[HN Gopher] Labor shortage or terrible jobs?
___________________________________________________________________
Labor shortage or terrible jobs?
Author : RuffleGordon
Score : 169 points
Date : 2021-04-30 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (annehelen.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (annehelen.substack.com)
| stakkur wrote:
| _" But what if, she writes, those benefits are actually providing
| a safety net to American workers so that they do not need to take
| terrible jobs for low wages at terrible companies under terrible
| management?"_
|
| Exactly this. A significant part of American business depends on
| cheap, low-overhead labor. America outsources a lot of that
| overseas (both white and blue collar), but fundamentally depends
| on filling shitty jobs and providing as few benefits as possible.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Well, there's a straightforward (I don't say easy) way to fix
| this: you require a high enough minimum wage (and healthcare, and
| sick leave, and etc.). It's not like the restaurant owner has the
| option of just deciding to pay twice or three times the labor
| costs, and trust that their customers will be happy to cover the
| difference, if their competitors don't have to do the same.
|
| Because, those restaurant (and retail and etc.) business owners
| are mostly not the ones making big money. Restaurants, in
| particular, are horribly low margin.
|
| The end result of getting rid of "terrible" jobs, is that
| everything at the restaurant costs 2-3x as much, and so on at the
| many other businesses (agriculture?) which rely on cheap labor.
| Which means all those people in professional class jobs (e.g.
| programmers) will find that their salary doesn't go nearly as far
| as it used to.
|
| Personally, I'm ok with that, I think it's the right thing to do.
| But it's not like it's the small business owners that are
| standing in the way of it; they cannot pay higher wages if their
| competition is not, so it has to be mandated. What's standing in
| the way of it is that this would be, at least temporarily, quite
| inflationary, and we have a professional class that is accustomed
| to not having to pay much for anything except houses.
| toast0 wrote:
| Tying healthcare insurance to employment isn't really the
| direction we want to be going.
|
| When the individual market was terrible, it made sense to push
| employers to buy it for their workers, because you got better
| coverage for less money that way.
|
| Now the state marketplaces are at least mediocre; coverage and
| costs are similar to what you might get as a small or mid sized
| employer. We should be pushing people towards marketplace
| plans, and not trying to continue the employer plan model.
| danaris wrote:
| That seems to be making quite a lot of assumptions--first,
| that even in the better states, costs to the employee are
| similar if they choose to get insurance individually rather
| than through their employer. Even assuming that the cost _to
| the employer_ is similar to the cost I would have to pay out-
| of-pocket to get insurance on the state marketplace, which is
| not a safe assumption, just because I choose to do that doesn
| 't mean my employer suddenly decides to give me all the extra
| money they _would_ have paid for my health insurance in my
| paycheck.
|
| Even if all that were true, it would only be in the better
| states. There is massive variation between the states on
| this, and some have (last I knew) truly abominable plans as
| the only real options.
|
| No; what we need to be pushing towards is single-payer health
| care, the way nearly every other civilized nation on earth
| does it. The market-based system we have is a travesty that
| literally kills people in order to further enrich the richest
| among us.
| indigochill wrote:
| Maybe I'm naive, but this seems to have some significant
| problems:
|
| 1. Yes, everything costs 2x more for professional-class people,
| but also for working-class people. The numbers might get
| bigger, but the impact for those in the position to consider
| these terrible jobs is net nil.
|
| 2. For anything that doesn't require physical presence, the
| more you raise minimum domestic labor cost, the more attractive
| foreign labor looks, so you're also driving outsourcing.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| You would absolutely have to back away from free-trade with
| low-wage countries for this, but in the restaurant/retail
| side of things it's not as big of a consideration, because
| not many people cross borders to do that in a country as big
| as the U.S. But for many industries it is absolutely a
| consideration (e.g. agriculture).
| Clubber wrote:
| "According to "Papa" John Schnatter, the cost of providing
| health insurance for all of his pizza chain's uninsured, full-
| time employees comes out to about 14 cents on a large pizza."
|
| And this is the reason he gave for not supporting ACA. $0.14 a
| pizza. To this day, I struggle to understand the psychology
| behind it.
| paulpauper wrote:
| but that is not a fixed cost though, although it is small
| relative to the price of a pizza
| cosmodisk wrote:
| I think we should be going that direction,where a meal in a
| simple place is expensive enough to support normal wages with
| benefits and whatnot. Because right now, whenever someone
| brings up an argument that people don't get paid adequately,
| there's always the same 'but but the customer won't pay'. We
| all seem to love to have cheap meals, cheap uber drivers and
| cheap cleaners, while at the same time expensive office
| workers, expensive lawyers and doctors. It doesn't need to be
| so extreme on either side.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I agree.
| jolux wrote:
| >It's not like the restaurant owner has the option of just
| deciding to pay twice or three times the labor costs, and trust
| that their customers will be happy to cover the difference, if
| their competitors don't have to do the same.
|
| This feels a bit backwards. We don't know that their
| competitors _aren't_ already paying more, we only know that
| some people can't seem to get labor at the price they were
| paying before. I think the numbers here are currently
| inconclusive, but I conjecture that what we're seeing is small
| business owners losing labor monopsonies that they had come to
| rely on, and consequently a more competitive labor market. Of
| course competition causes upward pressure on prices, that's the
| whole point.
|
| This is tangential but I think America has been too scared of
| inflation for too long. There's nothing wrong with a bit of
| inflation, especially if it means we can get closer to full
| employment. We haven't even been meeting the fed's (very low)
| target for quite a while.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > I think America has been too scared of inflation for too
| long
|
| This is true! The Federal Reserve, since the Carter
| administration, has acted like even the slightest bit of
| inflation is impending doom.
| specialist wrote:
| I've concluded that over steer (over correction) is the
| norm.
|
| My hunch is one big cause is the mismatch of time scales
| between tenure (employment) and policy outcomes. Meaning
| that most policy and decision makers have moved on to new
| roles and jobs before the consequences of their decisions
| become clear. So very little learning can happen.
| [deleted]
| jolux wrote:
| Blame the Phillips curve ;)
| vl wrote:
| Feds tried to induce inflation for the last 20 years, it's
| good for them since they can just print more money. They
| largely failed to do so since dollar is so well propped by
| international demand.
| jfengel wrote:
| Remarkably, since the tail end of the Bush administration,
| it's the opposite: the Fed has desperately tried to get
| inflation up to its 2% target level, and mostly missing.
|
| The reasons are debatable, but I'd argue that it's mostly
| because the mechanisms they're using end up inflating the
| stock market instead of consumer goods.
|
| There are economists terrified of any inflation, but it's
| an attitude that's more popular with some ideologues than
| with mainstream economists. You hear a lot about them on TV
| and the Internet, but not nearly as much in real economics
| talks. Those ideologues punch above their weight in
| Congress, but not at the Fed.
|
| The Fed governors aim for a small, controlled level of
| inflation. Mostly that's to prevent people from just
| sitting on their money: money stuffed into a mattress
| doesn't grow the economy. Money in bank accounts isn't much
| better, since they can be withdrawn at any time. So a
| little inflation nudges people to either spend their money
| or invest it. Such is the theory.
| medvezhenok wrote:
| The reason is quite clear - the Fed cannot transfer money
| effectively to the poor/middle class; it's fiscal policy
| that can do that (and labor unions to some degree, which
| were gutted in the 80s).
|
| Inflation doesn't happen when you give more to the people
| that don't consume (and sustained inflation only happens
| when there is an actual shortage of some good, and
| arguably we have overcapacity for everything today so
| inflation will only happen under either a commodity price
| shock or complete breakdown of supply lines (transitory
| inflation can happen like it is now - from the COVID
| shock))
| jfengel wrote:
| That's absolutely correct, but it has been remarkable the
| way there's been _no_ money flowing to the poor and
| middle class.
|
| Supply-side economics clearly doesn't work, but it wasn't
| totally insane. If money was pumped into corporations
| you'd expect at least some of it to turn into more
| conventional demand. Buy a private jet or a yacht (built
| by workers and maintained by more workers), or start a
| company that pays wages, or something.
|
| Instead, all of the money just gets shuffled among each
| other. It's not just that trickle-down doesn't work; it's
| that it doesn't seem to trickle _at all_. Even to non-
| Chicago economists that 's a little surprising. Chicago
| School turns out to be more than just incorrect, but
| utterly at odds with reality. Rich people simply don't
| behave the way they imagine they do.
|
| About the closest it comes is messing with the real
| estate market -- mostly in the form of pricing lower-
| class renters out. That benefitted the existing
| homeowners, and maybe that's helped stem middle class
| decline a tiny bit, but there are too many other forces
| working against them. Instead, it just trickles more
| money back up.
|
| It'll be interesting to see what happens as COVID eases
| off. That's a very unusual kind of shock, and I'm
| surprised it hasn't been even more economically
| disastrous than it is. Part of it is that the government
| has done a weak form of the right thing, pumping money
| directly to consumers. If not for that we'd have seen a
| deflationary spiral of truly catastrophic proportions.
| medvezhenok wrote:
| "Despite the cacophony of complaints about "ruinous"
| budget deficits and "excessive" monetary growth, the
| headline-grabbing double-digit inflations of 1974 and
| 1979-80 were mainly of the special-factor variety. Only a
| minor fraction of each inflationary acceleration can be
| attributed to changes in the baseline rate; the rest came
| from supply shocks from the food and energy sectors, from
| mortgage interest rates, and from the end of price
| controls--a whole host of special one-shot factors. It is
| precisely this aspect of the recent inflation that this
| paper seeks to document. Since the paper focuses on the
| special factors to the exclusion of the baseline rate, it
| is worth pointing out at the outset that the two
| inflations are not really independent. Inflation from
| special factors can "get into" the baseline rate if it
| causes an acceleration of wage growth. At this point
| policymakers face an agonizing choice--the so-called
| accommodation issue. To the extent that aggregate nominal
| demand is not expanded to accommodate the higher wages
| and prices, unemployment and slack capacity will result.
| There will be a recession. On the other hand, to the
| extent that aggregate demand is expanded (say, by raising
| the growth rate of money above previous targets),
| inflation from the special factor will get built into the
| baseline rate."
|
| This is the difference between the responses to 2008 and
| 2020. The first was exactly the first example from the
| paper, and the second is the latter (expansion of demand
| capacity).
|
| https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c11462/c11462.
| pdf
| prepend wrote:
| This seems pretty simple to me since the special unemployment
| insurance is up to $600/week[0] through at least July 31 it's
| going to be hard to convince someone to work for less than that.
|
| So if it's a choice between $15/hour, steady to not work and
| $18/hour variable to bus tables or whatnot I'm not surprised that
| people choose the $15.
|
| I expect this will be different once unemployment goes back to
| pre-covid and people are forced to make decisions.
|
| Many jobs are terrible, I mean no one wants to be a janitor. So
| when finances allow me to not have to clean toilets and I can
| make a similar amount not doing it, any rational person will
| choose not to.
|
| I'm really surprised that any low wage jobs are able to get folks
| to come into work right now.
|
| It's odd that the article doesn't bring this up as the
| opportunity cost aspect seems like the most important factor in
| the "labor shortage."
|
| [0] https://www.dol.gov/coronavirus/unemployment-insurance
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > Many jobs are terrible, I mean no one wants to be a janitor.
|
| I honestly fail to see how janitor is a terrible job -- being
| in charge of keeping a building in shape, doing the repairs,
| etc.? That seems like a great job to me.
|
| I'd wager most people would have a problem with the pay rather
| than the job itself.
| prepend wrote:
| I don't like cleaning toilets, that's the main blocker for
| me.
|
| Operating that giant floor waxing/buffer machine seems pretty
| cool though but I would not want to be responsible for
| cleaning a bathroom.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| I'm surprised that the article Kottke links to didn't
| quote/acknowledge FDR. Maybe the author just came up with
|
| >We should ask ourselves, our communities, and our government: if
| a business can't pay a living wage, should it be a business?
|
| independently, but it sounds a lot like FDR's [0]:
|
| >It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which
| depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its
| workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business"
| I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by
| workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the
| men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare
| subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
|
| [0]: http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| Maybe one of these days the pro-labor left and the pro-labor
| right are gonna figure it out, stop taking the bait, and we'll
| finally get a real revolution.
| kokanator wrote:
| Revolution is NOT the answer.
|
| Think a bit harder on the problem than to simply cry
| revolution. Swaths of people die, families are destroyed, the
| economy is destroyed, the nation becomes vulnerable ( if you
| still have a nation ). You will have to deal with the problems
| you created before you ever get the opportunity to work on what
| you were originally revolting about.
| paulpauper wrote:
| What about the American Revolution (not that this would work,
| but some revolutions do work)
| kokanator wrote:
| I didn't say they don't work. However, most do fail. My
| point was they come with an extreme cost and in this case
| you may never get to the resolution you are seeking.
| Alternative means are much much more likely to be
| successful.
| mc32 wrote:
| Everyone knows how to make a revolution. The hard work is the
| day after the revolution. The same problems will exist. They
| don't magically go away.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Also what are they gonna revolt about? Immigration and
| automation I can definitely see, but there's nobody but the
| Yang stumping about this.
|
| And then you have the question of what happens when the A and
| C arks leave for Mars?
| cratermoon wrote:
| > pro-labor right
|
| Such a thing does not exist.
| paulpauper wrote:
| how about socially conservative union workers, for example.
| cratermoon wrote:
| By "socially conservative" do you mean opposed to
| reproductive choice, anti-immigration, opposed to LGBTQ+
| rights, opposed to affirmative action, and those kinds of
| wedge issues? Kind of the the inverse of libertarian
| "economically conservative, socially liberal"?
|
| I wonder how much those issues would fade from their
| consciousness if they weren't constantly fed the lie that
| their precarious economic status is the fault of
| immigrants, the cost of social welfare programs, the "gay
| agenda", the "great replacement" theory, and so forth.
| kokanator wrote:
| Greed permeates all parties as it is a human characteristic.
| The point is to create an environment that encourages strong
| businesses and discourages greed. Left or Right.
|
| Are you talking right business owners or politicians.
|
| If you answer both, how many conservative business owners do
| you actually know? I know a number of them and they have
| thriving businesses with well compensated and well covered
| employees that have worked for their businesses for decades.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| lol perfect
| beckingz wrote:
| The company: Cybersecurity Skills Gap! The job: low pay for
| unicorn candidates with 30 years DevSecOps on AWS experience.
| [deleted]
| ajb wrote:
| A similar point was made in Kalecki's 1943 essay:
| https://mronline.org/2010/05/22/political-aspects-of-full-em...
| honksillet wrote:
| There are no such things as "jobs americans won't do". It's just
| you have to compensate people accordingly. With this failing
| stealth UBI experiment that we are currently engaged in, people
| aren't willing to work when many of them are getting near 100%
| the same income not to work. The rest of us are being crushed by
| inflation.
| boublepop wrote:
| A system where people get the same to work as not to work is
| not Universal Basic Income, UBI. Such a system is guaranteed
| basic income. There's a huge difference.
