[HN Gopher] Labor shortage or terrible jobs?
___________________________________________________________________
Labor shortage or terrible jobs?
Author : RuffleGordon
Score : 514 points
Date : 2021-04-30 14:51 UTC (1 days 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _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._
|
| Not 2-3x, more like 0.36% for every 10% increase[1]:
|
| > _Many business leaders fear that any increase in the minimum
| wage will be passed on to consumers through price increases
| thereby slowing spending and economic growth, but that may not
| be the case. New research shows that the pass-through effect on
| prices is fleeting and much smaller than previously thought._
|
| > _By looking at changes in restaurant food pricing during the
| period of 1978-2015, MacDonald and Nilsson find that prices
| rose by just 0.36 percent for every 10 percent increase in the
| minimum wage, which is only about half the size reported in
| previous studies. They also observe that small minimum wage
| increases do not lead to higher prices and may actually reduce
| prices. Furthermore, it is also possible that small minimum
| wage increases could lead to increased employment in low-wage
| labor market._
|
| [1] https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/does-
| increasing-m...
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _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._
|
| I've priced out what a similar plan that I got from an
| employer would be when I went first bought insurance on the
| individual market. They are not even comparable.
|
| For example, a similar family plan on the individual market
| would cost over $30k in premiums, with an $8k deductible and
| a $17k out of pocket maximum each year with co-pays.
|
| For a similar plan for myself, I'm looking at nearly $10k in
| premiums, $3k deductible, and an $8k yearly out of pocket
| maximum, along with co-pays etc.
| 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.
| imtringued wrote:
| >it's good for them since they can just print more money.
|
| That's not good because it means they failed to keep up
| their mandate.
|
| >They largely failed to do so since dollar is so well
| propped by international demand.
|
| Actually, the international demand is forcing deficit
| spending. If money leaves the US and then comes back in
| the form of treasury bonds then pretty much the only way
| to tap into the money is to let the government get into
| debt. If driving yields to near zero was good enough to
| cause inflation we wouldn't be in this mess.
| 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.
| imtringued wrote:
| The Fed is terrified of inflation, that's why it's only
| using tools that cannot cause sufficient inflation.
| 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.
| imtringued wrote:
| >Supply-side economics clearly doesn't work,
|
| Supply side economics works if you have a nation that is
| doing so many productive investments that it has trouble
| getting enough financing for everything. By cutting taxes
| and lowering interest rates you are making it easier for
| businesses to acquire enough capital to do even more
| investments.
|
| The US economy is the exact opposite. It's difficult for
| the investment rate to catch up with the savings rate.
| Things like home construction are being delayed. Public
| infrastructure suffers from cost overruns, etc.
|
| >It's not just that trickle-down doesn't work; it's that
| it doesn't seem to trickle at all.
|
| For obvious reasons. Money doesn't trickle because
| consumer/worker behavior tends to lag behind business
| behavior. When a company has a good year, it can wait
| until the labor market tightens before it has to increase
| wages. If companies invent automation then they have a
| first mover advantage where they save a lot of money in
| the first 5 years and then once competitors join the
| market the margins are driven down. That delay is costing
| consumers money and it's costing workers money because
| the company doesn't employ anyone with it. Business
| oriented politics also tends to encourage inefficient
| (from a macroscopic perspective) corporations who lobby
| for bills that benefit them at the expense of everyone
| else.
|
| >Part of it is that the government has done a weak form
| of the right thing, pumping money directly to consumers.
|
| It's good enough. EU is still doing poorly.
| 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
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I think it's only 3 or 400 this go around.
| prepend wrote:
| The link I provided says $600 through July 31. It dropped to
| $300 in Jan, then was brought back up in March.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I believe it is out of date. Manchin kept it down.
| 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.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I don't see how this isn't more obvious. 18 months ago the US
| was pretty much at full employment the only thing different
| then and now is the pandemic and the bailouts.
|
| I feel like this article and the others like it are just
| political opportunism.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to fully blame these businesses. If they
| pay their workers a "living wage", whatever that is, then they
| need to raise prices just to remain profitable. Customers see the
| price increase and go to the next restaurant down the street. Of
| course location, quality, etc matters but price does too, and a
| business trying to compete in a price-sensitive industry is going
| to be a bind.
|
| What can help is government regulation that raises the wages at
| ALL restaurants. Then consumers don't have a choice. I grumble
| more about paying an extra 4% on top but what am I going to do,
| never go out again?
| 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
| mk81 wrote:
| The solution to this problem was to not ship millions of
| manufacturing jobs overseas (destroying middle class employment
| for people who prefer to work with their hands) and to prevent
| illegal immigration (flooding the economy with an endless supply
| of unskilled labour).
|
| But Pandora's box was opened, and destabilization seems to be the
| only possible outcome at this point. It won't be as rosy as this
| article makes it out to be.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Open the border.
| beckingz wrote:
| The company: Cybersecurity Skills Gap! The job: low pay for
| unicorn candidates with 30 years DevSecOps on AWS experience.
| [deleted]
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| or... insufficient compensation? (Yes I know the body addresses
| this, but seriously, why does every single headline in labor
| supply only do the false dichotomy of "no workers" vs "americans
| don't want to do X".
|
| Why do politicized right-wing economists pretend supply and
| demand pricing doesn't apply to the labor market? It's supposedly
| the foundational pillar of right-wing extreme laissez-faire cult
| economics.
|
| Universal healthcare would go miles to making these
| tolerable/palatable jobs to a wide variety of workers. Often what
| is lost in the "americans don't want to do job X" is that "Job X
| DOESN'T GIVE HEALTH BENEFITS".
| 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.
| bogwog wrote:
| This is not UBI at all. If someone starts working now, they
| lose those unemployment benefits they're getting. So the
| question becomes: should I work my ass off at this shitty job
| to make $X, or should I stay unemployed and make $X?
|
| If it were real UBI, these people could work those shitty jobs
| while still receiving the extra income every month. It's still
| a shitty job, but you also get the added benefit of not having
| to live in poverty while you do it.
|
| EDIT: Also, this situation is further proof of how useful UBI
| would be to the economy. It would be the government helping
| businesses by subsidizing wages, making even crappy
| unsustainable jobs livable and attractive to workers.
| randomopining wrote:
| No one is gonna do a shitty job if they don't have to
| financially lol.
|
| Clear misunderstanding of incentives. Most people would chill
| or take easy fun jobs.
| WarChortle18 wrote:
| I think you vastly under estimate peoples will to advance.
| Would some take easy or no jobs sure, but not everyone
| wants to get by with a fixed income. They will always want
| to buy something UBI doesn't enable them to buy.
|
| A nice vacation, nicer larger home, new car etc. UBI would
| just give people the cushion to take a risk and know if I
| fail I don't end up homeless. Or the piece of mind to relax
| and know they can eat a healthy meal and pay rent no need
| to work 2 or 3 jobs. Maybe the reinvest in their education.
