Max, please exuse my asking, but... Are you really that old that you saved those postage stamps for future reference?

 

Unfortunately, no matter how well we raise them, they will be (intended?) victims of the lowest common denominator.

That's why I'm starting the stealth and evasion training early.

 

Max, please exuse my asking, but... Are you really that old

Yes, I saved my stamp collection from when I was a Kid!
I had an in, my dad was a courier for MI5.
Most from the British Empire.
Max.

 

@joeyd999 AFAIK the safe spaces in california are what promotes this "lets keep the offspring like infants as long as possible" attitude

 

As the pre-war Germany example I used, people were literally taking a a wheel barrow of cash to buy a loaf of bread.
I still have postage stamps from the Deutsches Reich that were originally printed 200 marks, they had been over stamped with 2 millionen!
Max.

And, IIRC, Germany's inflation peaked in the early 1920's at about 20% per day, which is about 10^32 % annually. Zimbabwe, on the other hand, was more like 10^110 % annually. The worst was Hungary after WWI where prices were more than tripling every day for an annual rate of nearly 10^180 %.

The worst the U.S. saw was under the Articles of Confederation where we peaked at about 47%/month (right around 10,000% annual rate), just shy of the somewhat arbitrary definition that hyperinflation is 50%/month.

 

I worked for GM, and got paid weekly, as far as I know all auto companies do it that way.

 

I live in the UK and have been paid monthly throughout my entire working life (since the mid 1970s).

At the start of my working life, it was not uncommon for workers to be paid weekly (in cash). I recall my first employer had to bribe those employees who were paid weekly (in cash) to open a bank account and agree to have their salary paid directly into the account.

One further observation is that I’m paid monthly in arrears (as are most people). In fairness, one of my employers appreciated that on average they owed their workforce 2 weeks pay and so changed the payment terms to 2 weeks in advance/2 weeks in arrears.

 

And, IIRC, Germany's inflation peaked in the early 1920's at about 20% per day, .

Nothing changed overnight, One US dollar cost 4.2 trillion Deutsch Marks. People were lining up for food brings bags of money along.
Max.

 

So does it have any actual benefits, since it seems quite popular in the u. states of A?

I think it mainly benefits the people who live paycheck to paycheck.

IIRC, the company I was working for in the mid 80's was losing money and they determined that changing hourly pay days from every two weeks to twice a month actually saved money on payroll processing (because they already paid exempts on that schedule).

 

Nothing changed overnight, One US dollar cost 4.2 trillion Deutsch Marks. People were lining up for food brings bags of money along.
Max.

If nothing changed overnight, then when DID it change? For how long was $1 US 4.2 trillion Deutsch Marks? In December 1922 the U.S. dollar was worth 7,400 marks. By November 1923 it was at the 4.2 trillion marks. That didn't just happen overnight or in a few increments.

The parents of one of my elementary school friends were German jews (and were sent to Auschwitz and came to the U.S. after the war). It was from them -- in 3rd grade, IIRC -- that I first heard about the Holocaust and the German hyperinflation. Naturally, I was more interested in their tales of the Holocaust and didn't pay nearly as much attention to their tales of the economic times as I would have a decade later, given the chance to talk to them again. But I vividly remember them talking about how he was paid multiple times a day and how she would come by the factory where he worked and get his pay and immediately go to the shops and spend it all on anything that was available because the prices would be higher when she got his next pay a few hours later. Everyone bought everything they could as soon as they could because barter goods were how personal business was conducted, but most businesses paid employees in paper money (since learned that this was because of deliberate actions/policies on the part of the government as a means of dealing with issues surrounding the payment of war reparations from WWI). They said no one would accept checks because by the time they were deposited and processed they would be worth so much less that it wasn't worth the risk -- unless you wrote it for at least two to three times the value of what you were paying for.