| dmwallin wrote:
| It's unfortunately nowhere near a stealth UBI experiment and
| really just a classic welfare trap, in the vein of so many
| other government programs. There are many bad incentives in our
| unemployment system and it was clearly never designed to be a
| delivery method for long term stimulus.
| paulpauper wrote:
| But inflaiton is very low. yeah, CPI excludes stuff, but we're
| a long way from the 70s and 80s.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _inflaiton is very low_
|
| No it isn't. _My_ rent is up 80% since two years ago. Food
| costs are up 40%. Healthcare is up 200%. Good news though:
| fuel costs are about the same!
| imtringued wrote:
| Aren't you keeping up with the stats? It's the energy
| prices that are currently shooting up.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cpi/
| runako wrote:
| This is not the experience of most Americans. In fact, if
| these numbers are accurate for you I might suggest you
| employ a financial planner to help find alternatives.
| loopercal wrote:
| >My rent is up 80% since two years ago.
|
| There's no major* rental market in the US where this is the
| case.
|
| * - There could be some oil boom in a 300 person town I
| don't know about I guess.
| inetknght wrote:
| Houston, March 2019, my rent renewal was $1500/mo for a
| 12-month lease or $1500/mo for month-to-month or a new
| contract. Houston, October 2020, my rent renewal was
| $1500 for a 15-month lease or $2100/month for month-to-
| month or a new contract.
|
| Okay so 80% is an exaggeration. 30% isn't.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| > _The rest of us are being crushed by inflation._
|
| The top 1% are making more money than ever before. If you're
| holding assets impacted by inflation, you're doing quite well
| now.
|
| If we take it as a given that in a modern, humane society no
| one should starve to death on the street and everyone should
| have access to the basics of survival, then the answer to the
| labor "shortage" is simply to shift some of the historically
| record breaking wealth inequality back down the org chart from
| the executives to the roles that need filling.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| How do you define the basics of survival? In parts of the
| world people live with 2 hamburgers a day, is that what you
| propose? Even $15/hour seems huge compared with basics of
| survival.
|
| Also, there are not enough executives to take from them to
| give to the poor. You need 100 or 1000 times more for that,
| so the executives theme is a straw man.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I would define the basics of survival as:
|
| * Basic groceries
|
| * Healthcare
|
| * Housing
|
| I don't think these things are easy to achieve but they
| seem like obvious goals to societal progress. If not, what
| are we even progressing towards?
|
| > _Also, there are not enough executives to take from them
| to give to the poor. You need 100 or 1000 times more for
| that, so the executives theme is a straw man._
|
| I said if a company wants to fill a role, that they should
| pull from executive pay. The average CEO gets 70-1 the pay
| of the average employee. There is absolutely a surplus of
| capital to pull from to increase worker pay (thus filling
| the role).
|
| https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/ceo-pay
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I would add transportation and communications to the
| "basics of survival".
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from https://kottke.org/21/04/labor-shortage-or-
| terrible-jobs, which points to this.
| [deleted]
| medium_burrito wrote:
| This is super exciting and scary- we've basically gone basic
| income, but with zero planning. We'll see how it turns out.
|
| We're having some price inflation due to supply chain issues.
| Cost of housing is more interesting... should we go public
| housing like Signapore, but contract it out to a country that
| isn't full of morons that cant plan/lawsuit/consult/build infra
| for a reasonable price?
| paulpauper wrote:
| The strength of private sector is helping funding and providing
| this infrastructure , such as Amazon and Walmart, this post
| scarcity we have.
| brightball wrote:
| We haven't though. The key to basic income is that it provides
| a baseline and then you can go to work to earn more money.
|
| With high unemployment pay, you lose that money the moment you
| go get a job so it creates a disincentive to work.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| > so it creates a disincentive to work
|
| This framing can make it come off as though the wages were
| fair to begin with. The consensus seems to be that they were
| never fair. And people in the US are largely tired of the
| government giving handouts to businesses over people. It's
| time for those who reaped disproportional benefits over the
| past 40 years to eat some costs instead.
| brightball wrote:
| > This framing can make it come off as though the wages
| were fair to begin with.
|
| This framing passes the buck for inflation from the
| government onto businesses that have no control over it
| whatsoever.
|
| When the money you have buys less and less, the wages
| suddenly become less and less "fair" without the employer
| doing anything differently. Who's to say that their
| business has increased enough to support the higher wage?
|
| This is, IMO, why basic income is _critical_ because it
| puts the cost of dealing with inflation directly back on
| the government itself, rather than the small businesses
| that are constantly framed as paying "unfair" wages.
|
| If the taxes to support it come from the people at the top
| who've reaped disproportionate benefits...GREAT. But the
| small businesses at the bottom struggling to keep their
| doors open are _not_ the enemy here but they will
| absolutely be the ones that suffer the most from wage-based
| legislation that they can 't afford.
|
| And let's not forget that the moment such legislation
| passes, it just encourages more automation or exporting of
| jobs to other countries where a fraction of the original
| wage is somehow "fair".
| jschveibinz wrote:
| This article unfortunately doesn't address the business side of
| the problem. Fast food restaurants, or place like "Dale's"
| mentioned in the article, make very little profit. It is most
| likely below 10%. Here is an estimate:
| https://www.restaurant365.com/blog/what-is-the-average-profi....
|
| A 10% profit is very modest. That's not the story of the "fat
| cats getting rich on the back of the workers" that the article is
| alluding to.
|
| The problem for the business is that the financial model is set
| by the fixed or imperative costs, i.e. the cost of rent, the cost
| of maintaining the capital equipment, the cost of cleaning to
| meet codes, insurance, etc. The cost of labor, for cooks, wait
| staff, etc. is often the biggest part of the expense budget for
| restaurants.
|
| With such a small profit margin, arbitrarily raising everyone's
| wages is likely going to kill the business. There is no room in
| the budget. The only choice is to either automate, which will
| reduce the labor requirements, or raise prices and hope that
| customers won't just go down the street. But they will, they will
| go down the street--until everyone's prices go up and there is
| nowhere else to go. And all of this is free market capitalism at
| work. It is a continuous process of reinvention.
|
| In short, I'm not saying that higher wages aren't necessary, I'm
| just saying that both sides of the equation need to be examined,
| i.e. the plight of the worker AND the plight of the business. And
| we need to understand that things will probably get ugly before
| they get better. Because that's how capitalism and free market
| economies work.
|
| But watch out for technology and automation...that is the part of
| the equation that has been "solving" the labor problem for some
| time now...
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| I think the effects of price stickiness (on goods and labor)
| aren't being adequately considered in these discussions. Yes,
| these restaurants could raise their wages to compete with
| unemployment, and many have. They'll also need to raise their
| prices, which they have leeway to do, because everyone is
| facing the same costs.
|
| The problem occurs in a few months when the bonus unemployment
| runs out. Then there will be millions more people looking for
| work. At that point, expanding employers will be able to hire
| at lower wages again. They'll also be able to offer goods at
| lower prices. Employers who stepped up to pay higher wages
| won't be able to compete. They'll need to cut prices and cut
| wages or lay people off. That will be painful, which makes
| holding out until wages lower more attractive.
|
| Employers can get around this by offering signing bonuses
| instead of higher wages, but they need to be large to compete
| with unemployment checks, and it may not make sense to do that
| for a few months of work.
|
| These conditions may present a unique opportunity for
| policymakers to increase employment by raising the minimum
| wage.
| [deleted]
| runako wrote:
| > The problem occurs in a few months when the bonus
| unemployment runs out. Then there will be millions more
| people looking for work.
|
| Maybe this won't happen? Unemployment is officially at 6%.
| Better-capitalized firms have hired a ton of people over the
| last year. It's possible that marginal businesses like the
| weaker local restaurants mentioned in this thread will just
| have to adapt.
|
| Besides, given that their jobs are apparently so crappy that
| they are losing employees to the likes of McDonalds,
| certainly they have high turnover. If a labor glut happens,
| they can just lower wages and deal with the resulting
| turnover, which they already know how to handle.
| losteric wrote:
| Real estate prices are also part of the problem, especially in
| urban cores... some Seattle and SF rents are just stupid, to
| say nothing of NYC
| robocat wrote:
| Real estate prices and rent are driven by how much people can
| only just afford it.
|
| If people earn more, they can afford a bigger mortgage, so
| house prices rise.
| fma wrote:
| Yep - which is the appeal Universal Basic Income as Andrew Yang
| proposes...automation is inevitable, have it work for the
| people rather than increasing profits.
| madengr wrote:
| Or stop producing as many people.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| What about franchise fees? Independent fast food restaurants
| basically don't exist in the U.S. anymore. An individual
| McDonalds may be scraping the boundary of profitability, but
| corporate had a net income of $1.5B last quarter[0], or about
| $7,500 _per employee per quarter_ [1]. That's net income, not
| revenue.
|
| [0]
| https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/content/dam/gwscorp/assets/i...
|
| [1]
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/numb...
| simfree wrote:
| Dicks, Burgerville (mostly unionized), Burgermaster, In N Out
| and other regional chains exist, along with a plethora of
| single location independent fast food restaurants.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| All those regional chains you mentioned pay significantly
| better than McDonalds, YUM, etc. as well.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > This article unfortunately doesn't address the business side
| of the problem.
|
| Good! I've been hearing about "the business side of the
| problem" my entire life -- lectured sternly about it, in many
| cases. All while few of the Adults and Experts - people with
| Real Power, in other words - dare even mention some of the
| topics laid out in the link.
|
| > I'm just saying that both sides of the equation need to be
| examined, i.e. the plight of the worker AND the plight of the
| business.
|
| There is no "plight of the business". There's a business that's
| making money, losing it, or breaking even. The people working
| there may feel the consequences, but a business cannot
| "suffer".
| smabie wrote:
| plight: "a dangerous, difficult, or otherwise unfortunate
| situation."
|
| Pretty sure a business can have plight.
| pupdogg wrote:
| Good point, I can think of 1 right away: Toys-R-Us. Miss
| having them around!
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| It was hyperbolic, yes, but only a little, I think. The
| point I was making is that we've drunk a lot of koolaid
| about corporations being legal persons, as having rights,
| etc., such that no one bats an eye at anthropomorphisms
| like "the suffering of a company". My claim is that a)
| those words in that context are anthropomorphisms,
| metaphors, and b) that I don't think we've had much of a
| conversation about the koolaid I'm alluding to. (Outside of
| wealthy educated elites like ourselves, I mean.)
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Maybe we're getting a little philosophical here, but I
| don't believe inanimate entities can experience
| "difficulty" or "misfortune".
|
| Would you say that a rock suffers "misfortune" if it
| topples off a cliff into the sea? Is it "difficult" for a
| glacier to maintain its integrity in the face of global
| warming? Is my car unfortunate to have been scratched in a
| parking lot? (OK, I do believe that last one, but I'm
| anthropomorphising my car to talk about my own human
| misfortune)
| hervature wrote:
| Definitely philosophical. If we can use statements like
| "a business had a bad quarter" and "a business had a good
| quarter" and understand that these mean that the
| financial statements were negative/positive. It isn't a
| stretch to say something like "a business has had 10
| straight bad quarters" is a plight considering a business
| can cease to exist.
| FFRefresh wrote:
| Is a group of people an inanimate entity to you? Are
| there only certain types of groups of people that you
| think are an animate entity?
| ForHackernews wrote:
| If you want to get really pedantic about it, a company is
| not a "group of people": a company is a particular legal
| structure for organising a profit-making enterprise. So
| yes, it is an inanimate entity.
|
| When we say things like "that Lions football team
| suffered a crushing defeat", we're engaging in metonymy
| -- referring to the suffering of _the members of the
| team_ but speaking metaphorically about "the team".
| FFRefresh wrote:
| We'll have to agree to disagree here. I don't think
| whatever arbitrary legal structure there is around a
| group of people somehow makes the organization not human.
|
| For example, I think it's perfectly normalized to say
| "that Detroit Lions team suffered a crushing defeat",
| even though the Detroit Lions are a profit-making
| enterprise.
| conanbatt wrote:
| If a business closes, lots of people lose employment +
| business owners become more employment competition.
| Increasing unemployment wrecks wages.
|
| It is also not free to give unemployment benefits, it
| requires higher taxation which moves the sustainability bar
| higher and more businesses close, etc etc.
| pnutjam wrote:
| You know how people avoid being impacted by a business
| going bankrupt? They don't take jobs there.
|
| Jobs at more stable places are available and people will
| take them. The businesses need to fail or be sold.
| judge2020 wrote:
| 'suffering' for a business is just code for being on a path
| _towards_ the workers suffering the consequences of no
| profit. That might mean not paying shareholders dividends and
| the company 's share price losing value, but not all
| companies are public or pay dividends. If the money runs out,
| suddenly the business can't pay rent or pay the workers and
| thus goes bankrupt. No, the business's feelings aren't being
| hurt and it's not taking any physical bruises.
| ozim wrote:
| Imagine scenario where you have $100k and you can open a
| small restaurant, create jobs, maybe not best jobs but still
| some people will be putting food on the table with your help,
| some students will pay for their collage.
|
| But you count the costs and it turns out you will break even
| in 50 years or if anything goes bad never, like, one bad hire
| will drown you.
|
| You look at Google, Apple, Facebook stocks ... there is
| always a risk but no one got fired for buying IBM right? If
| you put your money in that stocks you don't have to worry
| about bad employees, sanitary inspections, paying rent, bad
| customers.
|
| That is what those Adults and Experts are trying to tell you,
| local business is not some "magic" that makes money or loses
| it. Behind every local business with shitty jobs there are
| people, don't make every business equal to faceless Facebook,
| Google or Apple. Your local pizza shop has an owner who is as
| much an employee as his staff.
| ep103 wrote:
| https://academictimes.com/economic-news-reporting-suffers-
| fr...
|
| No. News sources are focusing on business instead of
| labor's issues, because news statistically favors business
| interests, not labor's.
|
| If your hypothetical business owner is unable to start a
| business without paying a reasonable wage, then that
| business should not exist. And your hypothetical business
| owner should invest in Apple, Facebook, or otherwise.
|
| If this causes less business entrepreneurship, then so be
| it. A business that cannot pay employees is not a business
| that adds value to society, and nothing of value is lost.
| This is a fundamental tenet of capitalism, the same way we
| say that businesses that cannot sell their product also
| deserve to fail.
| ManBlanket wrote:
| The tone of this article also sounded like she was spitting it
| through clenched teeth, which I found to be incredibly
| distracting and defeating to the point the author was
| attempting to make. Was the point small business owners at
| establishments like Dales are facing troubles because they're
| fat-cat capitalist Trumpian Covid deniers whose problems aren't
| valid as such? That's what it sounded like. I look forward to
| when we can have conversations about topics like economics
| without hyperbolic intolerance for outsiders serving an
| ultimately unproductive narrative that has been driven into the
| ground.
