Sinfest

[Agamemnon]

A quick aside to something that was mentioned previously. I am just finishing my class in Customer Service and came across these true-false questions:

1. A longer life expectancy and a decline in the birthrate will contribute to a shortage of entry-level employees in the future.

2. The downside of an aging society is that customers will require fewer personal services.

3. Technological changes are occurring so rapidly that continual training, retraining, and education on software and delivery systems are needed.

6. Global competition has provided new career opportunities in customer service.

7. To meet today's business challenges, schools are improving programming and keeping pace with changes.

(I picked out the applicable questions to the discussion at hand. Source: Customer Service: Building Successful Skills for the Twenty-First Century. Robert W. Lucas. Third Edition, 2005. Chapter 14.)

I picked these out because I think they are applicable to the argument about minimum wage positions. These shortages are going to do two things, I forsee: 1) there will be plenty of opportunity for people to be able to move up in skill positions and salary as we move from a primarily manufacturing based economy to a more service based economy. All those elderly people with so much money will be paying for a lot of services. 2) there will be a shortage of labor available for entry level jobs. This will result in market pressures forcing wages up. (If you doubt this, think back to the mid to late nineties when we went through a labor shortage and a lot of businesses that were offering positions at or just above minimum wage were having to offer substantially more to maintain the labor pool; I know that our business had to raise the starting wage for production line workers by something like $1 to $1.50 and hour and many of the McDonalds that were hiring for a starting wage right around $5.00 were having to up that to $7-8.)

If anyone is interested, the answers to the above are:
1.T
2.F
3.T
6.T
7.F

'Nite all.
_________________
-Agamemnon.....but you can call me Jake.

P: They don't know we know they know we know. And Joey, you can't say anything!

J: Couldn't if I wanted to.

[Major Tom]