To: Wharf Rat who wrote (216487 ) 2/9/2013 3:15:14 PM From: Maurice Winn Read Replies (1) | Respond to Sure thing, but I thought you meant they thought the pay rate was bad: <"Those people you know who are picking up cigarette butts and collecting aluminium cans could go and harvest crops" > Some of my initial capitalist efforts were collecting empty beer and soft drink bottles on Mount Maunganui beach and environs. It was quite profitable. No taxes [that I was aware of anyway]. While everyone else was hung over, I was out with my sack collecting bottles early in the morning [the early bird gets the flagon]. Flagons got 2 shillings. Woohoo!! Beer bottles 1 penny, soft drink 3d [threepence], large soft drink 6d and as I recall a flagon [half gallon] got 2s [shillings]. 2 shillings with decimalisation and inflation has turned into 20c which is now the second lowest unit of coinage and of negligible value. Those people want their fruit picked? Try paying decent wages. Maybe treat their workers as treasured resources instead of a drag on profits. They need to pay only a bit more than whatever somebody else is offering. Not "decent wages". When I was picking crops, I just chose the best of what was on offer at the time. Maybe strawberries. Perhaps peas. Sometimes tomatoes. Or go and load logs onto railway wagons. Or wheel concrete all night long. It's a market out there Wharfie. "Decent wages" is what's available at the time. If somebody isn't offering enough, work for somebody else. I could normally tell how treasured I was by how much I was paid. I was not a national treasure, nor even a local one. youtube.com to Lusk Boulevard and the hub of the world. Luckily for descendants of the USA slave traders their ancestors were sold down the river in east Africa [which is not to say it was so much fun for the original slaves]. Macy Gray would not want to be "sent back" to Africa. Hooray for the English. There should be a national day to celebrate the English conquest and their banning of slavery, which finally caught on in Washington too.