|
| I live in Missoula. I am a regular customer of Black Cat Bakery
| and I can see them struggling. I will tell you this article
| largely ignores probably the biggest problem faced by laborers
| in Missoula at the moment. This city is amid a dire housing
| shortage, expedited by lack of new construction and a migration
| of buyers from more lucrative economies. It is truly a seller's
| dream market and as such the availability of rentals has fallen
| through the floor. You'd be lucky to find a 1 bedroom right
| now.
|
| My wife and I bought a home here a little over a year ago and
| were fortunate to find the nut who, "didn't need a realtor,
| what with craigslist." Before then we had been outbid 5 times
| previously, during which we offered up to 30k above the asking
| price. Frankly, we wouldn't live here if we didn't get lucky.
| Our experiences weren't unique at the time and it has only
| gotten worse. I regularly hear of houses selling for 50K over
| listing price to people buying sight-unseen.
|
| Frankly I don't care what the owners of Dales or Black Cat
| Bakery think about Covid or whether they voted for Trump. I
| really, sincerely, don't care. I only hope for the best for
| their business and their employees. I know what it's like to
| struggle here, I did for years and I still would be if not for
| dumb luck and a bit of privilege. The problems these people
| face are complicated and difficult to solve. I can only hope
| people will come to understand if we truly care about solving
| problems, then we have to put down the tribalism and
| intolerance for those with different views and focus on the
| matter at hand.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> But they will, they will go down the street_
|
| But... why? To save a couple bucks on a burger? This is a
| serious question.
|
| Is this really how consumer behavior works in the restaurant
| industry? Restaurant food _isn 't_ actually a commodity. A
| burger from one place can be quite different from a burger at
| another. Even at the low end -- I much prefer McD's to the
| other fast food joints. Atmospheres can be very different as
| well, even at the low end. Etc.
|
| This is not at all how I behave. I have two local bars. I like
| both way more than all the other bars. I have one local brunch
| place I like way more than all the other brunch places. All 3
| places can & have increased prices. In one case substantially.
| I go anyways.
|
| Granted, I have more expendable income than the average
| American. But this is even how I behaved when I was on a pretty
| tight budget during grad school -- a few regular places and I
| went as much as I could within my budget.
|
| Maybe I'm just a weirdo?
| djbebs wrote:
| Price changes do work...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Maybe I'm just a weirdo?
|
| Yes. The data clearly shows the vast majority of the
| restaurant business be a low margin, high risk venture. That
| must mean a majority of the customers are very price
| sensitive.
|
| I can easily afford to pay double and triple what most
| restaurants charge today. But I'm not going to pay it because
| I can easily make a meal at home of better quality for less,
| just have to add in my time and energy.
|
| Moreover, I don't trust restaurants to not cut corners most
| of the time due to the volatility of their business.
|
| But that's all personal preference. I suspect most people
| just have limited budgets, so increased prices means less
| times they go out.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> The data clearly shows the vast majority of the
| restaurant business be a low margin, high risk venture_
|
| I think what I was suggesting was that perhaps restaurants
| as an industry have systematically under-estimated
| consumers' willingness to pay.
|
| You see this in software pricing discussions a lot,
| actually: small shops that leave _a lot_ of money on the
| table by not charging enough. Is it really so crazy to
| imagine that restaurants might be doing the same thing?
|
| _> That must mean a majority of the customers are very
| price sensitive._
|
| It's this "must" that is always asserted but... I think
| might not be as true as we assume?
|
| I am not a restaurant owner, so what do I know.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Restaurant owners aren't leaving money on the table
| because they're charitable people. There's so many
| restaurant openings and closings for so many decades that
| I think it's a pretty good indicator of their price
| dynamics.
|
| Software is B2B many times and has efficiencies of scale
| that restaurants don't.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| I'm not suggesting thy are charitable. I'm only
| suggesting that they are not omniscient.
|
| _> There's so many restaurant openings and closings for
| so many decades that I think it's a pretty good indicator
| of their price dynamics._
|
| This may well be true.
|
| But I mean, if this were the case, a common failure mode
| for restaurants would be full tables right up until bust,
| right? Low prices due to unprofitable margins would mean
| lots of demand. Losing money on every head, but lots of
| heads.
|
| But, IME, in my area, restaurants that fail in the first
| year or two do not fail in that modality. They usually
| have some of the lowest prices, but empty seats none-the-
| less. Because the food isn't good, or the menu is weird,
| or they don't do marketing right, or the location is
| wrong, or a million other things. But in my area at least
| I basically never see restaurants will full tables fail.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| People often open restaurants as a hobby project. They
| like the idea of running a restaurant, maybe because they
| like the idea of being sociable or cooking for other
| people.
|
| But they literally have no idea how to run a _profitable_
| restaurant. Often they know next to nothing about
| business in general, and have no idea how to estimate
| costs /profits.
|
| Plenty of other business types operate on a similar semi-
| amateur basis, including book shops, record stores,
| independent garages, hairdressers and beauty parlors,
| craft and art shops, realtors, and others.
|
| Sometimes they get lucky, or they're started by people
| who have actual business talent and can deal with
| challenges creatively.
|
| But often they don't, which is why they fail.
|
| Many also pay very poorly. Both super-professional and
| super-unprofessional owners can nickel-and-dime their
| employees, but for different reasons.
|
| Failure is bad because these kinds of small businesses
| often add life to a community. But there's little or no
| support or training for them. It wouldn't take much to
| help them avoid the more obvious mistakes, give them more
| stability, and turn them into more of a local and
| national resource.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| > With such a small profit margin, arbitrarily raising
| everyone's wages is likely going to kill the business.
|
| There have been past minimum wage hikes, and that's not what
| has happened. The costs get passed onto consumers.
|
| Of course, there's presumably some hypothetical minimum wage
| that would be too high and destroy the industry, but the
| amounts being discussed in the US are below what other
| countries have already tried.
| nickff wrote:
| Your second sentence is debatable, as it appears that many
| European countries have high enough minimum total
| compensations (including benefits and other indirect costs)
| that unemployment is relatively high, and it can be very
| tough to get on the economic ladder.
| rbg246 wrote:
| But equally a poverty wage job doesn't get you on the
| ladder it makes you an indentured servant.
| nickff wrote:
| The company I work at has hired a number of employees
| whose only previous work was very low wage, and that (low
| wage) experience definitely weighed in their favor.
| pnutjam wrote:
| Maybe we need some sort of wage floor or mandatory
| "minimum"...?
| michael1999 wrote:
| Firms in a competitive market are price takers. None of them
| individually can raise prices. But an increase of the minimum
| wage increase affects all of them together, and will cause a
| new equilibrium at higher prices.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| That assumes no substitutes, but in reality this will
| increase the relative cost of restaurants compared to home
| cooking which will reduce demand for take out.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > This article unfortunately doesn't address the business side
| of the problem.
|
| She actually addressees this in the very last paragraph:
|
| > if a business can't pay a living wage, should it be a
| business?
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| If a business can't pay a living wage, the workers will die
| off and the problem will be solved.
| djbebs wrote:
| Yes? I dont understand how this is a question.
|
| If a businesa is in operation profitably it is because it is
| providing more value than if it were not, otherwise it would
| not be able to remain in business
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| If a business is operating profitably by paying people
| wages below the cost of living, it is being subsidized by
| the government and therefore is not independently
| profitable in any meaningful sense.
| rbg246 wrote:
| I don't think anyone is saying that these sorts of companies
| have lots of money.
|
| These business have a model that relies on poverty wages
| changing the minimum wage will disrupt these businesses greatly
| and I don't see a problem with that.
|
| You can't keep a broken thing going because of the businesses
| that will have to change their model.
|
| But sorry I also see your point there needs to be help to
| business to change their business.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| I'm of the opinion that if you're business model relies on
| paying people so little that they don't even want to work for
| you, maybe that business _shouldn't_ be viable. No one is
| forcing you to own a business, just like no one is forced to
| work for you.
| RGamma wrote:
| ITT: Americans being afraid of social market economy
| [deleted]
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I just wanted to comment on the photos of the sonic drive-thru,
| with the sign that basically shames their employees. "People
| don't want to work." No, people don't want to work _for sonic_ ,
| a company that pays its car hops tip wages and then leaves no
| mechanism to tip with a card in their unnecessary touch screen
| kiosks, a company that charges extra for ketchup. Imagine getting
| paid 2.15 an hour to hear the 10th person today complain about
| having to ask for ketchup with their fries, and only getting tips
| on cash purchases, something exceedingly rare. I've never worked
| for this company, I never would, nobody should, and I can't wait
| to hear the impending news that the company is filing bankruptcy,
| I will throw a party.
|
| Beyond that, there's too much noise in this article about
| "capitalism" and "BIPOC" and in reality what's happening is a job
| market going _back to_ normal, where people actually have
| options, rather than the extended "recovery" of the great
| recession where people had none.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Neither.
|
| If employers really wanted more workers, they'd up wages.
|
| If employees really wanted to work they'd settle for less.
|
| If neither is happening then everyone is happy and anyone
| complaining is a liar in the economic sense.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If neither is happening then everyone is happy and anyone
| complaining is a liar in the economic sense.
|
| The complaining is an economic act in itself - employers
| whining about "unable to find workers" usually get political
| help as a result, either in the form of tax breaks/other
| subsidies or in the form of relaxed labor laws/enforcement
| (e.g. loosening the requirements to fire someone, reducing the
| amount of inspection for undocumented workers).
| xondono wrote:
| This. Everyone is trying to milk the government for "support",
| especially if they can get it in cash.
| colpabar wrote:
| Why shouldn't they? The government taxes everything it
| possibly can, and for the past year the government has put a
| ton of restrictions in place that caused a lot of people to
| lose their jobs. It is now time for the government to start
| using those taxes to provide the safety net it promises us.
|
| If the pentagon can "lose" 125 billion dollars
| ($125,000,000,000), I really don't care that people with the
| ability to "milk" the gov for cash are taking advantage of
| that ability. It's their own money in the first place!
| intergalplan wrote:
| Seriously. I'd rather "deadbeat Johnny" down the street
| milk the government for a few hundred a month than
| Halliburton milk them for $50,000,000,000. At least he's
| gonna spend a fair bit of that money locally.
| xondono wrote:
| I'm not saying they shouldn't. I'm just saying you should
| not be surprised of their complaints.
| Clubber wrote:
| I mean, every year the government milks me, and it certainly
| is in cash.
| Jiejeing wrote:
| But who even wants to work for a minimum wage job for the
| pleasure of it?
|
| The corporation needs labor, but the employee need money, not
| labor (but it happens that most common way for normal people to
| earn money to live is through labor).
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| The people with jobs paying taxes aren't very happy to support
| freeloaders simply taking unemployment because they don't want
| to work.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I feel happy enough with the situation. No one should be
| forced to work a shitty job imo.
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| Well I'm not. Now there's two anecdotes to work with.
|
| I worked a shitty job to get through college, it's a
| stepping stone.
|
| These jobs aren't meant to live on. They should be used as
| part time jobs for people transitioning in their careers,
| like students.
|
| When you give handouts to people who don't want to work you
| are not doing them any favors. They become reliant and
| trapped in that loop.
|
| That's not to say there shouldn't be a safety net with
| strict qualifications. You're doing no service to the
| people who need it by allowing those who don't.
|
| We should be spending money creating new, better paying
| jobs, not new social programs.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I pay taxes and I'd be super happy if my money went to
| support people in this country without jobs. It would lower
| crime and increase the quality of life for everyone living
| here. I could also be one of those people someday.
|
| Unfortunately many of my tax dollars go to fund a military I
| find ethically abhorrent instead of improving the quality of
| life in the US.
| [deleted]
| iaw wrote:
| I pay my fair share of taxes and I'm happy to support
| 'freeloaders' when they're unemployed and need support.
| Especially if it leads to a universal living wage from
| employers.
|
| Don't speak for me please.
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| I'm speaking for me and those I know. My response was to GP
| saying everyone is happy. I am not.
|
| Also, I'm not talking about the people who need support,
| I'm talking about the people taking advantage and staying
| on unemployment because they don't want to work.
| scollet wrote:
| I may be missing what you mean by "taking advantage" but
| isn't that the point? Like taking advantage of a life
| raft after going overboard.
|
| If someone chooses to not be employed and it brings them
| basic needs and recuperation, then I see the system
| working well.
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| You shouldn't be able to "choose to not be employed",
| someone else is picking up the slack for you and you are
| taking away benefits that could be used on someone that
| NEEDS it (disability, elderly, etc.)
|
| When others see that you can just give up and get paid,
| they will also become burnouts.
|
| Eventually you will run out of other people's money.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I wish this logic was more frequently applied to large
| corporations and their externalities or to the military.
| How much money was flushed down the drain to develop
| dubious weapon systems like the F-35 or to clean up
| messes like Deepwater Horizon. Yet when we give ordinary
| people some money suddenly it's a moral failing on their
| part and we're "picking up the slack".
|
| Here's an idea: next time there's an oil spill, lets take
| the money for cleanup out of the executives' bank
| accounts (and investments, and properties) before we dig
| into the public coffers. _Then_ we can talk about
| freeloaders at the bottom.
