Our small town’s volunteer fire fighters are not compensated. The town budgets for expenses such as fire engines. Things have not always gone smoothly. Every little town in Maine thinks it needs to be separate from the adjoining one. They really need to pool their resources. Drives me nuts.
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I have a high school friend who volunteers as a dispatcher and her husband volunteers as a fire fighter but didn’t want to ask her about money. Seems like an oddly personal question. Just amazing to me. Incredible work these folks do, but also why do we pay people lots of money for jobs that don’t contribute to society? Kind of a head-scratcher.
The problem with firefighting is that it is (luckily) such an infrequent activity that it is uneconomical to put together a permanent fire fighting force. It is like reservists in the army. Perhaps you can pay reserve fire fighters whenever they are called for help.
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Our 3 mile town has both volunteer and paid fire houses. There is always talk about combined services with neighboring towns, but every time I’ve called 9-11 for an emergency (fire, ambulance, police), response time has been incredible. The towns do work together for big fires/events. We had a volunteer rescue squad for decades, no cost, there were some paid through fundraising, but the town took it over.
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What jobs do you think don’t contribute to society?
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Selling of bad products. Selling of dangerous products–like the Sacklers and Oxycontin. Why are they raking in millions and literally killing people when we have volunteers paid nothing that are out there saving lives?? I’m sure each of us can think of some products that are bad and jobs that are vastly overpaid.
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I think it depends on the town but in most cases they are doing it without compensation. Chiefs and other leaders may get a stipend. Paramedic level responders may get compensated in some places (especially if they are on call rather than come if you can when you hear the tones) but generally not EMT level. But I’m sure there are as many different arrangements as there are departments across the country. Generally costs are covered through insurance, grants, fundraising and town taxes I would guess
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How about jobs that are basically theft, whether package / bicycle / car theft, or telemarketing scams, or white collar finance fraud?
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I had oxy after surgery. Compared with the morphine I was given 30 years ago and Dilaudid 15 years ago, and Vicodin after an accident…oxy was far superior in every possible way. It is tragic that the drug has been abused so terribly, but it also represents an advance in pain management. Just saying. The world isn’t nearly divided into good guys and bad guys.
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If you ever need serious pain medication, believe me, you want it.
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At the risk of going off topic, no one has ever said oxycontin isn’t great for acute pain, e.g., after surgery, and for short duration. But it was irresponsibly prescribed in great numbers (my father got something like 70 pills upon discharge after his knee replacement - this is after he’d spent several days in the hospital and 10 days in rehab and had taken maybe a total of 5 pills that entire time for acute pain - why in the world would you send him home with 70 almost two weeks later when the pain should have subsided by then? Fortunately he knew better than to take them even though they were prescribed, though he had a bit of trouble letting them go when I told him what they might be worth on the street. We did dispose of them responsibly 
. I’d like to think this is a thing of the past but as this was maybe 5-6 years ago, but it was shocking to me even then.). The other issue of course is prescribing for chronic pain, where the efficacy is way less and the potential for both addiction and rebound pain/pain getting worse is way higher. Acute pain, short duration, yes. Chronic pain, longer duration - not so much. OK, way off topic, sorry!
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Although they get a bad rap by many (especially on CC ) the For Profit “colleges” offer many certificate programs that can get your kid employed in their chosen field. After graduating Kinesiology 10 yrs ago and working menial jobs, nephew decided he wanted to be a nurse and took a very focused, fast nursing curriculum at one of the major For Profits. Graduated with a nursing degree in 18 months, while working part time. Guess what, he’s a nurse. Gets paid the same as any other nurse from more traditional programs. Has worked in several hospitals, a family practice, and is now riding the wave of the “contract nursing” explosion. Back to working in a hospital doing the same work as the “regular” nurse employees of the hospital and making 2x - 3x times the money with guaranteed 20 week contracts.
I’m sure these schools have appropriate cert programs that make kids employable in many nursing, PT, OT related fields.
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Yep! H rented a house in his 20’s with friends: they had a couch on the front porch, a keg used as a side table in the living room, and they almost started a fire setting off fireworks during a party. H said he would never rent to guys that age nowadays.
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My reference was that someone mentioned upthread that there are lots of jobs that don’t contribute to society… and specifically pointed to the sellers of Oxy to make their point. And I am providing a counterpoint, which is that for folks who do not abuse drugs but need painkillers, the sellers of Oxy have, in fact- contributed to society. I have experienced modest or incomplete or “knocked out and completely catatonic” pain relief with earlier meds, but found Oxy to be a complete game changer.
There are irresponsible doctors who prescribe recklessly; there are irresponsible EVERYTHINGS, everywhere. But to claim that an entire company is filled with people who do not contribute to society because their products have been abused strikes me as a weak argument.
Back on point. But you didn’t seem to understand the context of my post…
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But it’s not just ME who is saying that about the makers of Oxycontin, the Sacklers and PurduePharma. The court system and the House of Representatives has said that too. Their marketing of Oxycontin was reprehensible and they are responsible for hundreds of thousands of lives lost due to addiction. It’s not debatable. The Sacklers are awful people who should be in jail instead of only having to pay fines. PurduePharma was so bad it was ordered dissolved.
Same with that Pharma-bro Martin Shrkeli who raised the cost of a life-saving drug sky high.
These “jobs” that these people have do not contribute to society. They are worse than worthless. They are causing harm. You could say the same with cigarette manufacturers or vape companies like Juul. There are many more examples of companies and jobs that do not contribute to society.
@Blossom, I am sorry you deal with chronic pain. I know that is no fun at all. My aunt was on Oxy for terminal breast cancer than had metastasized to her bones and was in a lot of pain. Unfortunately her in home aid’s son came in the house and stole some of her Oxy too.
If the Sacklers and PurduePharma were really concerned about society they would have worked on making a drug that was not so addictive and marketed it in such a way that it was not overprescribed. I could not believe it when my daughter had her wisdom teeth out recently that she was given Fentanyl for IV conscious sedation and a prescription for Oxycontin. Crazy! You can bet we did not fill that script.
Tens of thousands of people are prescribed pain killers every day and do not become addicted. Sorry, that’s a fact. I took Oxy, then I stopped. That was several years ago. I don’t walk around wishing I had more Oxy. But I was glad there was a newer drug than morphine (which is also abused) which was more efficacious. I read a study that morphine is the “physician’s drug of choice”, i.e. if a doctor is an addict, he or she is more likely to be addicted to morphine than anything else. Don’t know if it’s true. But are you going to deny tens of millions of people pain relief during and after surgery because physicians have ample access to morphine and become addicted?
I’m not some super human being…but I am not ready to claim that every single person that works for a company whose product can be abused is as evil as you claim. And I don’t think they are “worse than worthless”.
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This might sound like a dumb question, but what does taking pain meds after a surgery have to do with a young adult having a difficult time finding a job with a living wage?
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What jobs do you think don’t contribute to society?
This was the post that started the tangent. I will log off from the thread now…
Not dumb at all, but I think it’s that the seller/maker of the drug, Oxy, does not contribute to society, but correct me if I’m wrong.
Or maybe the connection could be summarized by Mr. Hand’s question to his class at Fast Times at Ridgemont High:
I still don’t get it. How does that relate to the OP’s son trying to find a decent paying job/career in CA?