GS pay raises are only time-based in-grade, called steps. Each grade has 10 steps [0] and if you start at step 1 it can take up to 18 years to reach step 10 (less if you have good performance because then you can get a bonus step increase). Most people don't start at step 1, though, so maxing out typically takes less time.
There are some jobs that will push you through grades on some regular cadence (usually 6-12 months in each grade), but those are usually "internships". New hires getting brought in at $50-60k/year GS-5 or GS-7 positions and moved up over 2-4 years into a GS-11 or GS-12 position. After that, they're back to competing for positions again for anything higher than GS-11/12 or whatever their target grade was.
[0] Technically there's step X, which means you're paid above step 10 for that grade. This is relatively rare, but when it happens they only get half the general pay increase each year until step 10 catches up to them and then they are step 10.
> The purpose of food labels is to increase safety, transparency and honesty around the contents of food.
USDA Organic label is rampant with fraud, and just having thr USDA label on it isn't a guarantee of trust. Similarly, the AHA endorsing oils blatantly bad for the heart is also similar example how labeling doesn't promote trust necessarily. Labels can and do lie, quite often even.
> just want the label to tell me what's in the product
You will never, ever get that. It's simply impossible. Label games are the biggest legal tug-of-war between consumers, regulators, vendors, and the industries.
When I began reading about labeling and its regulation, and all the bullshit tricks that are played to "stay compliant" but also lie out their asses to the consumer, and hide everything from us, I concluded that there is no way to truly read a label properly.
It basically comes down to a question of whether you trust this vendor or provider to give you a quality product. If you do not trust, then do not purchase. If they play games and lose trust, then do not purchase. Once you have a decent-sized blacklist, then there is no reason not to patronize those survivors.
That's the double edged sword. Requiring labeling doesn't prevent label fraud, and pretending label fraud is rare is either naive or obtuse.
Oversight is then called for (eg USDA organic) which itself can still be frauded around, especially when dealing with sources outside of the US.
I'm reminded of a tiktok that had raw chicken labeled with a particular weight at Walmart. When they weighed it on a checkout scale, it didn't match the weight the label had. On multiple packages.
However, this is one of my frustrations about Teams - it absolutely sucks, and what few integrations it has from Microsoft absolutely sucks. You are already paying too much to MS for it to not be working properly.
God knows how much my company is giving to Microsoft for us to have crappy and expensive (read: time wasting) experiences with Teams, Windows 11 onboarding, Azure DevOps (better than what wr had, at least), Visual Studio 2022, etc.
In my (admittedly very limited) experience, Teams was almost free when you're already paying for microsoft 365. At least last time I had any involvement with it, the price difference between having teams in the bundle or not was negligible. It makes it cheaper than any competitor.
Now in reality, I think the true cost is hidden by the frustration it causes (some?) users, but it's very hard to quantify that in a dollar amount. Which is why companies stick with Teams.
The hidden cost is also the removal of competition. Google get more heat for browser "monopoly" when they even provide a free browser base for others to customise, and Microsoft gets almost none for incredibly overwhelmingly anti-competitive behaviour around lock-in to Office, Teams, Sharepoint, Azure.
Yup. That's because they had actual competition in the space. Throwing a (bad) Slack clone for free was a way of preserving and extending their monopoly.
But you're still paying for it. The costs to build and fund the product still exist, and are still coming out of customer payments. Manipulating their pricing to manipulate their customers doesn't change that.
Ideally we'd all have a lot of things we don't all have the means to have. Practically, the pitch is daycare offers a net cheaper option for society as a whole by allowing us to specialize roles in our communities, allowing the same means to do more similar to public education. Constraints aside, it'd also be great if, e.g., we all got our education via dedicated 1:1 time with experts instead... but that doesn't make it a practical possibility for everyone.
It's also worth noting the article opens with a single income family that used childcare. The options there were either don't have the family you want at the ideal age, don't go for a more ideal education/income prospects, or don't go for the ideal always-with-one-parent style of raising the kids. None of the choices would have left all ideals on the table.
A single income household with a homemaking parent requires that wages or salaries be offered that can support an entire family on a single income. In most states, minimum wage (and even most hourly jobs that pay above minimum wage) isn’t even enough to support living alone for a single person working less than 60 hours/wk.
How can you refinance when you just bought the house? There is no equity for you to tap into, and if there was, you now even have a highly monthly payment.
Housing prices have to decrease first if you want people to be able make these decisions. That means we need a deflationary economy through increased production, so more people can be able to afford the enhanced productivity.
More like the lack of natural fuel that Europe is willing or able to use for itself.
Noticeable exception includes Norway with their gas fields, but it's not like Germany has huge swaths of oil ready to be used. Germany does have substantial coal, but it's been decreasing its use of it in exchange for alternatives it doesn't own the fuel for.
In other words, Europe pays more for energy because they have to import it. Importing it isn't factoring "externalities", as the extra money isn't going to anything except Russia or OPEC.
Um, Most Xbox Series X consoles still have a disc drive. Most Xbox Ones had a disc drive. There are disc driveless models like the Series S and white Series X but there are millions of Xboxs that are still current and have a drive.
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