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| I do too, but currently the opposite logic is being
| applied to unemployment benefits. Maybe there will be an
| article about those shady defense contracts and eco
| projects but that's not the topic.
| mc32 wrote:
| Apparently close to 30% of household income right now is from
| government payments. I think on average people are getting the
| equiv of $15/hr from gov checks. So for people to want to work
| it's going to have to exceed that by some non trivial amount.
| intergalplan wrote:
| > Apparently close to 30% of household income right now is
| from government payments
|
| How much is it normally? Definitely not 0%. Also, what's
| "government payments"? Does it include wages to government
| employees, for instance?
|
| (I expect the figure is higher than normal, I'm just not sure
| from this _how much higher_ )
| mc32 wrote:
| It does not include wages. These are "welfare/unemployment
| benefits" These are spikes. During the last recession it
| spiked into the teens. Before that it was lower. So, yeah,
| it's a lot of money.
| intergalplan wrote:
| Ah, OK--if so then the total share of all household
| income from all government sources must be well over 50%
| right now, no? Wages, pensions, (including military, in
| both cases, and state and local government) Social
| Security, et c.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Ultimately, this is a problem with all government benefits
| with an strict binary income limit. The result is that, in
| some circumstances, earning 1 more dollar results in losing
| thousands of dollars. The marginal income tax system was set
| up this way for a reason.
|
| If these unemployment benefits were paid out UBI-style,
| regardless of current employment, there wouldn't be a
| disincentive to find work.
| petre wrote:
| > earning 1 more dollar results in losing thousands of
| dollars
|
| They might either go out of business or automate those
| roles if they can't afford to pay blue collar workers a
| living wage. I'm not a socialist, but some business do rip
| off low income workers. So they might as well cease to
| exist if they can't find workers to rip off, instead of
| claiming that _people are lazy_.
| christophilus wrote:
| > The result is that, in some circumstances, earning 1 more
| dollar results in losing thousands of dollars.
|
| I think your new marginal rate only applies to anything
| over the limit that bumped you into a new tax bracket, so I
| don't think this is right. A raise always gets you more
| money.
|
| The exception being if it bumps you out of the government
| assisted healthcare bracket. Then, a raise could indeed be
| a loss.
|
| Edit: I thought you were talking about income tax, but you
| might have been talking about business subsidies, which I
| know nothing about.
| somebodythere wrote:
| They are talking about welfare benefits. Many of these
| are structured so that the marginal dollar you earn
| results in $0.75 to $1000+ being taken away from you in
| benefits.
| paulpauper wrote:
| but much of that temporary.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I'm a brit so I'm far from an expert but I though you kept
| the US covid payouts whether you worked or not? (unless you
| earn something like 400k a year)?
|
| Sorry if I'm missing your point...
| jpindar wrote:
| The three individual "stimulus checks" went to everyone
| whether they worked or not.
|
| But in addition, unemployed people have been getting
| unprecedented amounts of weekly Unemployment Insurance
| payments. In normal times, you can only get these for a few
| months while proving that you are actively looking for
| work. During the pandemic, these have been extended and
| greatly increased, and the government has mostly stopped
| checking whether people were really looking for work. The
| normal rules are going to go back into effect soon, though.
| itronitron wrote:
| There is also a nasty waiting game that is playing out right
| now. Employers don't really want to hire people that need a
| paycheck as those people, if hired, are more likely to ask for
| more sooner. So employers have no incentive to advertise higher
| wages for an open position because they will just get more
| applicants from people who 'need money', not necessarily better
| applicants.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I don't think a lot of people work in fulfillment centers,
| construction, fast food, or retail because they love the job.
| Most people are there because they "need money". If employers
| think otherwise they have been drinking too much of their own
| coolaid about "passion".
| gred wrote:
| Given the surge in online shopping and the blue-collar labor
| shortage (not really a shortage, just wages triplicating within 1
| or 2 years), logistics automation is in overdrive right now. Many
| of these jobs won't be available to come back to (at any price)
| once the helicopter money runs out.
| macinjosh wrote:
| If this is happening it is truly a good thing. I have always felt
| that the best way to have improvements for entry-level labor is
| if they just refused to take the shitty jobs and the market
| turned on employers. What employers refer to as shortages aren't
| really that at all. The truth is that the labor market is just
| not in their favor as it typically is.
|
| I do not think it is ideal that the alternative option being
| utilized is government handouts. I'd rather people have the
| mindset to, for example, run their own hot dog stand on the
| street instead working for a fast food chain. But
| entrepreneurship is not easy for everyone.
| cratermoon wrote:
| It's not even the shitty entry-level labor that is underpaid.
| There's plenty of examples of companies offering $15/hr for
| mid-career jobs requiring some post-secondary education.
| djfobbz wrote:
| I'm not too sure about that one! I've seen some entry level
| laborers getting paid $10/hr to sleep in their car. I don't
| think "Sleeping in your car" is a valid job description for any
| business.
| neilwilson wrote:
| Business should always have to compete for labour. That way there
| is an incentive to replace labour with machines and better
| processes - which is where increased standard of living comes
| from.
|
| However there is a problem. The 'standard job' is now gardening
| leave with a wage, which any other job has to compete with. And
| what that leads to is a 'dead zone gap' in the wage structure
| between the 'standard job' and the next reasonable job (say
| working 9-5 Mon-Fri with full benefits, close to home). A private
| employer has to pay a much higher wage than the payment for the
| 'standard job' to get people to work for their 'reasonable job'.
|
| (You get the same between unemployment benefit and the 'minimum
| wage' in many countries).
|
| However we could have everybody earning the living wage working
| for a publicly provided 'reasonable job' at a living wage, which
| would mean the that the private employer would only have to pay a
| penny more per hour to get the labour they need.
|
| The most efficient construction is when the 'standard job' and
| the 'reasonable job' are the same. That eliminates the 'dead zone
| wage gap', and allows people to smoothly move between public and
| private jobs, increasing the efficiency of the use of labour -
| all without exploitation.
|
| And those business that can't deliver a profit with this system?
| Well they get to close to make room for better businesses that
| can.
|
| Business is there to serve people, not the other way around.
| bradlys wrote:
| I find this is true even within software. There is a large
| complaint about not enough engineers. There are enough engineers
| - it's just that you won't pay enough for them for the given
| locale! If every startup started compensating like FAANG, they'd
| have no trouble finding talent.
|
| Personally, I've had to go through this recently where I received
| 5 job offers. All well below what I'd consider "market" rate.
| They were all lower than past offers. Basically, companies are
| being very cheap with equity and/or salary. If you live in SF and
| are a senior engineer, giving equity that only matches FAANG when
| the company hits an absurd valuation that will likely never come
| is just not going to get people to come. Why bother? Whole point
| of startups is that you could _earn more than faang_ if you get
| lucky enough. It shouldn't be that you just match FAANG if you
| get lucky.
| luckylion wrote:
| > If every startup started compensating like FAANG, they'd have
| no trouble finding talent.
|
| That can't work. Current talent is a zero-sum game. You offer
| more, you get someone to switch over to you, somebody else
| offers more still and takes that person from you.
|
| You might attract more future talent to the industry by
| offering more, but since software developers already make 2-10
| times the average, I doubt that people think "you just can't
| make money in software, I'm going to do something else".
| thunfischbrot wrote:
| Meh - I see one of the benefits of working outside of FAANG and
| other enterprises to work on something you trule believe in.
| Who truly loves working on improving the returns on online
| advertising to extract more money out of people's pockets?
| mywittyname wrote:
| I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. There
| are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below zero, long term,
| when you factor in the external costs associated with working,
| such as needing transportation. These jobs have been propped up
| by debt.
|
| It looks like the pandemic has put and end to this.
| Transportation costs have skyrocketed to such a degree that it's
| basically impossible for a poor person to even get a car, because
| they are going to be outbid by a not-poor person who is willing
| to pay a lot more for the same crappy car because of shortages.
| Repair shops are having issues getting replacement parts, so even
| maintaining a vehicle is getting difficult.
|
| We built our economy on exploitation, and now the exploited have
| been drained dry. So now we have to either pay up or do without.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Another thing: if the job pays just enough to disqualify you
| from state-run healthcare (medicaid, etc), but not enough to
| pay out-of-pocket for health insurance, the only logical step
| for many is to not work.
|
| This is especially the case for part-time jobs which do not
| provide healthcare.
| gruez wrote:
| >I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages.
|
| Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 * 8 hours = $58. It's hard to
| imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day,
| especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas
| the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Can you elaborate on this? $7.25_ 8 hours = $58. It 's
| hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day,
| especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas
| the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.*
|
| Wow can you be any more out of touch? Your comment is
| offensively innaccurate.
|
| $58/day = $1740 for 30 days
|
| Unhealthy cheap carbs for a single person... $200/month
| (chicken, beans, rice, milk, cheese, bread)
|
| Shitphone with basically no internet for a single person...
| $40/month (who needs internet anyway)
|
| Fuel for a single person... $200/month (assume 2 tanks /
| week)
|
| Rent for a single person... $1400/month far (+fuel)
|
| Health insurance because you have two or three shit part-time
| jobs: $400/mo
|
| Vehicle insurance on an old vehicle: $300/mo
|
| It's hard to imagine someone who's so out of touch with
| reality that they think they can get away with claiming
| minimum wage is higher than $7.25 in high cost of living
| areas. In Houston, Texas the minimum wage is ... $7.25/hr.
| Cost of living here isn't approachable to minimum wage.
|
| This doesn't even _start_ to pay for taxes, retirement
| investments, medical emergencies, vacations, legal disputes,
| education costs, or heaven forbid having family.
|
| What numbers are you using for your costs?
| gruez wrote:
| >Unhealthy cheap carbs for a single person... $200/month
| (chicken, beans, rice, milk, cheese, bread)
|
| >Shitphone with basically no internet for a single
| person... $40/month (who needs internet anyway)
|
| >Health insurance because you have two or three shit part-
| time jobs: $400/mo
|
| >Rent for a single person... $1400/month far (+fuel)
|
| These are all sunk costs. You need them regardless of
| whether you have a job or not. You seem to be talking about
| your general finances (ie. your expenses > your income),
| whereas I interpreted mywittyname's comment as saying that
| the job itself is a net loss (ie. your cost of getting the
| job > your income from job).
|
| >Wow can you be any more out of touch? Your comment is
| offensively innaccurate.
|
| _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| inetknght wrote:
| > _These are all sunk costs. You need them regardless of
| whether you have a job or not_
|
| They're not sunk costs if you literally don't have money
| to pay for them.
|
| > _Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._
|
| Your argument _wasn 't_ in good faith. You're saying that
| minimum wage is a livable wage which is a demonstrably
| false statement. Then you're also claiming that the cost
| of living is a sunk cost.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I think a better phrasing of his argument would be "if
| you take that job, the _additional_ costs will not
| outweigh the income you get from that job ". Put in
| another way, your net surplus after a month will be more
| with the job than without, irrespective of whether it is
| actually positive.
| gruez wrote:
| >They're not sunk costs if you literally don't have money
| to pay for them.
|
| Food isn't optional. Getting a job that pays you money
| which you spend on food doesn't magically make the cost
| of food a cost of getting the job.
|
| >You're saying that minimum wage is a livable wage which
| is a demonstrably false statement
|
| I made no such statement. Please point out where you
| think I made that statement.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Food isn 't optional. Getting a job that pays you
| money which you spend on food doesn't magically make the
| cost of food a cost of getting the job._
|
| Most people aren't able to get food without money
| obtained from a job. So unless your food is provided
| elsewhere then getting a job that pays you money which
| you spend on food _does_ magically make the cost of food
| a cost of getting the job.
|
| > _I made no such statement. Please point out where you
| think I made that statement._
|
| > _$7.25_ 8 hours = $58. It 's hard to imagine expenses
| adding up anywhere close to $58/day*
| gruez wrote:
| >Most people aren't able to get food without money
| obtained from a job. So unless your food is provided
| elsewhere then getting a job that pays you money which
| you spend on food does magically make the cost of food a
| cost of getting the job.
|
| That makes zero sense from an accounting point of view.
|
| >> I made no such statement. Please point out where you
| think I made that statement.
|
| >> $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses
| adding up anywhere close to $58/day*
|
| 1. I'm not sure how you're getting "minimum wage is a
| livable wage" from that comment.
|
| 2. you seem to be fixated on "expenses" meaning living
| expenses (eg. rent, food, clothing, etc.), whereas I was
| only talking about expenses related to getting the job
| (eg. transport). This was pointed out several comments
| ago.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> That makes zero sense from an accounting point of
| view._
|
| If your point of view prevents you from understanding
| that people need shelter, food, and clothing in order to
| not die, and must be alive in order to work, then your
| point of view might not be sufficient.
| inetknght wrote:
| > $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses
| adding up anywhere close to $58/day*
|
| > _I 'm not sure how you're getting "minimum wage is a
| livable wage" from that comment._
|
| The comment you replied to stated:
|
| > _There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below
| zero, long term, when you factor in the external costs
| associated with working, such as needing transportation._
|
| Transportation is just a single one of those costs.
| Nobody in their right mind is going to get a job that
| they recognize won't pay for their _expenses_ and many
| people consider more expenses than just transportation.
|
| > _I was only talking about expenses related to getting
| the job (eg. transport)._
|
| That wasn't clear and is no doubt where our discussion
| went astray
| gruez wrote:
| >many people consider more expenses than just
| transportation.
|
| You (and other people) seem to think that food, housing,
| and healthcare is an expense in getting a job, but that
| makes zero sense from an accounting point of view. This
| is trivially proven with a thought experiment: let's say
| you were unemployed and had $2000/month in "required"
| expenses, and a job offered you $1000/month. Are you
| going to turn down that job because it "won't pay for my
| expenses"? Of course not, even though you're still losing
| money from an overall cashflow perspective, taking the
| job still provides you a +$1000 improvement to your
| financial situation[2].
|
| [1] although I suppose you would need less calories if
| you didn't work, but I think that's safe to ignore
|
| [2] for simplicity we can ignore government subsidies
| that gets cut off when you exceed a certain amount of
| income, or unemployment.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _that makes zero sense from an accounting point of
| view_
|
| Well the world doesn't work like your armchair
| accounting.
|
| > _a job offered you $1000 /month. Are you going to turn
| down that job because it "won't pay for my expenses"?_
|
| $1000/month is _less_ than that minimum wage. So I'll
| assume it's indeed a part time job.
|
| Taking that job means 4 hours less time each day looking
| for a better job because you're busy with this part time
| one. Not only 4 hours less for work, but another 1 or 2
| hours each day because now you're driving to and from
| that job. So 6 hours less each day. That's an expense.
|
| Now that you're working it also means being less eligible
| for any government assistance. $1000/month to work 4
| hours/day while taking $800 less government assistance
| comes out to... a net of $200/month. For 4 hours/day of
| work and an additional 2 hours/day for transportation.
|
| If you look at the raw money, you're making more money.
| Homelessness is on the horizon and inching ever closer
| even if it's approaching slower.
|
| Are those 6 hours to you really worth your time when you
| could have spent those 6 hours trying to find an even
| better job?
|
| And when you _do_ reach homelessness, is that $1000
| /month job going to continue employing you?
|
| I think that's the dilemma that the commenter at the
| start of this thread posits. Jobs are "available" but
| they're not sustainable. And people are turning down
| $18/hr stressful part-time jobs because they _can 't
| afford them_.
| gruez wrote:
| >Well the world doesn't work like your armchair
| accounting.
|
| ah yes, just slap "armchair" in front of something to
| invalidate someone's position.
|
| >Taking that job means 4 hours less time each day looking
| for a better job because you're busy with this part time
| one
|
| >Are those 6 hours to you really worth your time when you
| could have spent those 6 hours trying to find an even
| better job?
|
| The money you "earn" searching for a job is highly
| variable, and I don't see any attempts at quantifying it.
| If you were recently employed for $4000/month, your time
| might very well be spent looking for a job rather than
| taking the next min. wage job, but if you were unemployed
| for 6+ months and your previous job only barely paid
| better than minimum wage, the ROI is probably not there.
|
| >Not only 4 hours less for work, but another 1 or 2 hours
| each day because now you're driving to and from that job.
| So 6 hours less each day.
|
| Aren't part time jobs closer to "8 hours a shift but you
| come a few times a week" rather than "4 hours a shift but
| you come in 5 days a week"?.
|
| >Now that you're working it also means being less
| eligible for any government assistance. $1000/month to
| work 4 hours/day while taking $800 less government
| assistance comes out to... a net of $200/month. For 4
| hours/day of work and an additional 2 hours/day for
| transportation.
|
| Thank you, that's the type of numbers I was looking for
| in the original comment.
|
| >And when you do reach homelessness, is that $1000/month
| job going to continue employing you?