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There's a global pandemic.
| 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.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> My rent is up 80% since two years ago_
|
| WTH where do you live?
|
| _> Food costs are up 40%._
|
| Dear god, what do you eat?
| 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.
| loopercal wrote:
| 1. There's a giant difference between 80% and 30%.
|
| 2. That's not reflective of the rental market in Houston
| (I'm from there and going back for a graduation
| tomorrow), that's reflective of your landlord charging
| you for the convenience of not moving.
|
| https://www.rentcafe.com/apartments-for-
| rent/us/tx/houston/#...
| throwawaygh 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._
|
| Is there a typo here? You have to sign a longer lease but
| you are paying the same per month... that's a 0%
| increase.
|
| And as for month-to-month, paying zero premium for a
| month-to-month lease is abnormal in pretty much every
| market...
| inetknght wrote:
| > _You have to sign a longer lease but you are paying the
| same per month_
|
| Signing a longer lease demonstrates that the new lease
| isn't like the old.
|
| Otherwise let's compare apples and oranges in the economy
| too.
| shkkmo wrote:
| So the rent didn't go up, the longer lease term was made
| longer and it was only the month to month that went up in
| price. The comparison is one you started making and only
| complain about when people call you on your made up
| numbers.
| 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.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| Agreed. Not long ago there was debate about a permanent
| structural stagnation with permanent unemployment. The
| argument was that workers lacked sufficient training or
| desire to fill current jobs. All while some economists were
| screaming that it was actually the result of an insufficient
| fiscal stimulus response to the Great Recession that could
| have easily been solved had the response been $1.5T instead
| of $700B. Given the massive fiscal response to COVID and this
| current situation resulting in a rebalancing as you
| highlighted, I think it's clear that it was never structural
| and always a result of unnecessary slack due to a financial
| recession easily solved by government support spending.
| 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".
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| This is nowhere close to 'basics of survival'. You can
| survive on 2 hamburgers a day and 1 liter of drinking
| water, this is called survival. If you want 'basics of
| nice living' then call it that way, but don't redefine
| the dictionary. Think of 'basics of survival' what you
| need to continue to live if you land on a deserted island
| in the middle of the ocean, naked and with no tools.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| You can't live without shelter or medical care.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Really? Tell that to Hiroo Onoda and his 29 years in the
| jungle. You see, people play on the subjective nature of
| life and honesty is not a virtue anymore.
| bluedino wrote:
| It's a shortage when the jobs paying 50% over minimum aren't
| being filled.
|
| Stores and restaurants are thinly staffed around here. Even the
| ones with signs out saying they'll pay a premium.
| derrekl wrote:
| Not going to speak to the article but want to layout that in 1997
| when I was a waiter at Chili's I made $2.50 an hour base wage,
| but with tips nearly always cleared $24/h. In 1999 I was a waiter
| for an upscale steakhouse in the city of Chicago and on average
| made about $40/h. Several of the waiters there were career
| waiters and had families. Many career waiters worked very hard to
| get jobs at higher and higher end restaurants and could clear
| 100K on the year back in 1999.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| I used to live in a touristy area and there was a similar
| phenomenon with waitresses in the city center - the only issue
| was that after a few years the waitresses were let go because
| the employers picked prettier ones as a replacement. A
| colleague of mine from highschool got hit _hard_ by that, as
| she thought she 'll surely not be one of those that get
| replaced. She had to take her lifestyle a few good notches down
| with no higher ed and just waiting experience. She would have
| had no issues with getting a degree, she was smart but naive.
| ipnon wrote:
| It seems like "elbow grease"-type middle class jobs are a thing
| of the past.
| 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".
| phillipcarter wrote:
| That's a lot of speculation on your part :)
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Yeah, strongly agree on automation/export of jobs.
|
| I imagine the political class will of course make it
| illegal to automate them!
| 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...
| fukmbas wrote:
| If your business model cannot support affordable wages for
| employees, then it is not a good business model. Super
| simple...
| 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]
| kukx wrote:
| Rising the minimum wage is exactly the thing that should not
| be done, if one cares about the employment levels. It prices
| out the least qualified workforce of the market. To put it
| simply the less able/educated/experienced are not productive
| enough to cover own costs. So that no one wants to employ
| them and they are stuck. They start to rely on the government
| to provide them with resources and it means that have to vote
| for politicians that promise to keep the free money flowing.
| It creates a perverse relation between politicians and
| citizens, which may resemble a dealer addict situation.
| 8note wrote:
| Realistically, GDP has grown substantially with the owners
| receiving nearly all the benefits.
|
| Raising the minimum wage is unlikely to affect employment
| much because of just how profitable companies are today
|
| Mind you I think a better tslternative to a specific
| minimum wage is to have a guaranteed government job at a
| specific wage. That sets a bar that all labourers have an
| option, while some lower paying jobs can still exist if
| they're otherwise competitive in other experiences
| saddlerustle wrote:
| Corporate profits as a fraction of GDP hasn't changed
| much.
| wonnage wrote:
| Just remember that very sane corporation in the US does
| their very best to realize their profits outside of the
| US.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Oh how I wish this was a more popular view. Minimum wages
| have a history of exluding a group of people from
| employment to protect the higher wage earners jobs.
|
| Minimum wage absolutely prices some people out of the job
| market.
| [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.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| For any of this to be a valid arguement you're going to have to
| explain why places like Australia haven't imploded.
