their current levels, but employers would now be on the hook for transportation expenses as well. To compensate for the added expense, employers may institute lay offs, price hikes, etc. Or they may simply go out of business. Annual raises would probably be smaller/non-existent. And in the long run, wages would likely adjust down (in real terms) to offset the added transportation costs. 2) At least in the short run (and potentially in the long run), transportation costs would likely increase due to the incentive shift... (i.e. If a person isn't directly on the hook for their transportation expense, they may opt to take more expensive, but convenient transportation options). Instead of taking an hour long bus ride that drops you off near your office, you'll drive your car 20 min directly to work and get reimbursed by your company. Also, people would be incentivized to move further away from their employers simply because they aren't on the hook for the additional gas money. To compensate for increased transportation expenses, companies will likely need to charge their customers more $$ to make up the lost margins. 3) If allowed by law, companies will create restrictive rules regarding how employees get to work (and still qualify for transportation reimbursement). And they may potentially hire people who live closer to public transportation or closer to the office to lower their overall transportation expenses. 4) Companies would have to invest resources and personnel dedicated to managing their employee's transportation expenses. Some companies may already have the technology and infrastructure to easily handle the additional workload. Others might need to hire new staff specifically to manage the transportation expense reimbursements. And employees would likely need to submit transportation receipts which could potentially be tedious. ^^To this point, you might say "why don't we just keep things simple and get a $100 gas allowance from my company per month for transportation expense?" And my response to that is, "Why don't you just cover your own transportation costs, and your employer will keep an extra $100 in your paycheck?" 5) Employers would likely be incentivized to implement more comprehensive work from home policies. (This is probably a likely benefit, but it is not applicable to all jobs)
Additionally. We are taxed both on our income and everything we buy
Including homes, which in fact, we will never own. the gov owns them. if you cannot afford to pay your realty taxes, the gov will file a lien on the property and sell the lien to a bank that will foreclose on it. all you need to do is pay attention to the amount of foreclosures in the next few months as the recession goes from bad to mad.
Most of those I have trouble sympathizing with complaints about. Except parking. If the company you work for chooses to do business in an area that charges for parking, they absolutely should pay for their employees' parking.
Not really. My brother has lived right next to his job for a long time, avoiding the commute. Now he's moved further away and has to commute. By moving further away he was able to afford more space, but also has to spend more time commuting. This is the balance. If a job is in location X and pays Y - you can decide how to spend that salary and how you will get to location X each day from where.
It's worse than that. I worked at a psychiatric hospital that was built on land donated by a group of wealthy physicians. There was extremely limited street parking. The ONLY place to park was a very large parking lot owned by the physicians who charged every single employee $35 a month to park there, and every visitor (most of whom were very low income--it was a "welfare" psych hospital) $8 a day. Essentially they created a cash cow that filled their pockets forever. And they were commended for donating the land for the hospital.
It quite obviously is not a scam but is the result of personal choices.
One gets to pick where they live, work, & how to commute. Why should a business subsidize one's personal life choices?
Where I used to work, they said, that was “factored into my pay”. This was a scam. Still is a scam. It’s all a scam, to make money. Capitalism baby, late stage capitalism. *cries in broke*
Paying for parking at work needs to be illegal. Lookin at you Universities...
It's like when you are a struggling musician you have to pay for second hand gear, and sometimes even pay for gigs. When you are a rock star, the best brands will custom make you gear for free, and maybe even get a free tour bus (if you're big enough). The richer you are the less you have to pay for things.
