Memory Matrix

The U.S. Department of Labor shows the states with mandatory lunch breaks and the states with mandatory rest periods.  The national Conference of State Legislatures has a list of which states codified religious and personal belief vaccine exceptions.

This article is to narrow down long a long term settlement plan based upon a critical factor, probably the most important factor.  Some might not think this factor is that important, but since it is encountered day in and day out every working day of every year, it is extremely important.  The factor is whether or not a worker gets breaks at work.  Numerous states do not mandate any kind of break.  Others mandate a lunch period, and others mandate lunch and rest periods.  Some mandate lunch periods only for those under 18.  Ostensibly, the day after one’s 18th birthday is the point at which one no longer needs rest during a workday for those states.

I have worked in Kentucky and Tennessee.  Both of these states have different regulations. Tennessee requires a lunch break, but does not specify rest periods.  Kentucky specifies lunch and rest periods.  In the state of Kentucky, every employer I ever worked for except for one complied with all the provisions.  A single employer hated the idea of rest periods, but such behavior was illegal and that gives people the right to argue against them.  In Tennessee, which has a slightly different framework, I have had had 2 employers which had both lunch and rest breaks, 1 employer that had only a 30-minute lunch break in the center of a ten hour shift, and one employer that had none until complained on severely, and then the complainers got the mandatory lunch break while the non-complainers still received no breaks.

New Hampshire was on my short list, but it mandates only lunch breaks like Tennessee.  That means a distribution center with a senior walking 10 miles a day would have no rest periods and that would be legal and they would have no argument against that treatment.

With n=4, lunch and break stands at 50% for a state that regulates only a lunch period, and greater > 95% in a state that regulates both lunch and breaks.  Part of that may not even relate to any kind of enforcement, but the simple cultural difference that workers should be able to rest for a few minutes during the day and the people growing up under such a culture just expect that it will happen for others.

Illinois, Kentucky, Colorado, and Vermont pass the anti-slavish test.  California also regulates lunch and rest periods, but they and New York have chosen the path of gene-therapy anti-humanism and cannot be considered among the moral states that we consider further.

Of those 4 states continuing, Vermont’s regulation about rest periods is a vague standard of reasonable to protect health and hygiene.  The other three specify minimum time amounts.  So any person who will have to work a full time job in their senior years should live in one of those three, possibly four states.  Frankly, anyone who has to work a full time job at all should live in one of those states.  Maybe a further look at the pragmatic realities related to Vermont’s non-specific standard would make it a quartet of states with respect of workers.

A non passive-incomer’s state of choice to settle in would then be either Illinois, Kentucky, or Colorado, so that they may have some rest breaks during the thousands of days they spend working over the course of their lives.  It’s illegal to work animals with no breaks in the same states you can do it to humans if you are a monied interest.

“How The Masses Deal With Risk (And Why They Remain Poor)” appeared on Capitalist Exploits in January of 2016. The quote that resonated the most was “What is also a fact is that the mean return of early stage VC investments is north of 50% per annum. This is the mean and like anything else with a little bit (OK, a lot) of work, outperforming the average in anything is entirely achievable if you put effort into it.” (Chris MacIntosh, 2016)

“For Many Americans, ‘Temp’ Work Becomes a Permanent Way of Life” appeared on NBC News in April of 2014. The article follows Kelly Sibla and others who joined the ranks of the permanent no-benefit-no-FMLA class of temporary employees. The market started calling ‘temp’ jobs ‘contract’ jobs around the end of the Great Recession. “…labor economists warn that companies’ growing hunger for a workforce they can switch on and off could do permanent damage to these workers’ career trajectories and retirement plans” (Maddie McGarvey, 2014).Andrew Moran, writing for Time Doctor looked at the same issue in “Employee Extinction? The Rise of the Contract, Temp Workers in Business” using Federal Reserve data and other countries. The phenomenon is not unique to the United States, however the United States does not have a social safety net for things like housing the way that other countries do.

James Balogun wrote a career advice piece on the subject called “Here’s the Deal with Contract to Hire Positions”, and although he left out the valuable statistics about the majority never converting to full time employees, the article provides a great analysis on the scenarios when taking such a job. The best quote is “Let’s be clear here. The employee is the one taking the risk in a contract to hire, not the employer”. (Balogun, 2016)

Outcome-Based Religion by Mac Dominick describes the management theories of Peter Drucker and their penetration into organized religion in Chapter 13. It’s an interesting read and describes the mode of many denominations to act in a business manner. It details theological seminaries and Pharmaceutical company foundations working with seminaries via foundations (Eli Lilly, among others). The book mentions one “community church” that makes hundreds of referrals for psychiatric care annually. Dominick refers to this as the rise of “Christian Psychology”. It’s an interesting read, but like many other works that discuss the Roman Catholic faith, fact-checking assertions remains a good idea. One example of such claims is the assertion that Catholicism teaches that salvation exists in all faiths, but, in August 2016, Brother Andre Marie wrote an explanation detailing the misunderstandings of that view.

Dr. Ed Hindson at Liberty University wrote an article denying preterism in 2005 called The New Last Days Scoffers. Donald Perkins discusses the refutation and explains the futurism view. J. R. Bronger wrote another analysis of the preterist view in August 1999, and calledRealized Eschatology a poisonous belief. Bronger used a broad brush, but made strong arguments, including references to Hymenaeus and Philetus, historical figures who claimed the resurrection was already past. JM wrote a more recent article with strong arguments opporsed to futurism. Jame’s Loyd’s article at Christian Media Research takes issue with preterism and contains historical detail in addition to scriptural analysis while keeping Daniel’s 7 debated years in the past rather than the future.

The number of science, technology, engineering, and math, STEM, jobs in the United States, shrank for the past three decades,1982-2012. The draw-down accelerated from 2000-2012.

The highest occupational growth occurred among occupations with soft skills, with K-12 teaching and non-doctor health care support staff, such as nurses, technicians, and therapists. From 2000-2012, those in the physical sciences, such as chemistry, physics, and others, biological scientists, and engineers saw decreases in the availability of work in their field. The percentage of the workforce that fell into the category of “engineer” declined by over 15% (David Deming, 2017). In “The Economics of Noncognitive Skills”, data from the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton project shows that the number of service jobs increased the most over the last three decades (Timothy Taylor, 14 October 2016). These are tasks such as customer service.