|
| We have a decent minimum wage, social welfare, and hybrid
| socialised / private healthcare.
|
| Increase wages and conditions gradually, businesses that can't
| innovate or charge more will fall by the wayside. _That
| happens_.
| 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.
| Itsdijital wrote:
| Yeah, but the counter to all that is building new housing,
| which unsurprisingly very difficult in these areas.
| robocat wrote:
| > but the counter to all that is building new housing
|
| I would like to see some stats on that meme.
|
| Anecdotally, what I think happens is that people buying
| second homes, vacation homes, and more people living one
| person to a home. People without homes are not clearly
| advantaged.
|
| I live in Christchurch New Zealand, with a truely massive
| increase in standalone houses, and significant
| densification in the city center. However house prices
| are still booming, and plenty of friends are struggling
| to find a first home.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Think of the business side of the problem as a collective
| action problem. You want to pay your workers a living wage, but
| to do so, you have to raise your prices. If you raise your
| prices, your business will go to your competitor, so you can't
| exist if you increase your wages (and your competitor doesn't).
| Meanwhile your competitor wants to increase wages but doesn't
| for the same reason.
|
| If the government mandated that when you raise your prices,
| everyone else had to too, then suddenly increasing wages won't
| put you out of business! Same story if the government mandated
| that you raise your wages (in this particular hypothetical).
|
| You're right that both sides of the equation need to be
| examined, but it's actually a bunch of equations with a bunch
| of sides.
| chii wrote:
| > If you raise your prices ... and your competitor doesn't
|
| this means your business is less efficient than your
| competitor's, or you are asking for a higher margin than your
| competitor. Both means that the business deservedly fail
| under the raised minimum wage.
|
| if everybody has to raise their prices to fund the higher
| minimum wage, then it means the original minimun wage was
| already at the optimal level for your business!
| [deleted]
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > 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.
|
| That's why governments created a minimum wage. If the salaries
| are written into law, there is no place down the street to go.
| That's also why environmental and hygienic regulations are so
| successful. Those things simply can not be done without
| government intervention.
| 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.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I think a big factor is that a lot of restaurants in the US are
| throw-away businesses. The average life span of restaurant is
| five years. A lot of people enter the restaurant out of a weird
| desire to create something - which is to say they're shoveling
| money into the business 'till they're out of capital and then
| another "entrepreneur" takes their place. And oppositely,
| landlords and local government pretty expect that the sequence
| of failures is going to continue. Everyone else (landlords,
| restaurant suppliers, consultants and so-forth) makes money.
|
| _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..._
|
| Restaurant is a little bit convenience but mostly
| entertainment. If a robot is going to spit some stuff for you,
| why not buy an cheaper even microwave dinner, they're not that
| bad (or cook it yourself for something good tasting and which
| you can entertain yourself with).
| 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...
| fallingknife wrote:
| I feel like there's never been more independent (or local
| chain) burger joints, food trucks, and just fast food in
| general.
| 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.
| simfree wrote:
| Yes, the point of most franchised chains is to extract
| wealth from communities rather than invest in a stable,
| skilled workforce delivering a good product.
|
| McDonalds, YUM Brands, et all charge large franchise fees
| and force use of particular vendors and business
| practices to ensure they extract as much income as
| possible from their franchisees.
| nimos wrote:
| ~200,000 is number directly employed by McDonalds. They have
| 5-10% of stores. There doesn't seem to be a current accurate
| number for total including franchisees - but seems to be in
| the 1.5 - 2 million range.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| > The problem for the business is that the financial model is
| set by the fixed or imperative costs
|
| What about profit sharing?
|
| Hire an employee who agrees to get 1K currency units if company
| (store, resto etc) made 100K CUs.
|
| But 500 if company made 50K CUs and 50K CUs if store made 5000K
| CUs.
|
| There's always a max cap, but never a min cap. When someone
| talks about min caps we all get antsy.
| 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.)
| zepto wrote:
| Nobody talks about "the suffering of a company" - that's
| a made up example.
|
| People do say things like 'the company suffered losses',
| but isn't anthropomorphising.
| smabie wrote:
| A company is just a group of people right? Like people
| talk about the plight of the Syrian people or whatever.
| What's the difference?
| 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.
| 8note wrote:
| I'll go with, there is a group of people involved with a
| corporation, but it's largely decoupled from the
| corporation itself.
|
| The group of people are the labourers being exploited,
| and they're separate from the group of owners that the
| corporation represents.
| 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.
| 8note wrote:
| This really just raises the question on why employees don't
| get a share of profits.
|
| They take on all the same risk as owners do
| mstratman wrote:
| Most small businesses require the owner to take
| significant financial risk, or work for free for years or
| more.
|
| Each growth stage presents tough choices of additional
| risk, as well.
|
| An employee doesn't shoulder any of this. There is a
| world of difference!
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's because the law and financial system exalt capital
| at the expense of everyone else. There's no reason that
| labor couldn't translate into equity.
|
| Also, the current system enforces the artificial scarcity
| of capital available to those who need to work for a
| living instead of living off of their assets.
| conanbatt wrote:
| It's certainly not the same risk. If a business goes bust
| the owners lose capital, the employees lose opportunity
| cost at worst.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| If a business goes bust, those losses can be written of
| at tax time. A worker losing their job faces
| homelessness, the inability to see a doctor or pay for
| their medications, and hunger.
| terragon wrote:
| To avail the benefit of writing off taxes, the ex-
| business owner requires future income. Who's to say that
| he/she won't be unemployed for a long while after
| devastating their life savings?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Then they can get a job. Why are they taking on risks
| that they can't bear with their investments?
| 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.
| conanbatt wrote:
| There will always be businesses on the margin that barely
| survive, and you want as many of those as possible always
| to increase employment and wages, even if your world
| vision is only pro-worker.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > _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"_
|
| For a small business, the business and the owner can be
| practically one in the same. So in some cases I think that
| verbiage is pretty spot on.
| 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 being physically assaulted.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| The thing is, "the business" tends to always treat the
| employees as if money is running out. To the limit
| permitted by law.
|
| This limit needs be adjusted, that's all.