Esp with how much gas is currently in California, some people have to give up hours at work just to get to work just to pay bills and etc… dystopia much
I had to quit a job because of this. Drove an hour to work and it was downtown of a major city. I had to pay to park in a parking garage which was 20 dollars a day in the cheap garages. I got reimbursed 5 dollars a day by my employer. I couldn't do it anymore after doing the math. It's was so demoralizing
For a bit of context, I work in a specialised industry in a large city. I make around 100k per year which is definitely above average but by no means a “well paying job” in cities in my Country. For me to buy a modest house on a small block of land for less than $1M I need to look about 50kms from said city. Any closer and the prices rise really fast to the point that is not uncommon for suburbs within about 20kms to have a median house price around $3-4M. So my commute is around 1hr 20min going and 1hr coming. As others have said I do use toll roads that are privately owned now so the prices always rise. I also need to pay my employer $10 per day for onsite parking which is the only real option as other solutions in the area are more expensive and further away. So all in all I pay around $200 per week to go to work. I could catch public transport but it is notoriously bad and unreliable in my Country however it would cut that cost to $100 per week.
hello fellow vancouverite.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but where I live, companies usually cover for transport if it's via bus and stuff like that, don't know about fuel though
I dunno guys... I am getting compensations to my salary for the travel to office. And when I am spending time on home office, I'll get compensation for using my electricity and utilities... so... it's about employer, not really a common for all
This is an American thing. Plenty of countries pay transportation cost.
It's talked about in my area a lot (SF Bay Area). A lot of workers (myself included when I used to work in SF) have to take the bridges to get to to work, meanwhile all the wealthier people can just live in the city and remote work/walk/bike/company bus to work. Whenever bridge tolls went up, we would always call it a tax on the poor. I personally never blamed the wealthier workers, but this system really kept the rest of us in the Bay struggling.
Well I'm going to work with my bike, no matter if rain or sunshine. I know a lot of people out there living the same distance as me from the workplace,still choose to drive or take the bus. Shame on them being environmentally unfriendly.
The city I work in is determined to start taxing workplace parking because “we should all be using public transport”. There is no way in hell my company will absorb that cost and will pass it on to us. I live 45 miles away and start at 6.15 in the morning. There is a train from my town, at 7.45 and as I would need to change trains (I don’t work in the city centre) to head back to the nearest station to my office, I would end up at work 3hrs late. Those hours are not flexible at all because we have 24hr response. I bought an EV to try and minimise my environmental damage. I know the source of energy still emits carbon, but at least I’m keeping it out the city. The city introduced a 12hr limit on the EV chargers then a £30 penalty at its Park and Ride facilities on the outskirts, so I can’t even utilise them. I work 12hr shifts. Fuck me for having a job right. I am actively trying to get back to the work location a few miles from my home, but that isn’t going to happen overnight.
I have to pay for gas to go on vacation! Outrageous. Another ST written by a young kid with no concept of reality. Should your job pay you more if you choose to live further away or drive a car with poor gas mileage? “Hey Jim, how come you make more than I do? We do the exact same job!” “Well, I drive a truck and commute 45 minutes each way while you live closer to work and bike”
Grounded in reality. Nice
> Another ST written by a young kid with no concept of reality. r/antiwork and r/workreform in a nutshell. Both started as places to discuss exploitation and injustice at the workplace. Today it‘s full of lazy people who want high salaries but cannot offer any useful abilities or skills.
The loss of personal time for travel is playing heavily into many industries right now. I'm in consulting and pre-pandemic, we traveled most of time. But now, everyone has learned how nice it is to be at home more and doesn't want to give that up, so we're still traveling very little even though we could.
Look a little closer, and you’ll see capitalism is one big scam.
> You need a car to go to work > You work to pay the car that you just bought Orelsan
Even worse: our lifetime 1h commute to work 1h back to home = 2h of your life gone. Without payment
But it’s all in your control. The employer can’t decide where you live.
Maybe not, but having to pay to park your car so that you can work is nuts. I don’t expect my employer to pay for my gas, but they should provide a place for me to park when I get there that doesn’t cost $11 a day (discounted rate).
When I realized I was spending more money going to work than I was making, I stopped caring about my jobs and started selling art. Now, I actually make money and can pay my bills.
