Haul it yourself for a few weeks, then determine what a good pay rate for breaking your back and busting your ass is.

You've never hired people from the Great lakes Regions. They are (or were) some of the hardest working people I've hired.

I don't understand this job situation. Am article ran today in the LA Times about a fitness center not being able to hire anyone. They don't pay much which is the problem in my mind, but the perks are great (free use of a gym).

When I get my new shoulder late this month and as soon as I am able, I'm going out job hunting. For 180 a day cash I'll pick up trash all day every day.

People look at me and think he's too old to work. Bulsh=iht.

In this day and age just showing up on time is a skill.

About 15 yrs ago I could not get anyone to bid on replacing the vinyl siding on my townhouse and replacing some dry rotted wood underneath. Finally, there was someone with a table set up at Home Depot for such stuff. I think they said $3500. My then GF was from China and she found some Chinese laborers who only advertised in those newspapers always laying around the lobbies of Chinese restaurants. They wanted $1500, came right out and did an amazing job. I'm sure most were illegals, but damn, they did a great job.

Around here our Mexican landscaper is the go-to for all labor I don't want to DIY. He replaced our whole drip system for $500. Next best bid we got was for $3200 and Mrs. Lee was pissed when I tipped our guy $100. Sheesh. Next project is to find a house cleaning crew. I hope our landscaper's wife does this.

how much do you make? "skill" ?

Word on that.

That's the way I look at it. And my limit for doing hard physical labor myself is getting lower all the time.

$22.00 per hr @ McDonald's in Copenhagen DK with lifetime free medical care, free college, child care too and there is NO such thing as personal BK. No wonder it's the happiest city in the world and they write songs about how lonely L.A. is...

Your lucky nobody got hurt on the job, its like hitting the lottery from them when it happens, a little pain with lots of gain. Lucky you didn't get ratted out to the HOA either.

If only there were a way to make it so it’s easier for them to enter the system and pay taxes too.



Nah…. That’ll never work. 🙄


Agree with everyone above. If you wouldn’t do the work that needs done for that rate, why would you expect someone else to. You don’t want to pay the market rate for labor? Well then good luck to you working alone or getting scabs that aren’t able to hack it elsewhere.

I always laugh at people who complain about the price of labor, especially in CA. and other places where it's been so artificially depressed for decades due to cheap, imported workers. Take a moment to ponder what a crew of ditch diggers working in the hot sun for 10 hours and showing up on time, (or even showing up at all), would cost if there were no migrants from Latin America and you had to rely on native born Americans. In a time of extremely expensive everything, which it would be if not for cheap labor.

As Heidi Fleiss famously said when someone complained about her prices, "Do it yourself."

Do it yourself for a couple of days and get back to me on a fair rate. Take your judgements about the people you're hiring out of it and how little you think they should work for, because they have "no skills." HTF do you know what their skills are? You probably can't even have a conversation with them, due to your lack of language skills.

I just paid someone to put rear brake pads on my Jetta wagon yesterday, because I did not feel like doing it myself. I can change brake pads in my sleep and spent all last week on the ground or bent over working on a car. Because I did not want to wreck my back further, and because I'm old and have a lot more $$ than time, I paid a shop to install them. I'm about to go on a trip and I just did not feel like doing it. The best $80 I spent all week. It helps that the guy I paid to do it is one of the only people on earth that I would trust to do a better brake job than me. I am beyond meticulous as a mechanic and especially on brakes and safety related items.

He is Mexican, fwiw. Born in East LA and as American as they come but thoroughly Mexican. Smarter than about 99% of the posters here, based on the written word, anyhow. His brother graduated at the top, and I mean the top of his class from Yale University. From a very working class background. Marco, the professional mechanic, is as polite and intelligent a young man as you will ever meet. He is employed by my close friend at his high-end Mercedes-Benz shop, probably his most valuable employee. They normally get $120 labor alone to do brake pads on one axle but I get the buddy deal. On most other days, I'd gladly put pads on someone's car for $80 an axle, just not yesterday. They are the annoying, rotating piston type, fwiw. :)

Higher wages for people at the bottom of the labor pool is the absolutely best thing for the economy, it's a proven fact. Anyone w half a brain understands this...it's both the cause of and a result of a very healthy economy.

Real wages have been falling for many decades, based on their buying power. Most jobs were enough to support a household, when I was a kid. Today's low wage problems have had consequences. Moms used to stay at home. There is something wrong these days, and $180/day is not the problem.

I'm glad to hear that you're getting another shoulder!

Look, it's about supply and demand. Very simple.

You said they already had jobs so now you're into marginal value - what is the value to them of hard work in the heat for little more money when they already have a job??

and read speeder's post too

[QUOTE=look 171;11380462]Yes.

Key word here is illegal. No tax. Our all American boys have to pay a portions of that to fund their medical, lunch programs while they take that money, all of it into their pockets. That college kid that works over at Starbucks are making 15-16 bucks and they have to pay medical insurances, roof over their heads and tax. They have a skill called the ability to communicate with me or anyone else. Drive themselves to a job. These guys have to be picked up and taken to a job by someone.[/QUOTE

Is hiring "Illegals" Illegal in your state? Wondering why you are trying to hire them....

Cheers

There’s two reasons to pay well. It’s a difficult learned skill. Ex. Brain surgeon

Or

Nobody wants to do it. Dangerous, gross, tough manual labor…

There’s two reasons to pay well. It’s a difficult learned skill. Ex. Brain surgeon

Or

Nobody wants to do it. Dangerous, gross, tough manual labor…

And tax all of it. Everyone will pay if it won’t get you into trouble.

I'm curious as to whom is on your 1% list.

Their hard won skill is either a strong back or an ability to tolerate pain...most double major. They might be willing to teach if you're willing to learn.

Nobody likes paying. Machines replace people, people scream. High fuel prices? Do the labor saved by a gallon of diesel and check back with us.

Join us today in celebrating the Entitled States of America.

No schit. The people with no skills are the ones who can only survive in business with a bunch of artificial advantages baked-in, like dirt cheap foreign labor or a tax code that is heavily slanted towards their industry and easily cheated. People who can only make it by underpaying their employees get zero respect from me as business people. No skills, no game.

America is filled with these entitled "businessmen" who think that they are smart because it was so easy to make money. I've seen it all my life and my dad always had disparaging words for them. The founder of Ikea became one of the richest people in the world in a country with a 90% tax rate for high earners, and virtually no way to avoid paying taxes like in the United States. Now, that guy had skills. :)