| syshum wrote:
| hmm the vast majority of people in the US work jobs that
| offer FAR more in wages and benefits that the smallest
| amount permitted by law, so clearly this statement is
| objectively false
| 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.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "A business that cannot pay employees is not a business
| that adds value to society, and nothing of value is
| lost."
|
| _Value_ is a tricky expression here. There is a short
| term value and a long term value, and they may be very
| different.
|
| Let us say that a mom-and-pop restaurant that cooks
| fairly healthy meals is squeezed out by McDonalds and
| shuts down. 50 years down the line, the fast food triumph
| has serious consequences on health of the nation.
|
| But immediate market interactions cannot capture this
| development. The short term "Yay for salty and sugary
| food for less money!" win does not include the fact that
| you are buying an invisible "Type 2 diabetes and morbid
| obesity at the age of 40" item, too.
| FFRefresh wrote:
| What's a reasonable wage? Should any business in
| developing countries exist, given the incredibly low
| wages? Their wages can't be considered reasonable, right?
| dmitriid wrote:
| You just compared the US to developing nations.
|
| It's an apt comparison.
| foota wrote:
| "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."
|
| This is a false and dangerous, in that it ignores that
| the world isn't a free market, wage markets don't exist
| in a vacuum. Businesses might be able to pay higher wages
| if they weren't hindered by high rents, or if other
| restaurants raise prices in unison (e.g., in reaction to
| higher labor prices).
|
| Just because a business can't pay a living wage in some
| setup doesn't mean it has no contribution.
| ozim wrote:
| But that is creating tragedy of commons that we have now.
| People who are having money are investing in stocks or
| ETFs, buying real estate because it is still better than
| having cash. Which inflates stocks/real estate bubble and
| when it bursts it will be much bigger mess than paying
| low wages but in constant manner, spread out over
| multiple people and multiple years.
|
| I definitely did not write about business that cannot pay
| its employees. I wrote about business that lets people
| put the food on the table, which means also pay the
| bills.
| objectivetruth wrote:
| So, society has a problem where some people are so poor
| that some of them die and many barely survive... and
| other people in that society have so much money that
| they're converting it into electricity.
|
| I think eventually equilibrium will come in some fashion
| and it likely won't be the rich spontaneously deciding to
| generously share.
| ShroudedNight wrote:
| > buying real estate
|
| Tax positive externalities at 100%
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Perhaps those kinds of jobs should be automated.
| a3n wrote:
| They can charge what they need to be profitable, after
| discovering how much they need to pay workers to apply and show
| up.
|
| Which will drive away many customers who have become accustomed
| to cheap service built on "shit jobs."
|
| At some point an equilibrium will be reached, the customers who
| can't or won't pay more will drop out of participation, and
| we'll have the true market for service built on good jobs.
|
| No customer deserves cheap drinks and service built on shit
| jobs.
|
| "Oh, but all those jobs will be lost."
|
| They're already lost, the difference is that it's the workers
| making the decision.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| meh, if the only way you can get a piece of the pie is to take
| it from someone who has less opportunity than you I don't
| really feel bad.
|
| Cities like Seattle raised their minimum wage, there was a lot
| of worry that everyone would go broke and there would be no
| food to eat. As it turned out, a few people shut down and
| someone else almost immediately opens a similar business in
| that place.
|
| Not everyone runs a business that is properly priced, or
| properly managed to make a profit, but lots of people can do
| it, and they tend to fill the void that is left by businesses
| that can't offer a product that people feel is worth paying
| enough to support less than poverty wage.
|
| Even for companies that pay really well, some don't make it.
| 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. In fact most restaurants and
| breweries I frequent face the same issue, a few employees
| desperately trying to keep an inundated ship afloat. I will
| tell you this article largely ignores what everyone who lives
| here understands is 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. The median home price
| increased by 57% in the last 10 years, 8.6% in the last year
| alone to $315k. In the meantime the median family income
| remains only $46k. https://missoulian.com/news/local/missoula-
| housing-prices-se...
|
| It is truly a seller's dream market and as such the
| availability of rentals has evaporated. 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 in Missoula, I did for years and I still would be if
| not for dumb luck and a bit of privilege. The problems people
| face today are starting to pale in comparison to my own, and a
| solution is becoming truly urgent. I can only hope people will
| come to understand if we care about solving these problems,
| then we have to put down the tribalism and intolerance for
| those with different views and focus on the matter at hand.
|
| To quote Vince Staples, "Ain't no money in havin' hate in your
| heart."
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| > 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?
|
| You still have to understand the workers are also the one
| who's getting fucked here. The owner of the grill in the
| article is deliberately worsening working conditions because
| of his beliefs on Covid, and it's perfectly reasonable that
| the workers will leave you to get a new job where your boss
| doesn't spread Covid on you by not wearing masks. I
| understand businesses are hard right now, but business owners
| should care a bit about hygiene, it's not something that
| would cost you a lot.
|
| > This city is amid a dire housing shortage, expedited by
| lack of new construction and a migration of buyers from more
| lucrative economies. The median home price increased by 57%
| in the last 10 years, 8.6% in the last year alone to $315k.
| In the meantime the median family income remains only $46k.
|
| But I think you've correctly diagnosed the real issue here -
| skyrocketing housing costs. Everyone suffers from this, both
| the workers and the small businesses. And it's a shame that
| the Dems and Reps are making this an "us vs. them" issue.
| (There's a similar dynamic in my country too, where liberals
| try to raise the minimum wage a bit, and then the
| conservatives fiercely oppose it and latch onto small
| business owners for support. Of course both the establishment
| liberals and conservatives are totally incompetent at solving
| skyrocketing housing costs and general economic inequality,
| yada yada.)
|
| I think the real issue here is not about workers or small
| businesses, but just plain-old economic inequality - in the
| sense that the minority rich at the top can invest on housing
| at their heart's content (numbers seem to always go UP!) but
| the majority can't afford those prices. So even though the
| majority at the bottom knows that the price is bullshit, the
| bubble will not burst unless the rich realizes that those
| prices are bullshit (And do they really have to realize? They
| can still afford those investments though! They can stay
| being delusional and still enjoy all the luxuries they have!)