|
| Would you rather be on the streets in 10 months or 5
| months? The choice seems clear.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Aren 't part time jobs closer to "8 hours a shift but
| you come a few times a week" rather than "4 hours a shift
| but you come in 5 days a week"?._
|
| Maybe. "A few times a week" can mean "I need you to come
| in tomorrow and I don't care if that conflicts with your
| second job." It becomes a risk.
|
| > _Would you rather be on the streets in 10 months or 5
| months? The choice seems clear._
|
| The problem's been going on for months. Homelessness is
| significantly increased over the past year. The choice
| made seems clear.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| To me it looks like you two are talking past each other.
| In fact, I think you're both right. gruez point can be
| summarized as "if you're having a minimum wage job, your
| loss at the end of the month is smaller compared to
| having no income at all" [0], which is a possible
| interpretation of the comment that sparked this thread
| [1]. This is also the reason he does not account for
| food, while you do. Your (inetknght's) point is that
| "with a minimum wage job, you'll make a loss at the end
| of the month". As far as I read it, gruez actually _doesn
| 't_ try to make the point that a minimum wage job is
| sustainable, so there's no contradiction.
|
| [0] Compared to, for example, driving for Uber, where at
| the end of the month the cost for car+fuel+maintenance
| might cost you more than you earned, increasing your net
| loss.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26995335
|
| This line in particular:
|
| > There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below
| zero, long term, when you factor in the external costs
| associated with working, such as needing transportation.
| bena wrote:
| I have a problem with your basic starting point.
|
| You say $58/day for 30 days. That's working the whole month
| with no days off. That's not anybody's life that I know.
|
| It's better to estimate 168 hours per month worked. That's
| 4 full-time work weeks of 5 days a week plus an extra day.
| With 12 months in the year, you're still effectively short
| a few days, but it's close enough.
|
| So $7.25 * 168 is $1218
|
| Let's ignore every other expense. Let's say you walk
| everywhere, use the library for internet, whatever.
|
| Average rent is roughly that.
|
| You are fucked from the start to just put a roof over your
| head. That's also assuming that job is 40 hours a week.
| Giving 8 hours work, 8 hours sleep, you have 72 hours left
| over. Some of that time will be dedicated to commuting,
| hygiene, eating, etc. You might be able to swing a second
| full time job, but that's just your life from then on.
|
| Also 2 tanks per week, that's insane. Even when I was
| driving 50-ish miles each way, I was getting gas about
| twice every three weeks. With a daily 100 mile commute, I'd
| say my fuel costs were in the neighborhood of $100 per
| month.
|
| Your insurance is also way out of whack. Old cars have
| cheaper insurance. I have a 2017 model and pay $700-ish
| every 6 months. And it wasn't much worse when it was new.
| j1elo wrote:
| > Vehicle insurance on an old vehicle: $300/mo
|
| Wow. In Spain you would pay between EUR150 to 200 _per
| year_ of insurance for the typical old cheap car. 400 /year
| for a nice, semi luxury one. I knew some things were
| expensive in the States, but this particular one surprised
| me a lot.
| simfree wrote:
| Depending on the car and where you live insurance can be
| lower or higher. Outside of collector/classic car
| insurance policies (eg: this is not a daily driver car
| and you agree not to exceed a low number of miles yearly)
| or parked insurance (a few hundred miles a year), there
| is not $200 to $300 a year car insurance in the USA.
|
| Tribal reservations don't require license plates or
| insurance usually, and you cab choose to self insure if
| you have sufficient cash set aside.
| tedsanders wrote:
| It's not typical in the States. I own a new vehicle, have
| comprehensive insurance, and pay Geico ~$60/mo. I suspect
| that someone paying $300 for an old vehicle has either
| (a) an expensive low-deductible plan, (b) a driving
| record with past insurance claims, or (c) an expensive
| old car.
| grandmczeb wrote:
| A lot depends on the state, type of coverage, driving
| history, and which company you use. The average range in
| Texas is ~$45-165/month depending on coverage[1]. I
| personally pay a bit over $50/month for a 2010 Honda
| Accord in California.
|
| I wouldn't take the costs listed in the parent comment
| literally.
|
| [1] https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/states/
| aliceryhl wrote:
| Couldn't you do without the car? I've heard that the US has
| bad public transport, but is it really that bad?
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| If you live anywhere with public transit that's complete
| enough and reliable enough to get you to work on time,
| you're paying more in rent to make that happen. It might
| be cheaper but not by a lot
| seoaeu wrote:
| Doing that could easily add an hour (or in particularly
| bad cases, two hours!) each way to your commute. Some
| people do make that tradeoff, but it seems really
| unpleasant.
|
| The big issue is that transit accessibility is priced
| into rent, so while parts of US cities might actually be
| reasonable to get around with public transportation,
| you'd never be able to afford to live there with a low
| income.
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's lots of places with OK service, if you measure by
| overall coverage it's pretty bad.
|
| Like https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detr
| oit/2016... is about a guy that caught the attention of
| the internet because he couldn't take public transit to
| his job.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I'm glad I don't have to fit my expenses into a minimum
| wage budget, but some of your numbers are pretty high.
|
| I buy gas once every 2 or 3 weeks and spend $45 on a phone
| plan with 4 GB of LTE (US; I guess that can fit the
| definition of basically no internet). My car insurance
| (with collision and unlimited medical) is less than $500
| for 6 months.
|
| I would probably balk at paying much more than $800 in
| rent. The rental market here is pretty thin (I think part
| of it is I don't know where to look), but I see a listing
| for $1100 for a 4 bedroom house. Electricity+water+gas
| would be in the range of $250 for 1 person (and less for
| several as heating is a major utility cost here).
| inetknght wrote:
| > _but some of your numbers are pretty high._
|
| Cost of living across the US varies wildly. The numbers
| are pulled from my most recent billing cycle for Houston
| and partly extrapolated to minimum wage (which I am most
| definitely _not_ , but have friends who are).
|
| My rent is $1500/mo for 920sqft inside the 610 loop. The
| leasing office wanted $2000/mo for new contracts in
| October last year.
|
| It's _really_ hard to find places for $800 within a 30
| minute drive of any office in Houston. _All_ of my
| friends have the same problem. I 'm looking to buy a home
| for a similar reason.
|
| Living far enough out to have rent reduced to $800 is
| offset by increased amount of time driving and therefore
| increased costs in fuel. So I bought gas twice a month
| before the pandemic with a 5 minute drive to the office.
| When I lived 30 minutes out, I bought gas twice a week.
|
| Car insurance depends a lot on vehicle, driver age, etc.
| $300/mo was quoted to some younger family last summer --
| they were outraged because it was half-again their car
| payment. I pay $600/6-mo.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Are people doing office work for $7.25 in Houston?
|
| I agree that prices vary widely, I'm not sure it makes
| sense to take expensive places as typical.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I don't know where you live, but _you 're_ the one that is
| out of touch. 2 tanks a week? 200 bucks a month for shit
| tier food? Ever heard of cooking? 1400 a month rent?
|
| I've spent time in Houston, on minimum wage, and in the
| past decade. It was alright. I even had the money to go out
| drinking every weekend, by Rice university at that. Usually
| when you hear arguments like this and you get down to brass
| tacks, you start to hear the arguments that allude to the
| real culprit, things like "I should be able to have extra
| money for fun" which usually translates to "I blow my money
| on things I can't afford and then blame the world for being
| broke."
| jolux wrote:
| >It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to
| $58/day
|
| Well thankfully we don't have to imagine, people have
| researched this: https://livingwage.mit.edu/. According to
| these data, the living wage across the US in 2019 was $16.54:
| https://livingwage.mit.edu/articles/61-new-living-wage-
| data-.... So it's not at all inconceivable that the federal
| minimum is a poverty wage, in fact it almost certainly is.
| gruez wrote:
| But that has nothing to do with GP's claim? GP was talking
| about your "net pay is below zero", meaning that the job
| itself pays negative. eg. you get paid $50/day but spent
| $55/day to earn it. Your comment seems to be about the
| minimum wage not being able to sustain a given living
| standard, eg. you get paid $50/day but you need to spend
| $55/day to survive.
| colpabar wrote:
| First off, it's not $50 per day, because you're probably
| paying income tax. But let's assume it is.
|
| Second, it's not really "per day", that's an average.
| Most bills recur monthly. Assuming a month of four weeks,
| and working 5 days per week, that's 20 * $50 = $1000 per
| month. Doesn't that seem like an extremely low number to
| pay for rent, transportation, food, health care, kids,
| utilities, etc? I pay more for that in rent every month.
| gruez wrote:
| >seem like an extremely low number to pay for rent,
| transportation, food, health care, kids, utilities, etc?
|
| everything in that list except for transportation are
| sunk costs. In other words, you're paying for those
| regardless of whether you have the job or not.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _you 're paying for those regardless of whether you
| have the job or not._
|
| ...unless you're not paying for those because you
| literally don't have any money.
|
| So yeah, food is a sunk cost, sure. But that sinking will
| kill you without a job.
| gruez wrote:
| >...unless you're not paying for those because you
| literally don't have any money.
|
| That's not how accounting works. If you got a FAANG job
| that paid $300k/year, then proceeded to blow $60k on a
| tesla, your net pay for the job isn't $240k.
| inetknght wrote:
| Right, but at that minimum wage job you're not going to
| blow that $60k on a Tesla. You're not even going to blow
| $10 to go _look_ at a Tesla. You 're going to blow $2k on
| a root canal because your food is crap and your medical
| coverage is worse.
|
| Also, that $60k on a Tesla for the FAANG worker amounts
| to a small percent of the worker's disposable income. But
| that $2k amounts to over 100% of the minimum wage
| worker's disposable income.
| gruez wrote:
| > Right, but at that minimum wage job you're not going to
| blow that $60k on a Tesla. You're not even going to blow
| $10 to go look at a Tesla. You're going to blow $2k on a
| root canal because your food is crap and your medical
| coverage is worse.
|
| Way to miss the point. Whether the item is a tesla or a
| can of beans is irrelevant. The point is that if
| previously you couldn't afford X, after getting a new job
| you could afford X, then you can't say that X is a
| cost/expense of getting the job.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _The point is that if previously you couldn 't afford
| X, after getting a new job you could afford X, then you
| can't say that X is a cost/expense of getting the job._
|
| Sure I can if X is a basic necessity of life.
| jolux wrote:
| What point are you trying to make? The federal minimum
| wage is not enough to cover people's expenses, whether
| those expenses come from holding the job or not is
| irrelevant as to whether such a situation is
| "sustainable." This feels like pedantry.
| danaris wrote:
| They're not "sunk costs", they're "basic necessities".
| They have to be paid for every month (or whatever
| period), so if a job doesn't provide enough money to pay
| for them, _it is not paying a living wage_.
|
| You can't just say "they need those to live" as if that
| absolves you of explaining _how to pay for the things
| they need to live_.
| jolux wrote:
| I read their comment differently than you did, but even
| if I hadn't I don't quite understand your objection. By
| definition if you're spending $55/day to survive, you're
| spending $55/day to earn your pay, if nothing more. The
| situation you describe is not sustainable either. Please
| clarify.
| mywittyname wrote:
| First off, you need transportation to work. In most of
| America, this means, you need a car, gas, insurance, and
| maintenance.
|
| Secondly, you need uniforms. These are often paid for out of
| your check and come from companies that have pretty
| comfortable markup.
|
| Then you have the "expensive to be poor items" Such as
| getting your paycheck on what amounts to a Visa gift card,
| because cheap employers are transitioning to payment services
| that offload the cost of associated with payroll onto the
| employees. These cards have relatively high maintenance fees,
| and charge for things like actually getting your money.
|
| That's not even getting into shit like, "split shifts" where
| you have to work a few hours, take a multi-hour break, then
| work a few more hours. This means that you have to stay at
| work for 8 hours, but only get paid for maybe 4-6 of them.
| While you could leave, it would cost you money to do so.
|
| I've gone through this with younger siblings over the years.
| One in particular was a delivery driver, and factoring in
| cost of their car, the only reason they thought they were
| making money was because they were hiding the depreciation on
| their car through very long car loans and were not paying for
| the insurance coverage they should have been.
|
| Most low wage positions are only possible because they are
| subsidized by someone else, maybe it is a parent who lets
| them live rent free, or they subsist on credit card debt and
| payday loans to handle emergencies.
| slv77 wrote:
| Unlike capital equipment a business doesn't pay for the cost
| of replacing labor as it ages. The cost in the US of raising
| a child is about $250,000 or about $3 per hour over 40 years.
| Businesses expect a pool of qualified and educated labor but
| don't pay for childcare expenses.
|
| Employees are expected to have reliable transportation to get
| to the employers place of business but they do not cover
| transportation expenses. The cost of $400 a month for
| reliable transportation works out to $2.50 per hour.
|
| Employees are typically required to have work appropriate
| clothing. In the US this cost has often been pushed to
| employees. In some cases even tool costs have been pushed to
| employees.
|
| Employees have wear and tear on joints due to repetitive
| movements which will eventually have to be treated. Machines
| need maintenance and businesses are expected to pay the costs
| but with labor that is pushed back to the employee.
|
| The economics of minimum wage only work short term for people
| who are young, healthy and with no children where experience
| gained will lead to a higher paying job in the near future.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| I think the classic example of this is the pizza delivery
| driver (or now the gig economy food delivery driver).
|
| The driver might think "I made $100 today, great!", but they
| generally don't have a good sense for their total expenses.
| Sure, they know how much gas cost them this week, but they
| don't know how much the next auto repair will be, or how much
| depreciation they're incurring on their vehicle. And when
| their auto insurance goes up because they've been driving so
| many miles, that's out-of-pocket too - no employer is picking
| that up.
| joelfolksy wrote:
| True. Of course, that only scratches the surface of why
| it's a terrible job. In many locales, policies that cover
| commercial driving are prohibitively expensive, and the
| majority of drivers are effectively uninsured (often
| without realizing it). It's not a stretch to say that
| insurance fraud is a core part of that industry's business
| model.
| jfengel wrote:
| Is it really that hard to imagine?
|
| For starters, you don't want to have to work every single
| day. If you work 5 days out of every 7, you only have $41.43
| to spend per day.
|
| The average cost of a studio apartment is over $900 a month.
| That's $30 per day. Even if you get roommates, that's going
| to cost you at least $15 per day.
|
| That leaves you $26 a day to spend on food, clothing,
| hygiene, Internet access, electricity, transportation, health
| care (since most minimum wage jobs don't include it), and all
| of the other expenses of life. And then pray you don't get
| sick -- even with health insurance you're now losing income.
|
| It adds up fast. There is basically nowhere in the US that
| this is a living wage. At best you can barely scrape by with
| no margin for error -- and certainly no money to spend on
| training for a better job.
| gruez wrote:
| >The average cost of a studio apartment is over $900 a
| month [...] That leaves you $26 a day to spend on food,
| clothing, hygiene, Internet access, electricity,
| transportation, health care
|
| Seems like we're talking about different things. I was
| talking about the net gain/loss from getting a job, whereas
| you're talking about your overall living situation.
