Barnes & Noble is criminal

It may be true that tuition is higher. But when I was working part-time to get through college, minimum wage was $2.50 an hour.

 

No. I'm just tired of people who throw out the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" crap when the rules have changed.

Wake up and smell the coffee. Jobs no longer guarantee health coverage; tuition costs have risen far faster than the rate of inflation; some tax loopholes that older people benefited from have been closed.

Of course, a lot of these details have appeared in USA Today this week, as I'm sure you're aware, being the man of the world you are.

 

And minimum wage is now slightly over $5 an hour and hasn't kept pace with inflation, asshat.

 

Hondo went through university about the same time as I did. (Funny how Hondo seems about 100 years older than anyone else here). It's apples and oranges between today's kids and when I was in university.

I had a summer job that paid the equivalent today of about $35.00 an hour. I paid my schooling from my summer work.

Those jobs--widely available at the time in the heavy industry and manufacturing sectory--have pretty much disappeared and have been replaced with minimum wage jobs--and if not minimum wage, nothing remotely close to what I made.

And I speak from first hand experience. I have a son in second year university and there's no way he'll be able to pay for school from what he makes in a summer job. And he works part-time at the campus pub.

 

How in the everlasting fuck did we ever get here?

 

Blame Hondo.

He's been scolding all the young'uns. You know, like drunken Uncle Charlie at the Thanksgiving dinner who rants on and on about the "younger generation" and how they're lazy, blah, blah. And by the fourth scotch he's on about ragheads and illegal aliens and what happened to all the white people you used to see on the subway--not that he's a racist or anything.

That's how we got here. The Hondo Rant.

 

While Hondo is telling the rest of us what we've done wrong with our lives, also remember on another thread he's wanting to dictate who can pray at airports and how, simply because it makes him nervous.

 

GET OFF MY DAMN LAWN, YOU SNEAKY LITTLE CANUCKS!

 

A lot of companies use the automatic renewal. They tell you about it: in 5-point type.

Also, don't ever -- EVER -- do a check draft over the phone. You're giving that creditor permission to check draft again, if they want to, if you're ever late with a payment for whatever reason.

 

Goddamn, I must be the luckiest person alive. I did check drafts over the phone with several companies, including Sprint. When I canceled my phone, I owe them $225. They've never done drafts on it.

Hmmm. I must be living right. My card doesn't auto-renew and the check-draft Nazis aren't out to get me.

 

Probably because you're just so...darned...cute.

 

Aww, Fenian. I remember the good ol' days in which I believed the things you said to me.

Can we go back to those times? Please?