| Market price is now not an objective measure of value, but
| instead becomes a power that real estate investors can
| collectively impose onto the poor. Ah, communism for the
| rich, capitalism for the poor...
| throwaway1492 wrote:
| > 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...
|
| Brings to mind the growing prevalance of self serve kiosk for
| placing an order that so many fast food restaurants have now.
| Removing the need for the cashier all together. That and self
| checkout at a lot of big chain retail stores. I don't think the
| business concern is necessarily with making a profit, but
| making 1% more profit than not.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _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..._
|
| This claim in particular was examined in studies on minimum
| wage increases, and found that increases in the minimum wage
| had no impact on the adoption of automation[1].
|
| [1] https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/260/
| a3n wrote:
| Automation may merely not yet be readily adoptable.
| 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.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _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._
|
| There have been many startups that have opened and gone
| bust in the past 15 years. I don't think I would say that
| startups have terrible profit margins. In the context of
| tech startups the understood answer is that their product
| sucked. I think the same is true for most restaurants - I
| think running a restaurant is underrated and if the food
| is bad or atmosphere is terrible people just won't go no
| matter how low the price is.
|
| If restaurants were struggling solely due to low profits
| they would look a lot more like MoviePass or WeWork.
| Incredible demand but unsustainable business model. Most
| restaurants are more like Blockbuster. No demand while
| trying maintain fixed costs.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Tech startups are not very comparable to restaurants.
| Restaurants have limited capacity, limited ability to
| scale, usually pay rent (so any success can be partially
| sucked up by the landlord), and have limited times of the
| day and week to earn most of their money.
|
| To support terrible profit margins (relative to the
| risk), I also would look at the financial status of
| restaurant owners/operators, who by and large, aren't in
| the higher end of the income scale. Almost no one tells
| their kid to grow up and aspire to be a cook or open
| their own restaurant (unless they already have a a trust
| fund).
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >I'm not suggesting thy are charitable. I'm only
| suggesting that they are not omniscient.
|
| Sorry, I was just being snarky. I meant that there's so
| market is so "deep", that it surely represents the true
| prices.
|
| >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.
|
| They're not unprofitable margins, they're low margins.
| Restaurants have a high fixed cost, but low marginal
| cost. Every day they have to have some amount of staff
| and food, but once they have sold enough for the day to
| cover those costs, each extra doesn't cost them much at
| all due to the relatively low price of food and water and
| electricity and gas (compared to the labor).
|
| I'm not sure on the statistics of the exact failure mode,
| but I do know that your run of the mill restaurant can't
| charge people $30 per entree and get away with it. There
| is a cap on how much people are willing to pay most
| places, with the exception being a select few that cater
| to the rich, have a certain ambiance, reputation, quality
| of food, etc.
|
| >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.
|
| You're right that there are many reasons for them
| failing, but many can't work on things like marketing
| location, or quality food, because they can't charge
| enough money for those expenses in the first place.
| Celebrity chefs can come out swinging with high priced
| menus, but not the vast majority who might be doing it
| because it has low start up costs and they don't need
| credentials.
|
| Where I live, entrees cost $15 minimum, and with tip, you
| can budget at least $20 per meal per person. Even with
| that, I doubt the cooks are making anywhere near a
| desirable living, and I doubt the restaurant owners are
| making a decent living, especially if they're paying
| rent.
| 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.
| bena wrote:
| Bingo.
|
| A lot of people who open businesses aren't doing so to
| open a business. And most of them don't even know it. A
| lot of them are trying to open a clubhouse they charge
| people to be at.
|
| You see it often in the board game/comic/hobby sector.
| Someone gets it in their head that they could open a shop
| and it will be great and blah blah blah. But yeah, it
| goes south because what they really wanted was to play
| games for a living.
|
| They want to _be_ a business owner, but they don 't want
| to run a business. If that makes sense.
| asciident wrote:
| Yeah I think you're unusual.
|
| I and my family each have price points in my head, once a
| restaurant charges more than that on the total line, we look
| for other options. $5 for good enough lunch, $10 for a great
| lunch, $20 for gourmet lunch, $20 for a great dinner, $40 for
| gourmet dinner.
| parineum wrote:
| Consider the quality of a McDonald's burger/meal. It's not
| hard to find something considerably better and marginally
| more expensive yet they are still in business.
| stainforth wrote:
| >the cost of rent,
|
| The real drag on business and progress
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...
|
| _" The tendency of the rate of profit to fall (TRPF) is a
| hypothesis in the crisis theory of political economy, according
| to which the rate of profit--the ratio of the profit to the
| amount of invested capital--decreases over time. This
| hypothesis gained additional prominence from its discussion by
| Karl Marx in Chapter 13 of Capital, Volume III, but economists
| as diverse as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo and
| Stanley Jevons referred explicitly to the TRPF as an empirical
| phenomenon that demanded further theoretical explanation,
| although they differed on the reasons why the TRPF should
| necessarily occur."_
|
| Consider that if the rate of profit tends to fall, and
| shareholders require greater profits each quarter, how that
| affects "inputs" such as labor?
| laurencerowe wrote:
| > But they will, they will go down the street--until everyone's
| prices go up and there is nowhere else to go.
|
| This is why higher minimum wages are so important. They force
| all businesses (not just the ethical ones) to increase prices
| to point that workers receive a living wage.
| Salgat wrote:
| No business is entitled to be successful. This is just a case
| of a business with a no longer profitable business model where
| they can't compete for employees with other businesses.
| 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.
| humanrebar wrote:
| A verified history of showing up in time and not getting
| fired for theft or negligence is definitely valuable.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| My second sentence is suggesting that fast food restaurants
| will pass higher labor onto consumers. Your point seems
| entirely unrelated to that idea.
| nickff wrote:
| You are correct, I missed that period, and was in fact
| referring to your second paragraph.
| gilbetron wrote:
| Which countries are suffering from this?