I've come to understand since that this was one form of speculating on the currency. The factor by which you overwrote the check was essentially a marketable commodity with the check writer betting that their pay would be sufficiently higher before the check cleared their bank to cover the factor while the person accepting the check betting that they could get the check to clear while the higher value still had more spending power than the original value of goods sold. Like any such ad-hoc system, this was quickly filled with middlemen that bought and sold checks because they had worked out systems and built a network of couriers that hand-carried the checks to the various banks. Although this was a stabilizing influence to some degree, it was still layered on a practice that fundamentally served to drive the hyperinflation even higher.

At one point in the process there was full employment because there was such a huge demand for any product that could be used for barter, but it meant that companies focused heavily on products that could be made and sold quickly because the velocity of the money supply was just so high. But then business owners started to believe that there was a greater return in speculating/hoarding trade goods than in manufacturing them and so the supply of good in circulation dropped which drove the hyperinflation even higher, while at the same time resulting in exploding unemployment, which quickly caused the entire economy to rapidly crash.

 

Well yes, but the few hudred precent inflation of that era is not really relevant, at least not in the US. So what good does it do when you get paid weekly? If I imagine myself in that position, I would spend my money a lot more carelessly than if when I get it monthly. Also, do the people set aside a bit from this week to pay the rent, a bit from the next week to pay electricity and netflix, etc.?

It depends on the individual, of course, but if nothing else for most people it is a valuable learning experience in the need to budget.

While I've never been paid a paycheck more frequently than every two weeks, I worked as a tipped employee for a while which meant that I was paid pretty much all of my pay every day I worked since my actual paycheck was usually just enough to cover the taxes and leave me $20 or so left over.

If you are paid monthly, then it is a pretty straightforward matter to pay the monthly bills that are due during the month leaving yourself enough to get through the month because you know what the starting point is -- you have the check which is what you have to work with.

If you are paid daily, then you need to budget a lot more carefully to ensure that you will have the money to pay the bills as they come due, especially if you don't know how many hours you will actually get scheduled to work or how good your tips will actually be.

What I did (this was 1984-85) was take a bunch of small plastic boxes and wrote one each one an item that I needed to pay. I estimated how much I needed to put in each box each day in order to have what I needed when I needed it. I used a one-page calendar to mark off where I was in terms of payments. Each night that I got home I paid the boxes. If I knew I wasn't going to work the next day, then I had to pay them ahead. If, as happened from time to time, I didn't have enough then I would owe the boxes from the next time I worked. My policy -- pretty strictly adhered to -- was that I could not spend ANYTHING not allocated by one of the boxes unless I was at least a full week ahead. If I WAS at least a week ahead, then anything in the pile next to the boxes could be spent on whatever I wanted, but that included clothes and anything else that was needed by not covered by one of the boxes.

The system wasn't flawless, but it worked pretty well. I treated as a game and a challenge and at one point got it so that I was more than two months ahead. That gave me the ability to occasionally (very occasionally) take whatever I got paid one day and just go spend it on whatever I wanted without any guilt. But more than anything, it got me to really understand that when I got paid that the money wasn't just mine to do with what I wanted -- that much of it was already spoken for and that I couldn't ignore that reality. Sadly, it took a much longer time for me to realize that the proper way to live is to get it so that as little as possible of your money is already spoken for before you even get it -- i.e., live completely debt free.

 

In Mexico practically everyone is paid bi-weekly. I don't if it's the law, but it's definitely customary. The result is that most banks work at a hectic pace on paydays. And things become especially hellish if either the 15th or the 30th of the month fall on a weekend.

 

I've had about 10 different jobs in my life..
All have been a paycheck every 2 weeks..

 

Pay checks.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/201...hile-high-school-grads-line-up-for-university

While a shortage of workers is pushing wages higher in the skilled trades, the financial return from a bachelor's degree is softening, even as the price — and the average debt into which it plunges students — keeps going up.

But high school graduates have been so effectively encouraged to get a bachelor's that high-paid jobs requiring shorter and less expensive training are going unfilled. This affects those students and also poses a real threat to the economy.