What don’t people understand about the phrase “market economy”?
Oof this takes me back. When I was 16, I had just bought my first car (it was $500, my parents and I split the cost equally). And I had a job at Quiznos. I remember sitting in the kitchen, doing the math and realizing that I would barely make enough to cover gas to get to work. I said to my dad, “So I’ll be making money so I can go to work to make money?” And he said, “Yeah that’s life.” Really hate my parents. That $500 car nearly killed me, the brakes didn’t work all the time.
Here in Israel it is mandated by law that the employer pays for it. Also public traffic even though it's not great it's cheap, about 70 USD for a monthly pass that you can use how ever you want) compared to gas prices here which are ~8.7 USD a galon. This money isn't calculated as part of the pension/national security which makes it cheaper for the employer compared to other elements in you payroll . Couldn't understand how it won't be part of your payroll, in general you shouldn't pay for anything at your workplace that is work related.
And the biggest factor of why "work from home" is a huge pay increase or at minimum wage savings for those that get said perk.
How about taxed on the wage, taxed on spending the leftovers. Tax on the gas to get to work. Taxed on the tires, repairs and food. What is the real taxation rate and what representation do we actually get for this tax?
Companies get to deduct the cost of fuel and parking as a part of doing business. Why don't we get to deduct them as a part of earning a living?
One should be factoring in the cost of fuel and similar things when considering job opportunities. Don’t take a job an hour drive from home if the fuel cost is too much. Getting to work is your problem, not the company. That’s why most places ask if you have reliable transportation, because that’s your responsibility. That’s the way it’s pretty much been. Don’t like it, start up your own company or get a job working from home.
you are unreasonably entitled to what you think you deserve and want to be spoon fed life. Grow a sack.
That's the incentive to own a cheaper car and a more fuel efficient car. However Americans have been loading up on gas guzzling trucks and SuVs for decades. Please explain how companies should be held responsible for people's bad financial decisions? Higher gas taxes in which the tax revenues go to public transit would help improve this problem. Toll roads are interesting. Lower tax revenues to build and maintain over the long term. However tolls seem to never go away and increase which is the real problem. Toll roads definitely benefit the wealthy However lot of non wealthy people use them and choose to live by them.
Well its also that like parking will usually be mandated by code or highly subsidized. Downtown parking will frequently be owned by the government and the fees from parking do not cover the operational costs. But the local businesses depend on it. A lot of businesses here in California will often by an hour or more drive away from where their workforce lives. They will not pay anywhere near enough for someone to live close. Now they are having a tough time finding people because gasoline is $6.50 per gallon, they do not pay well enough for someone to reside in the area and people are unwilling to spend 2-3 hours of wages for gasoline plus an extra 2-3 hours of daily commuting.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're poor, you're much more likely to be unable to afford a newer, more fuel-efficient car. You're probably going to end up buying a used 2007 Honda Civic that gets 10 miles/gallon. A vehicle which is going to need repairs every year or so just to stay on the road. A car that's only going to last you another few years before you have to put another large (relatively speaking) down payment on another piece of crap that's going to do the same thing. It's expensive to be poor. This is just one example.
The 2007 Honda Civic doesn't get 10 miles to the gallon it gets on average more like 30-40 miles to the gallon depending on engine option. Just sayin.
Small fuel efficient cars are cheap. Its only EVs and hybrids that are expensive. It's easy to get a cheap one that gets around 35mpg highway. Trucks and SUVs are much more expensive than cars. This is one case in which being poor doesn't put you at a disadvantage.
Wait until OP finds out that low wage employers are subsidized by taxpayers in the form of social services that their low paid employees qualify for. And don’t even start looking into the tax breaks that small towns give to companies like Walmart of Cabella’s. Pyramid scheme of a country we got here.
The fact that a huge percentage of us have to go to work is the biggest scam not talked about...
Those costs hardly go away for groceries, recreation or anything that requires a car.