| magila wrote:
| France and Italy have long had chronically high
| unemployment, particularly among young adults who
| struggle to gain entry into the workforce due to the high
| cost floor on labor.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _The costs get passed onto consumers._
|
| Regarding this, from this[1] paper:
|
| > _Many business leaders fear that any increase in the
| minimum wage will be passed on to consumers through price
| increases thereby slowing spending and economic growth, but
| that may not be the case. New research shows that the pass-
| through effect on prices is fleeting and much smaller than
| previously thought._
|
| > _By looking at changes in restaurant food pricing during
| the period of 1978-2015, MacDonald and Nilsson find that
| prices rose by just 0.36 percent for every 10 percent
| increase in the minimum wage, which is only about half the
| size reported in previous studies. They also observe that
| small minimum wage increases do not lead to higher prices and
| may actually reduce prices. Furthermore, it is also possible
| that small minimum wage increases could lead to increased
| employment in low-wage labor market._
|
| [1] https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/does-
| increasing-m...
| alwayshasbeen wrote:
| If a business makes very little profit - why not closing it? It
| makes no sense to keep something alive that only works out when
| you pay your employees basically nothing.
| blihp wrote:
| A 10% margin also often doesn't tell the whole story of how
| they make their money. Nearly since its inception, a
| substantial portion of McDonald's long term profit came from
| the appreciation of the real estate the stores were built on.
| Operating a business on it just made it cash flow positive
| during the holding period. So it was essentially a REIT that
| happened to operate a fast food chain. Even for many mom-and-
| pop restaurants (or other business) the real payoff often comes
| when it comes time to sell and cash in on the capital
| appreciation of the business assets.
|
| My point isn't to say there's anything wrong with that model:
| more power to anyone who comes up with a creative, legal way to
| make a living. Mainly I just want to point out that you often
| can't look at it simply as making X% margin on sales in a given
| period of time or any other single metric for many businesses
| as the real gain is longer term than that.
|
| Which is really a long-winded way of saying: if the ability of
| a business to make a long term profit is not my concern, their
| claimed inability to pay a living wage isn't either. If they
| honestly can't afford to pay a living wage, then as the article
| states, perhaps it shouldn't be in business. If there is a
| market for whatever product/service they were offering, someone
| will come up with a sustainable way to serve it that is better
| for all involved.
| nbardy wrote:
| This is why its hard to start a restaurant. You need to be
| rich enough to own the land.
| malandrew wrote:
| Yup, if you don't then your landlord gets all the value.
| You get a 10 year lease, build a successful restaurant (if
| you make it past the dreaded first year) and then when your
| lease expires your successful restaurant has helped
| increase the land value in the area and the margin you
| worked up to evaporates when you sign a new 10-year lease
| that is more expensive because the value of the land has
| gone up (partly due to your success).
| hinkley wrote:
| My old neighborhood was full of people deciding on their
| third 10 year or early retirement. Had a few old guard
| businesses close before people noticed the pattern. Not
| that the residents could do much about the cause...
|
| I imagine them thinking, "I'm 56 and this contract
| basically says I'll have to work harder than I have in
| decades just to keep out of bankruptcy." And just
| checking their finances and then the want ads for
| management positions.
| anovikov wrote:
| In this case, why bothering operating a restaurant at all
| (it's a terribly terribly complex business to manage)? Just
| buy real estate and sit on it?
|
| I always wondered how restaurants even work - how can owners
| be motivated to keep themselves in this endless, poorly paid
| grind. In my opinion, when this is not about large chains
| that are effectively self-reproducing machines that don't
| depend on any people's motivation, it's mostly either hobbies
| (someone runs it to keep himself busy and feel beneficial to
| the society during retirement, for example), or just failures
| (someone foolishly believes there's a massive amount amount
| of money to make, gets burned, and vacates the space to leave
| it to the next one). Yours truly have been that sort of
| person in my younger years (when it was a lot easier, as
| industry professionals say!).
|
| And yes, i can easily understand how can one become a dick
| being a restaurant owner. You deal with people who are paid
| poverty wages (there is no choice here), who can't be
| motivated with anything but threat of losing their jobs, have
| no work ethic (or they'd be doing something better), and in
| general can't be trusted in anything at all. You become
| paranoid and you quickly learn to disrespect people. I can
| feel that guy, don't judge him so heavily.
|
| This is a hellish business to do and anyone who envies them
| is a fool.
| nikanj wrote:
| That's an excellent question, and touches many other
| avenues of life too. Why bother with producing anything,
| when asset appreciation provides bigger gains with no
| effort needed
| jsdwarf wrote:
| Because your activity contributes to the appreciation. A
| good restaurant attracts a lot of people, which in turn
| attracts other businesses (think of bookstores next to
| popular cafes). This increases the worth of the property.
| VLM wrote:
| In some social groups you'll get massive social status
| signaling about being an "entrepreneur". Admittedly it
| mostly comes from people who profit off the pipeline,
| mortgage refi officers, commercial landlords, accountants,
| bankruptcy attorneys, etc.
|
| As a cash business I often wonder how much laundering goes
| on. Not just hard core drug money, but any time cash is
| handled I suspect there's some rounding down going on.
| ianai wrote:
| Not to forget the times where states raise their minimum wage
| and see the number of people in the labor force increase. The
| balance of power is almost always squarely weighted on the
| side of the employer. This can push wages below market
| optimum.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'd expect minimum wage increases to be mostly off the
| table during recessions, so it's not surprising to see them
| passed during economic expansions, which are tightly linked
| to rising employment figures, so this might be a "wet
| streets cause rain" correlation.
| deburo wrote:
| >If they honestly can't afford to pay a living wage
|
| It's not logical to kill businesses by arbitrarily raising
| the minimum wage. Do you think the people they employ are
| better off not working at all? These people may not have a
| decent enough salary, but they get to work as opposed to
| staying at home and degenerate (mentally and physically). I
| always thought the better solution is to help them
| financially in other ways (greater tax credits, negative
| taxes?).
| plankers wrote:
| >they get to work as opposed to staying at home and
| degenerate (mentally and physically)
|
| I almost spit out my drink. You must have a pretty small
| imagination if you think that working for somebody else is
| the only way to stimulate yourself mentally and physically.
| poloopolo wrote:
| For the lower classes it usually is the case
| pyuser583 wrote:
| If have a hard time believing people are going to just sit
| at home staring at the wall because they loose their jobs.