|
| See my reply to jolux's comment.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26996114
| [deleted]
| kristjansson wrote:
| Your replies down thread indicate an extremely narrow
| interpretation of 'expenses' here, namely only those
| financial costs directly related to employment. Taking that
| interpretation, you're probably correct that nearly all jobs
| offer net-positive pay counting only the those inputs from
| the employee. You're right that someone with better off in
| immediate financial terms with basically any job than no job.
|
| However, that's something other than the 'sustainable' wage
| in the GP comment, since that doesn't count costs of the
| labor input! Each of us has only so much labor to sell in a
| given month, and need to get enough in return to support, you
| know, continuing to live and sell our labor. Sure, being
| employed at wage that does not provide a basic level of
| dignity is less worse than being completely destitute, but
| it's a bit disingenuous to argue that being less-worse-off is
| 'sustainable'.
| woopwoop wrote:
| I think his (gruez's) interpretation is the obviously
| reasonable one, and I'm not sure why he's getting bashed so
| severely here. Note that op made the claim that "net pay"
| was literally negative, which seems to comport totally with
| the interpretation given, and not at all with an
| interpretation of "sustainability" referring to a living
| wage.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > propped up by debt
|
| Payday lenders make a killing on exploiting this.
| drdeadringer wrote:
| I worked on a (US) Naval shipyard for a spell.
|
| The number of payday loan shops in the immediate surrounding
| area was astounding. I kept hearing word of "Don't Do Payday"
| financial help training for the Naval crew, who apparently
| were a prime target for the industry. Before working there, I
| had little idea such existed.
|
| Think "worse than 'cash your cheque here'" places.
|
| I don't know how many Naval folks I worked with took in to
| these places, but every time I passed one I frowned and shook
| my head.
| myself248 wrote:
| Some years back, I was on a jobsite where radios were
| allowed, and we rotated through the crew, everyone playing
| deejay for a day, so everyone's taste got represented. Some
| guys would bring in a stack of CDs, some would just play
| the radio. It meant I listened to a few stations I don't
| normally listen to.
|
| And the density of payday loan ads, on some stations but
| not others, blew my mind. I don't think I ever heard one on
| the classic-rock station (their stock in trade was
| testosterone ads, apparently), but they were at saturation
| density on the R&B station.
|
| Payday loan places have always been scum, but that really
| opened my eyes to the deliberate exploitation aspect. This
| is targeted.
|
| It's good to hear that there's financial training for the
| Navy. I wonder if there's anything similar out in civilian
| life that we could support?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > that we could support?
|
| One of the most effective anti-poverty programs the
| government could do is teach basic accounting and finance
| as core curriculum in the public schools.
| cratermoon wrote:
| That sounds like victim-blaming. People are poor because
| they can't balance their checkbooks?
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| There's another aspect: there's a horrible lack of common
| decency and respect by supervisors and managers of low-wage
| workers. Having worked menial data entry, warehouse, grocery
| store, fast food jobs, I've interacted with far too many
| stressed-out and abusive/abused bosses who cannot cope with the
| razor-thin timelines with minimal workforce (which seems to be
| the norm) and ultimately exhaust this irritating heat onto
| their subordinates and fail to show a minimal amount of respect
| to their employees to the degree of hostility and abuse.
|
| This isn't so much of an "all bosses suck" trope (I am happy
| and lucky to be at a healthier work environment at the moment).
| The sense I have is demands from the top continue to be more
| and more unrealistic as decisions are made to cut costs without
| truly thinking about it may start to rot the foundation
| beneath.
|
| In my case, $18 sounds like a lot of money, but I wonder if
| this just means the work will be exponentially more stressful
| and unhealthy.
| motohagiography wrote:
| It's like people don't understand how their wages impact the
| price of the goods they are producing.
|
| The problem is domestic producers can't compete against the
| actual terrible jobs with poverty wages that foreign producers
| pay. The trade off is binary. Either you put tariffs on cheaper
| foreign goods and protect your economy from predatory countries,
| or you tolerate downward wage pressure. There is no middle
| ground. It's such a simple and established reliable dynamic that
| even politicians can understand it.
|
| Our democracies have chosen cheap stuff and downward wage
| pressure, with the spoils going to the people who manage the
| capital flows. It's not a right/left thing either, as both sides
| cynically advocate and exploit globalization to inflate those
| capital flows.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| You're describing the effects of imperialism on the working
| class of the imperialist countries, a point we communists make
| all the time.
|
| It absolutely is a left/right thing, it's just that the
| imperialist countries have largely managed to exclude politics
| left of centre.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Occasionally, Twitter provides some nice insights in digestible
| forms (of course, nuance gets stripped).
|
| I saw a post recently that said something like "We watch Star
| Trek and marvel at their post-scarcity world. We are living in a
| post-scarcity world now, but all the benefits are being funneled
| by wage slaves up to the 0.1%."
|
| Paraphrased.
|
| I was talking with a friend who mentioned that a local pizza
| place is offering *$18/hr* for bussers at the restaurant. To me,
| that is a great wage for someone to wipe down tables and sweep
| floors. If they're still having trouble filling that, is it
| because making $37k a year in Texas isn't good enough for a no-
| education, no-experience job? Is it because the high-schoolers
| who would normally do that aren't looking for jobs due to
| pandemic? Is it the unemployment security and not having to
| actually do work 40 hours a week?
|
| I wonder if the roles of people at restaurants will have to
| shift, so each person does some of everything, and get paid more,
| instead of having dedicated low-wage cleaners. Or that profit-
| sharing and healthcare may be the new model for restaurants.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Profit sharing and healthcare are the minimum people want to
| keep do the same crappy jobs in hostile environments with
| creepy, violent, or domineering managers. The jobs have gotten
| harder, people have more bills, and pay hasn't budged. Some
| introspection by the "job providers" would be greatly
| appreciated as they complain about labor shortages.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| I won't argue your overall point but I will point out that the
| "sweeping and wiping down tables" are the easiest parts of that
| job and a small fraction of the labor that is done.
| stakkur wrote:
| > _is it because making $37k a year in Texas isn 't good enough
| for a no-education, no-experience job?_
|
| Maybe it's because it offers no meaningful health insurance, is
| most likely _not_ full-time (such a job rarely is), and has
| little long-term promise.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| > Is it because the high-schoolers who would normally do that
| aren't looking for jobs due to pandemic?
|
| The concept that entry-level food service is mostly staffed by
| high-schoolers who don't really "need" the money is the
| weirdest trope. Basically every restaurant is open during
| school hours. Who is handling the lunch rush?
| rednerrus wrote:
| The kids who just graduated and don't have other prospects.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| My high school had a thing where students could work during
| school hours. My sister did it.
| pydry wrote:
| Almost as if the trope were a pretext for why it's ok to pay
| shit wages.
| minimuffins wrote:
| When an objectively flimsy discourse like that circulates
| widely you have to ask yourself what its actual function
| is. Its apparent function of describing the world
| accurately is not being fulfilled, but the discourse
| persists, so what is its less apparent function (and you
| got it: it's to naturalize exploitation)?
| nondeveloper wrote:
| I worked in food service jobs during high school on the
| weekend. I graduated a semester early and worked full-time in
| food service for a few months, too. Not a bad option and
| pretty common at my school c. 2010.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Yeah, I worked in hospitality my entire 20s in a major
| American city, only ONCE did I work with an actual HS
| teenager and that was at a middle-brow Mexican place and his
| family knew the owners, and he only worked weekends. Great
| kid though.
|
| Also, most places serve alcohol and teens can't serve.
| leetcrew wrote:
| it's pretty common for the second shift to start right around
| the time highschool gets out. or if it doesn't, the manager
| might be flexible. dinner rush doesn't usually start until
| 6:00 or so. there's also the weekend.
|
| obviously highschoolers are not filling 100% of entry-level
| food service jobs, but they make up a pretty good chunk of
| these workers along with some college kids. it's a good
| option for someone who has literally no work experience.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Except it's not really a good option. Maybe a high schooler
| should be focusing on school.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Finally someone said it. High schoolers toiling away in
| dead-end jobs is not necessarily 'good'. They can be
| learning skills that generate a higher long-term ROI.
| gruez wrote:
| >Maybe a high schooler should be focusing on school.
|
| How do you feel about college students working part time
| during their studies?
| paulpauper wrote:
| only if they need the $ and there is no other option .
| the ROI from a high GPA and good grad school, makes the
| extra $ from a crappy part-time job insignificant.
| leetcrew wrote:
| imo this is one of those things that makes sense on paper
| but doesn't work out in real life. the extra lifetime
| earnings from a first job in hs/college are indeed
| insignificant. the value of a job is that, for many
| teenagers and young adults, it is the first time they
| have to navigate an environment that isn't specifically
| designed to cater to their needs. this is how most of
| life is when you finish school.
| rednerrus wrote:
| For a lot of kids, if they don't have a job in high
| school, they don't have any of the things they want. When
| I was 14 I had a job so I could buy the things my parents
| couldn't afford which was almost everything. I wanted new
| shoes and new clothes so everyone wouldn't know how broke
| we were. I wanted a car when I turned 16 and I knew the
| only way that was going to happen was if I worked for it.
| I didn't like not having money in my pocket when all of
| my friends did.
| jolux wrote:
| I didn't work in food service but I did work a service
| job (supervising children, teaching robotics, and hosting
| birthday parties for kids) in high school. I did not
| manage to save any of the money I made, but I definitely
| learned a lot from the experience. Namely: most people
| have no respect for service workers, and some people seem
| to have active contempt for them. Quite unpleasant. I
| don't think high schoolers should have to work for a
| living, but then again I don't think adults should
| either. However, I do think the experience of working
| service jobs is one that more people should have.
| nondeveloper wrote:
| Maybe. But I learned a lot of useful skills working that
| weren't taught at school. And working, along with sports
| and clubs, kept me out of trouble. I tell my partner all
| the time that when we have kids they're getting jobs in
| high school.
| leetcrew wrote:
| okay, it's a good option if you want/need work and you're
| a highschooler. I guess we could debate whether it is a
| good thing for a highschooler to have a job in the first
| place. that's going to depend on the situation. if you're
| working tons of hours to support your family instead of
| keeping up in school, that's going to hurt your long-term
| prospects. if you're working a couple shifts a week so
| you don't have to ask your parents for $20 to go to the
| movies with your friends, I'd say that's an important
| step towards independence. you learn a lot of stuff at a
| shitty job that you can't learn in school.
| seibelj wrote:
| Honestly - working crap retail and food service jobs
| during high school was as much (or more) valuable
| education than what I learned in school. Certainly
| motivated me in college to study and work hard. The value
| of working is not only in the money earned, and I will
| force my children to get part-time jobs during high
| school.
| minimuffins wrote:
| I feel similarly, but I think a big part of that is that
| my schooling was so bad. Ideally I'd have not had to work
| and actually been learning something (and that's the goal
| I have for everyone, as a collective political desire).
|
| On the other hand, I notice people who didn't have to
| work as kids and went straight into college and
| respectable white collar jobs usually have absolutely no
| idea how the rest of their fellow citizens actually work
| and live, so I'm thankful for the perspective.
| [deleted]
| ryan93 wrote:
| Why make your kids earn a profit for someone else? They
| should be learning and hanging with friends. You didnt
| learn more working fast food than in school. You hated it
| which motivated you. Not everyone needs to experience
| fast food to know its not a great career outcome.
| runako wrote:
| > If they're still having trouble filling that, is it because
| making $37k a year in Texas isn't good enough for a no-
| education, no-experience job?
|
| It's most likely because somebody in the area is paying more
| and/or offering a better job.
|
| Is it really $37k, or is it an $18/hr job? That is, are they
| offering $18/hr for 40 guaranteed hours a week for 52 weeks, or
| is it just a few hours a day during the dinner rush (unless
| they send me home early because of a light evening)? Can they
| tell me today what hours I will be working 2 weeks from now, or
| do they usually disclose the schedule a day or two in advance?
| Are there any benefits? In other words, is it a typical
| restaurant job?
|
| I personally would prefer (say) $16/hr with a guaranteed 40
| hours and predictable schedule to a typical restaurant job. Now
| that big employers like Target, Amazon, etc. are in the $16
| range, they may offer jobs that pay a lower hourly rate but are
| more compelling overall. (The Amazon warehouse in Fort Worth is
| paying nearly $18 and they have nonzero benefits and are
| unlikely to run out of hours.)
| paulpauper wrote:
| Such signs are somewhat misleading. it does not mean the
| restaurant is in urgent need of work. it is more like, we have
| a position open, please apply. You may be hired, but likely
| not, as many other people applied for it, and we need someone
| who can meet our stringent requirements. They may not even have
| a position open and instead are looking for an ideal employee
| who meets these criteria, which means someone else may be
| fired.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| To me, no education, no experience jobs are the norm.
|
| Does that restaurant pay incoming career food service staff a
| wage sufficient to raise a family on?
|
| A solid third of the _households_ in the US take in under 50k
| /yr. More than half that are under 25k. I don't know about you,
| but 37k doesn't go far.
|
| Assuming 30% effective tax rate that's 2158/mo.
|
| 1 bed flat in my city $1400
|
| Cell phone bill: $100
|
| Home internet: $100
|
| Electricity: $50
|
| Heating: $50
|
| Healthcare: $230* assuming 50% sponsored
|
| Car payment: $400
|
| Insurance: $130
|
| Without including food, dental insurance, deductible, OOP
| limits, retirement contributions, emergency savings, and
| anything at all for pleasure I've exceeded my budget. So,
| please, tell me more about how that's a good wage. How can
| someone go about improving ones position in life if they're
| kicked into a world that they'll never be able to afford?
| Should I go to college as an adult and get into eye watering
| levels of debt that'll follow me out of bankruptcy to keep
| bussing tables, like all the people that do just that? How can
| I juggle my full time job, side hustles at uber and lift (to
| keep the lights on), and a full course load? There are
| structural problems in society that no amount of blaming poor
| peoples bad decisions can wave away. Simple fact is some people
| with very large waists are going to have to tighten their belts
| so the millions of Americans whose only mistake was being born
| poor can have half of a fair chance at success and lead a
| modest yet dignified existence. There's no incentive for any
| halfway intelligent poor person to go to college unless they're
| a glutton for punishment, have a strong $upport network, and
| massive appetite for risk.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I should have been more clear, but I didn't have coffee yet.
|
| $18/hr being "great" was meant to compare to what I hear
| people tend to make in that position, not that it is
| objectively great as a living wage for a family.
|
| My post was a little twist-and-turn - I was thinking about
| two related things, one being the tactical issue of wages in
| food service, and the other macro issue about the fact that
| this country has enough wealth in it for everyone to be well
| taken care of.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| 30% is _way_ to high an effective tax rate at that income.
| Below median earners pay effectively zero taxes with the EITC
| and standard deductible.
|
| $400 is way too high for a car payment. You can get a great
| used compact for $10k. With decent credit that'll run you
| $150/month.