"Parents want success for their kids," said Mike Clifton, who teaches machining at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, about 20 miles from Seattle. "They get stuck on [four-year bachelor's degrees], and they're not seeing the shortage there is in tradespeople until they hire a plumber and have to write a check."
...
In all, some 30 million jobs in the United States that pay an average of $55,000 per year don't require bachelor's degrees, according to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce.

Yet the march to bachelor's degrees continues. And while people who get them are more likely to be employed and make more money than those who don't, that premium appears to be softening; their median earnings were lower in 2015, when adjusted for inflation, than in 2010.

 

Young folks talk about how much they earn.......old folks talk about how much it's worth.

 

Pay checks.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/201...hile-high-school-grads-line-up-for-university

A few often overlooked points whenever this topic is discussed.

These stories virtually always equate any bachelor's degree with any other bachelor's degree, which leaves the question begging of whether the "softening" is due to a lessening in the value of a bachelor's degree, or whether it reflects a shift in the distribution of degrees awarded toward degrees that have little or no value in the marketplace.

I haven't looked closely in a few years, but I haven't seen any indications that either demand or compensation for technical degrees, such as electrical engineering, are "softening". Now, as to whether the increase is keeping up with the outrageous cost increases of a degree is a different, though perfectly legitimate, matter.

This article also makes it sound like these trades jobs are going unfilled only because people are only interested in pursuing positions requiring a college degree. But right now employers at all levels are having trouble filling positions, whether entry level or for senior experienced people. Unless the article looks at the relative difficulty of filling trades positions compared to college-required positions, there is nothing they can claim beyond the well-known reality that the economy is currently heating up enough so that many positions are going unfilled.

 

AFAIK, everybody around here, gets paid monthly but, even today, in some ports, occasional stevedores are paid as soon as they complete every shift (6 hours) even if they work more than one shift in a row. What you read. It is well known that people of this group tends to waste their money frequently in non essential things as drinking and socializing in red-light areas.

With the privatization of many ports some years ago, stevedores now working as employees in the payroll, are paid monthly with salary transferred to their bank account. It took time for them to get used to that.

When I started going at sea in merchant vessels, 45++ years ago, some local companies used to pay crew members' family a monthly allotment. The rest was paid cash on board, upon arrival. Even the grumpiest left the vessel with a smile. Imagine after a 6 or 8 months voyage. Been there.

Bank transfers are the norm now mostly everywhere.

 

I think in skilled Technical areas Companies want Degrees with Certifications, I think somewhat of the mentality toward training vs education. Certifications allow for experience to develop for those who can obtain it. Universities teach degree driven pathways that earn them money not offering skills required later on the job training dumping this cost on the companies.

Meanwhile their counterpart individual with skills experience to fill the position are chosen over them, this reduces cost to the companies who employ them. Less training equates to ROI, on the endowments given to the University.

Academics in general don't follow a path driven success for the student enrolled in a University this lack of foresight, refusing to Teach skills along with knowledge.

So, just to prove you can learn isn't enough these day to stay competitive. Professors, Department Chairs, Administrators in general need to pull their proverbial heads out of the butt and come to the party. Companies pay good money and want skilled labor in return.

kv

Edit: Example, a class INFO 1120 I took not even 2 years ago, the professor taught Exell and Access or you get the professor teaching a 2400 class who just because it's the only thing he knew was teaching outdated, antiquated systems, databases and networks. WTF.

 

I am paid weekly and its fantastic. For one, you are more motivated to work since you get a pay check at the end of the week. Secondly, its easier to budget (breaks things like rent and bills into smaller chunks), and thirdly, if you need money quickly it can help to provide a stream of income instead of big bulk amounts.

 

I am paid weekly and its fantastic. For one, you are more motivated to work since you get a pay check at the end of the week. Secondly, its easier to budget (breaks things like rent and bills into smaller chunks), and thirdly, if you need money quickly it can help to provide a stream of income instead of big bulk amounts.

I think that this might bolster the TS's position, actually. It sounds like what you are saying is that getting paid weekly makes it easier to live hand-to-mouth. If you find yourself needing money so quickly that getting paid weekly makes the difference, then you are NOT budgeting and planning properly.