|
| If you want to argue that the minimum wage increases
| unemployment, and that the unemployment tends to be long
| term, go ahead and argue.
|
| But don't ask us to take it as an article of faith.
| onion2k wrote:
| The cost of some businesses closing because they can't
| afford a higher minimum wage has to be considered in the
| context of every business that can afford the higher wage
| improving the lives of their minimum wage staff.
|
| Maybe it _is_ worthwhile killing some businesses, and
| pushing some people to get new jobs or to live on benefits,
| if the wage increase for others is a greater benefit to
| society.
|
| Its also worth noting that practically no businesses close
| when minimum wages have been increased in the past. People
| suggest its a problem,and logically it makes sense, but it
| doesn't seem to actually happen in practise.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| This is something that is quite nuanced that isn't
| apparent until you really look into the numbers.
|
| When something happens that universally makes the labor
| costs go up, and you expect for many businesses to go
| into the black, what you will instead see is that the
| very worst company goes out business and all of the
| others will put pressure on their land owner for lower
| rents pointing out that they are next. The landowner
| wants their land to be used and not be earning nothing
| for years, so they will lower rents. For a restaurant, if
| everyone is in the same boat, is agnostic to labor costs.
|
| Higher labor costs makes real estate prices go down.
| Automation makes real estate prices go up. With interest
| rates going down bringing real estate up, we have plenty
| of space to rise minimum wage to balance.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| No, higher minimum wage shouldn't increase the labor cost
| "universally". Most of the cost increase would be felt by
| those employers who actually paid wages below the new
| limit. Which isn't even that great a portion of the
| economy.
|
| There might be some effect diffusing upwards, but I doubt
| it.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| Right, which is why I clarified each time I said that.
| Software costs don't go up as they don't rely on minimum
| wage labor. For restaurants, that almost universally rely
| on the cheapest labor, this is the case. If Burger King
| and McDonalds both have higher labor costs, both put
| pressure on their land owner, and both don't end up
| caring.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Higher labor costs makes real estate prices go down.
|
| Well, it might by your argument make commercial rents,
| and thus commercial prices, go down. But it also means
| more money chasing the median _residential_ unit (whether
| rent or purchase), so it should increase residential
| prices. Absent zoning constraints, that would seem to
| encourage shifting from commercial to residential land
| use
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| Yep, completely agree.
|
| But notice how this argument is based around the margins.
| When labor goes up, rents go down and food costs go up
| slightly. Someone who used to just barely be able buy
| fast-food from McDonalds will suddenly not be able to,
| and instead be forced to buy more from the grocery store.
| But there might be two customers that would have
| otherwise bought food at Five Guys who now buy from
| McDonalds.
|
| You might see a shift from commercial to residential, or
| you might see a shift to 4+1 mixed. The town might buy
| the space and put in a park. You might put in a high-
| rise. Anything could happen based on the situation.
|
| Whenever the argument of raising the minimum wage comes
| up, we always hear these stats that 50% of businesses
| will go in the black, and we will destroy the economy.
| It's much more subtle than that. The effect that we see
| is tiny tiny percentages that are overwhelmed by other
| factors.
| malandrew wrote:
| > Its also worth noting that practically no businesses
| close when minimum wages have been increased in the past.
|
| The problem got pushed somewhere, but where?
|
| Very rarely does the owner of the business just eat the
| cost except in the very short term. If the business
| doesn't close usually one of two things happen:
|
| (1) there are fewer hours available because books need to
| be balanced. Some workers that are able to keep their
| hours do better at the expense of those whose hours are
| cut. Basically this ends up being a wealth transfer
| between some hourly workers and others.
|
| (2) prices eventually go up and cause localized increases
| in prices. Within two to three years you end up with the
| situation where that new higher minimum wage has about
| the same purchasing power locally as the previous minimum
| wage had.
| itake wrote:
| > Do you think the people they employ are better off not
| working at all?
|
| Maybe you didn't read the article. but in summary, because
| the businesses are not paying enough, the businesses have
| less employees.
|
| Its not that the employees wont have jobs, but they will
| just have a higher paying job somewhere else.
| sqrt17 wrote:
| Most likely they wouldn't stay at home but either would
| start their own small business (which would be more
| competitive now since people with employees have to pay
| them a livable wage) or, if they can be supported by their
| partner and not work, do something that's important for
| society but doesn't pay well (e.g. caring for your family,
| or for people in your community, writing, creating art).
|
| I'd call it a wrong conclusion to assume that the thing
| that people do to unwind after a busy workday or what
| people do who are unable to work due to depression is the
| same as what people undertake when they can sustain
| themselves without spending the majority of their waking
| hours commuting and working.
| wizzard wrote:
| There's nothing arbitrary about paying a living wage. I
| could rephrase your argument as "Shouldn't businesses be
| able to pay poverty wages, and taxpayers can make up the
| difference?" If you can't stay in business without the
| government supporting your workers, then your business
| doesn't work. These businesses are effectively being
| subsidized by the government without giving the government
| a stake.
|
| Also, I feel like this isn't even worth addressing, but no,
| work is not a government-sponsored day care for workers.
| ehnto wrote:
| Please think about the holistic nature of your argument.
| The sum of it's parts essentially suggests that taxpayers
| should subsidize the employment costs of businesses, which
| is ridiculous.
| markvdb wrote:
| This is exactly what government does in Belgium for
| specific types of jobs, like home cleaning aids for
| example.
|
| Before the (significant) wage subsidy, they used to
| almost always be paid under the table. Now they earn a
| proper salary with all extra security that entails.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Aren't you essentially saying that because the government
| spends lots of money on welfare/social support, it gets
| to control private business too?
|
| If the state chooses to offer benefits, great! But the
| state shouldn't blame businesses having to offer those
| benefits.
|
| If the state wants people to have more money than the
| market provides, the state can simply increase benefits
| to that level.
|
| Wage subsidies are supported by both conservative and
| liberal economists.
| 8note wrote:
| I would say the government gets to control private
| businesses because it is the government. Businesses exist
| at governments discretion. Everything about how business
| is done is within scope of the government to regulate
|
| They should enforce things like minimum wage because it's
| doing welfare and social support, but they have the power
| regardless.