|
| $100 is way too high for home Internet. I pay $40/month for
| 100 mbps, which is more than enough for five decides to
| stream simultaneously.
|
| $1400 is too high. A low earner should be saving money by
| getting a roommate. I can easily find rooms for rent in my
| medium COL metro for $700/month. Heck, I can find one bedroom
| houses _for sale_ where the PITA mortgage is well below
| $1400.
| prepend wrote:
| These are just hypothetical numbers but I think the problem
| here is that people are resourceful and work to change or
| reduce these expenses. Everyone's story varies, but it's
| pretty common to address these with:
|
| Rent- get a roommate or rent a room instead of a one bedroom
| flat. Rent is reduced from $1400.
|
| Use a prepaid phone plan to reduce from $100.
|
| Use a slower speed or share internet to reduce from $100.
|
| Motorcycle or cheaper car to reduce from $530.
|
| These aren't impossible problems and are things that are
| really common to deal with. I worked with people in Manhattan
| who slept three to a bed. That obviously sucks but assuming
| that every single person should have a one bedroom flat with
| their own car and luxury internet and phone is not as good an
| assumption that people will adjust their spending.
| majoram wrote:
| Thanks man, you really understand. Good post.
|
| It's sad to say, but the pandemic was lifechanging for me.
| With the unemployment benefits I received, I was able to save
| up some money and had time for myself to start thinking about
| what I needed to do before the money disappeared into rent. I
| applied for the local community college and trying to get
| financial aid here in California, and if it works out, I'll
| "only" pay like $3.5k for each of the two years. If they
| don't give me financial aid, it's time to give up lol. I
| wouldn't have been able to afford even entertaining this idea
| before, because all the money disappears into living
| expenses. The pandemic saved me...the only way for someone
| like me to get a higher education, is for a global pandemic
| to happen at 24 years old haha.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| The bottom 99.9% in America enjoy healthcare, communications,
| caloric intake, political freedom, public services, education
| and safety from violence unprecedented in human history. By
| almost every metric society is better off now than it was in
| the 1950's, 1800's, etc. The over-focus on the negative propels
| us toward greater collective good - up to a point. We would do
| better as a society to revert to a mean that expresses some
| recognition and gratitude for the progress made. We're sowing
| the seeds of our own destruction via economic, racial, ethnic
| and class tribalism.
| pydry wrote:
| Worse than 20 years ago but sure, better than the 1800s.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The existence of smartphones alone makes life much better
| than it was 20 years ago.
| pydry wrote:
| Sure, I mean, you might be priced out of a home but you
| can play flappy birds.
|
| So that's something.
| r-zip wrote:
| Strongly disagree. The existence of smartphones has
| accelerated the development of social media, which
| negatively impacts people's mental health and children's
| attention spans. Their popular adoption has also driven
| the growth of disgusting surveillance ad-tech. Blegh. I'd
| gladly go back to using a Garmin GPS and carrying a Nokia
| if it meant that we didn't have all the accompanying
| garbage.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/rise-
| patients...
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| I wouldn't really call fighting for living wages for the
| working poor "economic tribalism."
| Communitivity wrote:
| I think the problem may be that many companies increase their
| prices to whatever the traffic will handle for needed items.
| For example, the $600 cost of epi pens.
|
| "$100 in 1980 is equivalent in purchasing power to about
| $321.45 today, an increase of $221.45 over 41 years" -
| Source:https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1980 This is
| a 68.89% decrease in spending power.
|
| For comparison, the minimum wage in 1980 was $3.10, and minimum
| wage today is $7.25, and increase of 233.87%.
|
| By rights the minimum wage should be able to keep up, with that
| big of a disparity. The problem is that purchasing power figure
| takes into account an average over all things. The ten cheapest
| cars in 1980 all had a base price under $5k (source:
| https://blog.consumerguide.com/cheapest-american-cars-1980/).
| Then ten cheapest cars in 2020 were, other than 1 exception,
| all below $17k (source: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g
| 29414710/10-cheapest-...). That's a decrease in spending power
| for cars of ~70%.
|
| For median family single home in 1980, $55k. In 2020, $300k.
| (source: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/). A decrease
| in spending power of 86%.
|
| The majority of the US is facing a huge discrepancy in the
| decrease of spending power amongst big ticket items, the
| increasing lease-economy, and unprecedented debt. There is also
| a sense of entitlement at avoid certain menial jobs in some. As
| a result a $7.25 minimum wage is not going to cut it, as that's
| only $14.5k per year, well below the poverty line of $26.2k for
| a 4 person household (2020). Double it to $15k/hr and you still
| are just barely above the poverty line, forcing both parents to
| work full time, or one parent to work two jobs.
| gruez wrote:
| >For median family single home in 1980, $55k. In 2020, $300k.
| (source: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/). A
| decrease in spending power of 86%.
|
| Inflation-adjusted monthly mortgage payments (the _actual_
| price that matters when it comes to housing) has actually
| gone down since 1989. This is on top of houses getting
| bigger.
|
| https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/03/what-if-housing-
| pri...
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| $18 for how many hours?
|
| Most "pizza places" will not hire someone full-time. They want
| part time employees so that they do not have to deal with
| benefits.
|
| Now, the intelligent thing to do as a nation would be to
| offload those benefits to the government so that companies
| would be free of the extra work AND employees would be free to
| move to better jobs... but America is not the land of the
| smart.
| OldTimeCoffee wrote:
| I hear this a lot, but it's really not true. Most "pizza
| places" are small businesses (<50 FTE), so they aren't
| required to offer benefits anyway.
|
| They want part time employees because it offers scheduling
| flexibility. If all you have is full time workers and someone
| calls out sick, you're short a person. If you have mostly
| part time workers, you can call everyone not scheduled that
| day to see if they can come in. Office jobs don't really have
| this because it's typically not critical that the employee is
| there.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Not sure about the US,but here in Europe,or Britain,to be more
| precise, many places expect you to do cleaning, serving tables,
| etc. All this 'joy' for minimum wage+a few pennies more.
| Apparently all the hospital sector is struggling to hire
| because people either moved abroad or went into more stable
| sectors,so now newspapers are plastered with articles how poor
| restaurants can't hire.
| flybrand wrote:
| > We watch Star Trek and marvel at their post-scarcity world.
| We are living in a post-scarcity world now, but all the
| benefits are being funneled by wage slaves up to the 0.1%."
| cratermoon wrote:
| > $37k a year in Texas
|
| Where in Texas? On average for the state, that's only a living
| wage for a single person with no kids.
| https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/48
| csours wrote:
| With apologies to William Gibson "The post-scarcity future is
| already here - it's just not very evenly distributed."
| TimPC wrote:
| Average Income in the US is $68,703 which certainly doesn't
| pay a mortgage in most big cities. So I think post scarcity
| is a tad optimistic. If nothing else there is always going to
| be a shortage of non-apartment housing where people want to
| live.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| Maybe the pizza shop would get a stronger response if they
| hired permanent workers on an annual $37k salary? An $18/hr
| wage is not identical....
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Yeah, $18/hour sounds less appealing if it comes with an
| unpredictable schedule and uncertain hours from week to week.
| I used to work retail, and it was rough trying to attend
| classes not knowing when I might get called in for a shift.
| _wldu wrote:
| But then they'd have to provide benefits (like health
| insurance, parental leave, etc.) and treat workers with
| dignity and respect. In America, that's unlikely to happen
| without government regulations enforcing it.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| Is it the same for restaurant workers in Europe?
| scotu wrote:
| to be fair, nowhere that's likely to happen without
| government regulation where there is profit to be had
| otherwise.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| We aren't actually living in a post scarcity world though.
| We're moving in the right direction, and hopefully we get there
| soon, but there is still plenty of scarcity.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| We would move faster towards post scarcity if businesses were
| economically incentivized to uptake automation faster (and
| then we tax businesses [1] to fund social safety nets).
|
| If we continue to encourage an economic system through policy
| that is satisfied with labor making wages that provides a
| dystopian poverty level of life quality, it will take longer
| to arrive post scarcity. Economic incentives matter!
|
| [1] https://blog.samaltman.com/american-equity
| pydry wrote:
| Worse, a lot of what is considered postscarcity / precursor-
| to-fully-automated-luxury-communism already in here is simply
| the US hegemony discount.
|
| And that won't last forever.
| seiferteric wrote:
| Not even close, maybe if we ignore the obscene externalities
| baked into everything we consume. This apparent bounty we
| have today will be short lived in the grand scheme.
| gonational wrote:
| Timeline of Stupidity A: "we should give
| everyone free money!" B: "no, that'll make everyone
| lazy..." A: "no, people will work on things they love
| instead!" [everyone gets free money] [nobody
| works, everyone plays video games all day] A: "see, this
| proves that everyone was being exploited!" B: [smh]
|
| Plato's Five Regimes. We're entering the fourth regime.
| petre wrote:
| Video games are considered e-sports in South Korea and some
| people do get paid to play them. Imagine a full stadium with a
| few guys playing games and the audience watching them on big
| screens.
| gruez wrote:
| You're technically right in the sense that some people do
| play video games for a living, but you're still wrong because
| GP talked about "everyone" playing video games for a living.
| just like you can't have everyone being
| actors/writers/musicians, you can't have everyone be esports
| players. There's only so much attention to go around, and the
| overwhelming majority is captured by a few at the top.
| luckylion wrote:
| They don't "play games" in any common meaning of the term
| though. It's not entertainment, it's work. It's not intended
| to pass the time, they train long hours to get better. Very,
| very, very few people do that, because it's not fun, it's
| work.
| [deleted]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Ok, but at some level of automation the number of low-skill
| jobs will be much less than the number of candidates. When this
| occurs, what's a viable career path for someone without a
| College education? Or even someone _with_ a College education
| that 's no longer relevant/in demand? We already have more than
| enough bullshit jobs...
|
| Perhaps the answer is to start shortening the work week.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Do you think that would last? I know I wouldn't be able to sit
| on my ass and just play video games for very long, even if I
| got paid or won the lotto, or whatever. My wife wouldn't either
| (though, we tend to marry our equal - or I hope we do). I'm
| generally curious as to what percentage of the population would
| actually sit for their entire lifetime and be stoned, play
| video games and make nothing for the long term. I realized that
| there is a percentage that would do this, but do you think it
| would really be that large? Are my friends group that skewed of
| a sample?
| paulpauper wrote:
| It depends on individual preferences. Individuals with a high
| preference for $ would still go to work, whereas others would
| play games at home. This could mean higher productivity at
| work and better customer and employer satisfaction, as people
| who hate working and hate their jobs and do their jobs
| poorly, would just play videos games instead.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| I guess, yeah. I might do something a little more creative
| but similar. It's just hard for me to imagine just not
| creating something, anything. Lack of imagination on my
| part, really. I can't imagine that anymore than the
| argument of "people will just use their checks to buy
| heroin and be drug addicts". I assume there are a small
| percent, but it's small. I just assume people would still
| want to make things for the sake of making things. Just for
| purpose =/
| somebodythere wrote:
| It's almost like this happened in the midst of a global
| pandemic where most people aren't allowed to do the things they
| would rather do than sit inside and play games...
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| That's crazy, no. people are lazy and will be lazy if you
| give them the option.
|
| There's plenty of jobs available. No jobs are unavailable due
| to covid restrictions.
|
| Burnouts playing video games is not new to the pandemic, the
| only difference is their pay raise.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| You missed the part where you lose "free" money when you start
| working, genius.
| otagekki wrote:
| > Current average rental cost for a one-bedroom in Missoula:
| $1010 a month, up 27% from last year
|
| Pretty expensive for a little town in the middle of nowhere...
| nonameiguess wrote:
| There are obviously a lot of factors that go into the decision
| making process of whether you should take a particular job at a
| particular wage. But at least two are 1) how much you're getting
| otherwise from other sources, and 2) competition from other
| sources of labor.
|
| For 2, consider this: https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-
| statistics/special-reports/l...
|
| New entries in Q4 2020 down 78% from the year before, and that's
| on top of a general downward trend in net immigration to the US
| that's been happening for a decade. Is this temporary because of
| Covid? Probably. But immigration at the low end of the wage scale
| is a factor that drives down the wages. Anyone who has ever lived
| in an apartment complex in Santa Ana and seen neighbors with 14
| people packed into a 3 bedroom apartment understands why. Native
| born Americans simply aren't willing to live like that. The
| expectation for what constitutes a baseline reasonable lifestyle
| isn't the same.
|
| For 1, these comments about "experimenting with UBI" or
| freeloaders living off the government seem to miss the point that
| augmented benefits are a temporary pandemic relief measure. Of
| course the low end of the labor market is abnormally depressed
| right now. That is on purpose as part of a calculated,
| intentional public health response making it easier for people to
| decide not to work. Lo and behold, many are now actually making
| that decision.
|
| For some reason, there seems to be this widespread notion that
| this is a permanent change, but it isn't. You're still not
| technically allowed to just quit or refuse to work because you
| want unemployment, but go ahead and look at the actual
| description of what constitutes a Covid-related reason to apply
| for relief:
| https://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/UIPL/UIPL_16-20.pdf
|
| If your place of employment was closed, if your kid's school was
| closed, if you were ever diagnosed, had symptoms, were
| quarantined, or anyone in your family was, your head of household
| died, you need to care for some who was diagnosed. None of those
| are usually reasons you're allowed to claim unemployment
| benefits. Now they are.
|
| How long will this go on? Who knows, but definitely not forever.
| This is also the answer to why businesses don't just offer more.
| Prices are subject to a ratchet effect. Offer more now to
| overcome the inertia of people choosing to stay unemployed during
| an abnormally favorable time to be unemployed and you're very
| likely to have to permanently pay higher wages even when the
| enhanced benefits are gone. Businesses are getting relief, too,
| and are willing to gamble that they can wait long enough for
| wages to come back down.
| [deleted]
| kokanator wrote:
| Pre-covid businesses which paid borderline wages are going to
| find it really difficult to compete with the government.
|
| Basically, you have an administration 'silently' waging war of
| certain types of business or jobs without needing to pass
| controversial legislation for things like a minimum wage increase
| or universal income. If it feel subversive, it is. But the cost
| of controversy these days causes people to find alternative
| options.
|
| It is now possible to make 130% to 200% your pre-covid
| salary/wage by being on unemployment. [0] It is generally human
| nature to do as little as possible to survive. In this case you
| don't have to do anything to survive. Why would you go look for a
| job.
|
| This will put large swaths of businesses who could stay afloat
| pre-covid and were forced to close due to covid to not be able to
| open their doors again.
|
| [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/09/it-pays-to-stay-
| unemployed-t...
| cratermoon wrote:
| That's a terrible take. The government is not "waging war" on
| businesses. Businesses that were (are) paying starvation wages
| simply socialize the costs of doing business. When Amazon's
| warehouse workers and Wal*Mart retail employees are also
| collecting SNAP benefits, their employers are getting all the
| benefits of low wages but - because they don't pay their fair
| share of taxes - the employers are avoiding the externalities.
| See "Cheap: This High Cost of Discount Culture"
| kokanator wrote:
| Note I didn't say whether it was good or bad. These are real
| things that are occurring.
|
| The government has a long history of subsidizing businesses.
| Think seasonal businesses that 'lay off' their workforce to
| collect unemployment until the season opens again.
|
| Sometimes we believe these subsidies are good other times we
| don't. Do I believe companies as large as Amazon and Walmart
| should be subsidized? Hardly.
|
| Do I think small businesses of all sort could use a break
| here and there when faced with the subsidized giants?
| Absolutely.
|
| Try to go to your local hardware store, it doesn't exist any
| more. How about the corner grocery, gone. These guys needed a
| break but we put the screws to them and let the Giant more
| 'efficient' businesses off the hook.
| treve wrote:
| This is a good thing. Businesses that rely on paying people
| salaries that keep them under the poverty line have no right to
| exist. Your business is exploitative and doesn't deserve to
| survive.
| luckylion wrote:
| What do you do with people who don't have any skills that are
| worth more money? Do you just let the government take care of
| them perpetually?
| Avshalom wrote:
| Yes.
|
| We already do that. Many of my coworkers at Target are on
| medicaid and SNAP and get child care assistance and they
| will be, perpetually (well not so much the child care
| part).
|
| We just _also_ make them work until they 're 70+ anyway.
| luckylion wrote:
| > We just also make them work until they're 70+ anyway.
|
| Or in other words: we make them work. If we didn't we'd
| still need someone to do the work, only it wouldn't be
| your current coworkers. And we'd have to tax that person
| severely, so we have enough money to fund the early
| retirement of your coworkers. I'm not sure that person
| will be happy.
| thrower123 wrote:
| The problem is essentially that you can get paid $X to not work
| at all, or you can maybe get paid $Y to work some shitty job.
|
| But you can't get the $X that you'd get if you didn't work at
| all, and add on $Z dollars working a job of some kind.
|
| The perverse incentives of these programs around their phaseouts
| are and have long been a reality of low-income communities.
| pydry wrote:
| This is by design. It's a good way to inhibit employees asking
| for wage hikes.
| Clubber wrote:
| I think the "life is short," phenomenon that recently occurred to
| everybody due to COVID is also playing a part. People are
| thinking, something along the lines of, "I could have died and my
| gift of life has mostly consisted of working for this shithole
| company for the last 5 years."
|
| Employers might want to consider hiring more people in smaller
| shifts. Maybe an extra person and put everyone on 3-4 day shifts
| rather than 5-6. It'll be interesting if this phenomenon holds.
|
| Of course the US workforce has been constantly squeezed for the
| last 40 years, so maybe the COVID was the breaking point. No more
| cheap labor because people are unwilling to live with their
| parents / not have health insurance. People really mastered how
| to live cheap over the last year as well.
|
| Make no mistake, COVID was a seismic event in the US economy that
| will have lasting changes.
| oramit wrote:
| I agree. Beyond the economic changes that have occurred, I
| think the social change is going to be even more dramatic.
| Everyone I know in my social circle has started new things,
| gone back to school, picked up old hobbies they neglected, or
| changed jobs. I don't think we are appreciating how radical a
| change it was for so many people to have months of free time
| where they had relative financial stability. You start to have
| time to really think about what you want.
|
| Going forward I think people are just not going to put up with
| bullshit the way they did before.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Employers might want to consider hiring more people in
| smaller shifts. Maybe an extra person and put everyone on 3-4
| day shifts rather than 5-6.
|
| I thought that doing this to avoid providing healthcare was the
| problem. Many jobs that can't be filled are for part time hours
| at terrible pay with no benefits.
| Forge36 wrote:
| This is where a government provided healthcare (as an option
| or as the only option) can be very beneficial.
| Clubber wrote:
| I'm not really understanding your point.
| cratermoon wrote:
| The laws in the US only require companies to provide health
| insurance and other benefits to full-time workers, usually
| defined as something over 30/hours a week. If a company
| hires a bunch of people to work 20-25 hours, they don't
| have to pay benefits.
|
| The solution, obviously, is to change the law so that any
| employee, regardless of hours, must get benefits. The other
| solution, in the US, is to get rid of the antiquated
| employer-provided private health insurance market and just
| give everyone health care, the way every other wealthy (and
| not-so-wealthy) country does.
| Clubber wrote:
| I didn't mention anything about cutting salary or
| benefits. If employers are having a hard time finding
| people, they'll need to step up.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Most people need full time work to survive to pay for
| everything. They need 40 hours of paid work per week as
| well as health care, a benefit that is usually only
| provided to full time employees.
|
| Businesses usually don't need 40 hours per person per week,
| especially for things like restaurants. They also do not
| want to pay for health coverage. So they offer part time
| jobs with 20 random hours per week.
|
| To survive, you would need to cobble together two of those
| jobs and hope that you don't get sick. Or you can hold
| out/leave immediately as soon as full time work is
| available.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Ngl it's got me wondering if I should make some life shattering
| changes myself.
| Clubber wrote:
| I've been working professionally for 25 years now. I could
| take a year off financially, but I'm still shackled by health
| insurance being so expensive on the private market.
|
| Think about this, when you are on your deathbed, whenever
| that is. Could be tomorrow, could be in 60 years. What
| regrets will you have?
| david_allison wrote:
| Unsolicited advice: dip your toe in the water and introspect
| after a couple of months to see if it's a sustainable change
| that you want to make.
| ok_coo wrote:
| I moved back to rural Midwest and be with and around family
| and it's made me appreciate them a lot more.
|
| I've thought about why I sacrificed this, by moving away to a
| big city, just to get an ok paying job with healthcare.
|
| So, I wonder if more people are re-thinking their life if
| they moved during COVID to be near friends/family during this
| time.
| lacker wrote:
| Personally, the pandemic has taught me how little I really need
| physical stores. Only a few items, like bicycles, shoes, and
| backpacking backpacks, do I really prefer buying them in a
| physical store. So for me at least, it would be okay if all these
| retail jobs went away, and all these retail stores just went out
| of business, and you just bought everything online.
|
| It seems like it could really be a disaster for people working in
| retail though. Hopefully those retail jobs would end up replaced
| by something better, like working in an Amazon warehouse....
| metalforever wrote:
| I feel the opposite, that people try to rip me off online with
| nice-looking but ultimately non-durable or non-functional
| products.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > like working in an Amazon warehouse....
|
| They (humans in Amazon warehouse) too are being replaced by
| robots. Not sure how many people know that Amazon has a
| robotics division [1]
|
| Like any modern corporation, Amazon is continuously looking to
| reduce cost and warehouse automation is the next obvious place,
| by automating most of pick/pack work.
|
| Even in shop experience is getting massively disrupted. At the
| one end of the spectrum there are self checkout kiosks that are
| super convenient and popular in the Netherlands and at the
| other end Amazon Go and similar with zero or minimal personnel
| running a shop.
|
| These types of jobs are popular among middle to just below
| middle class youth (high school goers) in order to earn a few
| bucks and reduce financial burden on their parents. With these
| jobs getting automated, at least in the developed world, I
| wonder what'll be those stepping stone type of jobs which are
| low on skill that need manual labor.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.jobs/en/teams/amazon-robotics
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| How do you handle buying clothes?
| cratermoon wrote:
| That's a tricky one, but it's solvable, if you're willing to
| give up the idea of having new and different styles
| regularly. Find a style & brand you like, figure out what
| size you wear and just buy that. You might have to send
| something back until you nail it.
|
| For people with odd size requirements like me (I'm short),
| shopping online usually means you can find a better fit,
| because stores tend not to carry much outsize the most common
| sizes. Shoes are a great example: A size 7.5 (US) is about
| the biggest I can wear, sometimes a size 8 if they run small.
| The "standard" mens size is 9, and you can find lots of
| styles in size 9 to 11, but rarely anything smaller than 8.
| Guess what? that shoe _is_ made in 7, but stores don 't carry
| it.
|
| Sometimes the maker will discontinue a line though, which
| means a switch. Shoemakers are notorious for this.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| So yeah, re-buying clothes/brands is fine. But I spent a
| bunch of money on clothes online and ended up with stuff
| that is nice, but which feels weird (and with some too-
| small pockets).
|
| I don't really know how one can solve for these kinds of
| issues online, even if we could CV together what clothes
| would look like on people (which is at least theoretically
| solvable with current technology).
|
| And fwiw, clothes are like one of the things that everyone
| needs to buy, so online only is almost certainly not going
| to happen in this space.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| My daughter buys clothes online all the time. They have free
| return now if they don't fit.
| lacker wrote:
| I just buy them online like anything else, in the same size I
| always wear. I had already stopped buying clothes in-person
| before the pandemic. I guess I am normally-shaped enough that
| I don't run into problems with things fitting this way, but
| certainly this is more problematic for some people.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Yeah, makes sense. My trouble is that I'm in between sizes,
| so I tend to either end up with too small pants, or many,
| many belts.
| andreshb wrote:
| If a business can't pay a living wage, automate the role.
| erhk wrote:
| And tax the labour that automation provides
| mc32 wrote:
| Lots of things have been automated over time. What's the
| cutoff?
|
| Tractors automate things. Email automates things. Computing
| in general automated things.
| kristjansson wrote:
| What? No. Automation doesn't need a new tax, it's just
| capital investment like any other. Tax the proceeds from
| investment (in automation and everything else) at a rate
| commensurate with taxes on labor...
| [deleted]
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| Looking at you California farms.
| nradov wrote:
| Strawberry picking robots are coming.
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rob.21889
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| Those exploited immigrants won't hold their breath.
|
| I'm sure those farms unwilling to pay a fair wage will
| start investing in those expensive machines' R&D. Then do
| it for all other crops.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > farms unwilling to pay a fair wage
|
| Half the blame has to go to consumers and a lack of
| desire for fair-wage strawberries that cost 2x as much.
| danaris wrote:
| That would only be true if, when I went to the
| supermarket, there was a display of strawberries that
| said over it "Low Low Prices Enabled By Virtual Slavery
| And Other Worker Abuses!", and another display of
| strawberries next to it that said "Slightly Higher
| Prices, But Their Workers Live Well!"
|
| You can't claim the market will resolve things when there
| is no meaningful opportunity for customers to "vote with
| their wallets". It requires not only equal access to the
| two products, but also _full information_ about what the
| differences are.
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| No, the full blame goes to the near slave farms
| exploiting these people.
|
| Raise the prices if you have to and tell the consumers to
| shove it. Chipotle just did this, farms can do it.
|
| If you can't survive without slave labor don't survive at
| all.
| paulpauper wrote:
| automation is expensive. it is not like a company or franchise
| can just flick on a switch to automate jobs. It has taken
| millions of dollars and decades to make robots that walk on
| stirs, let alone do anything that a low-skilled human worker
| can do.
| qudat wrote:
| I disagree. Not everyone needs a livable wage (e.g. teenagers)
| and by removing entry level positions we eliminate the lowest
| rung of the ladder. This is not a good outcome.
| kesselvon wrote:
| Why create an incentive to exploit teenagers for profit? Work
| is work, regardless of if the person being paid is 18 or 81.
| You're paying for output.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Unless they want to save money for college. Remember when you
| could work an entry level job and make enough money to pay
| for a substantial portion of college?
| riskable wrote:
| ...but imagine the economic benefits of giving teenagers a
| living wage. People who have loads of extra money to spend on
| unnecessary items (because presumably they're not paying for
| the bare necessities like food and housing).
|
| _< Gasp! Some might even save some of that extra money for
| use in the future!>_
| oh_sigh wrote:
| But they already get a living wage, since for almost all
| working teenagers, their biggest expenses are usually taken
| care of by their parents (rent & health insurance).
| pydry wrote:
| Not a good outcome for employers. Good for everyone else.
| gruez wrote:
| Where do you think the employers get the money from?
| pydry wrote:
| Customers?
| gruez wrote:
| That's the point. Absent any competition (which there
| won't be, because everyone is subject to the same minimum
| wage), the cost is fully passed on to the customers (ie.
| "everyone else"). Therefore your conclusion is incorrect.
| pydry wrote:
| How is that the point? The studies I've seen tend to say
| that minimum wage hikes tend to come from profits.
|
| E.g.
|
| https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/203233/1/16677309
| 24....
| gruez wrote:
| In the short term or long term? I skimmed the study and
| it looks like they only looked at two years? In the short
| term I can see it happening due to psychological effects
| like price stickiness, but I'm skeptical that in the long
| term the trend would hold. As evidence to the contrary:
|
| >Ashenfelter says the evidence from increased food prices
| suggests that basically all of the "increase of labor
| costs gets passed right on to the customers."
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/02/16/967333964/w
| hat...
| pydry wrote:
| >In the short term or long term?
|
| Wasnt transfer from profits supposed to be impossible in
| both cases because of competition?
| gruez wrote:
| Are you talking about how profits shouldn't exist because
| of competition?
| pydry wrote:
| I'm talking about your claim that the cost of raised
| wages would be inevitably passed on to consumers.
|
| I'm sure there's a good reason why employers lobby so
| hard to keep wages down even when it doesn't affect them
| in the slightest cos they can just pass the costs on...
| gruez wrote:
| >I'm sure there's a good reason why employers lobby so
| hard to keep wages down
|
| Yeah, because demand also drops when prices go up.
| Whether that's "good for everyone else" is debatable.
| Fast food? Maybe. Groceries? Probably not.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I see a logical fallacy because I lived in some conditions that
| are very relevant.
|
| Paying everyone a living wage (last sentence) is impossible; not
| because 'living wage' is relative - from a city to another, from
| a country to another, from a person to another (can you live
| without an iPhone? why not?) - but because increasing wages to
| that level, assuming you can determine one, will just increase
| the prices to fit.
|
| My first job was paying $100 and it was about the average in the
| capital city of my country. 5 years later I was earning $700, but
| that was just double the average pay. Another 10 years later, a
| bit over $1000 was above average, but not by much. The salaries
| grew 10 times, but the prices adjusted about the same rate, at
| least the price of food, rent and houses: if you pay 10x more to
| workers, the house will cost 10 times more. If you increase the
| salaries of many people, you will not increase their standard of
| living, just create inflation because they will not produce more,
| it's just their cost is higher and the money value is reduced.
|
| This is the real story of a country with 20 million people. If
| you increase the wages of the lowest paid, you need to increase
| to everyone to keep some proportions, otherwise you will pay
| restaurant cleaners more than teachers or doctors and that is
| dangerous, ~ 20% of the younger doctors in my country emigrated
| because at some point their salary after 20 years of tough school
| was sometimes lower than a driver's salary. If you increase the
| salary of everyone, that is very soon making all prices to
| increase at the same rate, changing practically nothing.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| And another thing: if you have workers that you cannot pay
| 'living wages' because they don't produce output to pay them
| more, automate and leave them on the streets. Do this with all
| low skilled workers.
|
| Is this what the article is suggesting?
| djfobbz wrote:
| agreed!
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