| ehnto wrote:
| I think you are right in a way, but all we are doing is
| setting a minimum market rate for employees so that they
| can't be exploited. If a business can't afford that
| employee at that rate then it can't afford to do business
| without being exploitive and so it needs to reconfigure
| itself until it can.
|
| I am not saying it's a net good or bad for the economy by
| the way, I don't think I am qualified for that. But I can
| tell be pretty confident that exploitive wages are bad
| for employees and good for employers, a balance for which
| we have a lever to adjust.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Whether or not someone's being exploited isn't determined
| by a wage.
|
| For example, my wife is an administrative assistant for
| an NGO. She makes about average for an administrative
| assistant, but that makes her one of the highest paid
| employees.
|
| Some of the employees are true believers and donate much
| of their salary back. Others are broke, and can hardly
| make it by.
|
| Most are women with husbands who make the real money.
|
| I know for a fact that the "higher ups" get paid less
| than the lower end. But many are retired lawyers and
| bankers. They also have seats on the board.
|
| Some of the people who work there do so at great personal
| cost. The kids just out of college can barely eat.
|
| Is this exploitive?
|
| If my wife was the primary breadwinner, it sure as heck
| would be.
|
| But everyone there could easily make much, much more in a
| heartbeat.
| ehnto wrote:
| I think you're trying to suggest that an NGO couldn't run
| without a low minimum wage because it couldn't afford it,
| but there are ways to structure an organization that
| society is willing to volunteer labour for without
| jacking up the rest of the community. I say that as
| someone with a partner in a very similar position to
| yours.
|
| No one is working at McDonalds out of the kindness of
| their heart. For my partner's work, they simply have a
| delineation between volunteer participation and worked
| hours, and it makes it very clear which hours you're paid
| for and which you aren't. They have "working bees" and
| "volunteer weekends" and so on, and people are happy to
| sign up for them.
|
| Similarly, theatres (as in performance art not cinema)
| are often for-profit but still quite heavily volunteer
| reliant, because people want to support the arts and the
| theatres wouldn't run without them they can make it work.
| If a petrol station tried to do that, no one would sign
| up for the volunteer program, and "the market" has
| happily chosen which businesses can run with volunteered
| labour or not.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Ok, maybe a better example is being a secret agent for
| the CIA.
|
| The CIA is able to recruit people for the Clandestine
| Service who could easily make millions at a bank. They
| get paid about 90k a year, for more work.
|
| Why? Because they get to be freaking secret agents!
|
| Are they being exploited? I know some folks who used to
| work for intelligence agencies. They seem to think so.
| The "secret agent" factor is bullshit. They have to live
| in high cost of living areas. And 99% of the time the job
| sucks.
|
| Mostly just office work.
|
| I certainly see something exploitive about that ...
| offering one thing and not giving it.
|
| The military is famous for that shit.
|
| I'm sure there are other industries that do the same.
| Hollywood comes to mind. So does programming computer
| games. Etc.
| ehnto wrote:
| To be clear was talking about exploitation regarding the
| minimum wage, I agree with you that there are many other
| ways exploit people.
|
| A great example in your favour is pilots working for
| minimum wage because people just want to be pilots so
| bad. But these are really exceptions, the vast majority
| of people just want to eat and make rent with any job and
| they're not able to. Companies know they've got no choice
| but to work at non-livable wages, so that's the most
| prominent exploitation around minimum wage that we're
| trying to solve by raising it. Make it so people in
| poverty don't have to trade there lives in exchange for
| money that can't even sustain their position in poverty.
| spamizbad wrote:
| I'm not an economist, but isn't it bad for overall
| economic health to have huge swaths of your country's
| workforce tied up in failing firms indirectly propped up
| by the government?
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Yes, but why do you think the government is supporting
| them and why do you think they're failing?
|
| My own experience is that failing firms pay more. They
| can't offer security, and tend to lay off as many people
| as possible. The layoffs leave the firm top-heavy. In
| order to recruit new staff they have to pay more. Who
| wants to be VP of a failing company?
|
| Regarding propping them up, I don't see how making up the
| difference between a given wage and the amount necessary
| to live a decent life is propping up the company.
|
| I'm very much in favor of minimum wage laws. But I don't
| see them as government propping up failing companies.
| caymanjim wrote:
| Taxpayers already subsidize the employment costs, by
| supplementing low salaries and lack of benefits via
| welfare programs, tax rebates, lower tax rates,
| subsidized healthcare, and countless other benefits.
| Walmart et al have externalized almost all of the true
| cost of labor to taxpayers.
| ehnto wrote:
| Right, and raising the minimum wage is an attempt to
| control that by putting the costs back on the employer.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Who will simply either pass the costs along to the
| consumer, or shut down.
| KSteffensen wrote:
| Again, internalizing the true cost of things.
|
| How is this bad?
| taurath wrote:
| Why not have the government subsidize purchases at the
| business, if the goal is to have as close to 0 pricing as
| possible and ensure the business survives regardless of
| its utility?
|
| People constantly argue for the rights of businesses
| which pay incredibly poorly, as if that is effecting mom
| and pop shops which are by and large already closed and
| gone, and when they were around ended up paying a bit
| more. Maybe a community is better when there's a
| collection of local businesses moving money locally
| instead of a big nowhere-place off the turnpike paying
| slave wages and moving money back to corporate HQ?
| America's business climate is pretty sick compared to so
| much of the world.
| varispeed wrote:
| I think the problem may also be that mom and pop shops
| are taxed much more heavily than big multinational
| corporations, that pay very little tax and thus have huge
| competitive advantage over small local businesses. I
| would think that any government caring about the local
| population would look into getting those companies to pay
| their fair share.
| taurath wrote:
| The areas where people vote for less and less government
| tend to be the places that have the most minimal
| services. I have yet to see an area that truly attracts
| business because of having low regulation and taxes, they
| all seem to have absolutey no businesses because there is
| no infrastructure to build upon, nor an existing business
| community to interact with.
| varispeed wrote:
| The problem is that in most places the general population
| is absolutely fine for being fleeced. They pay 30%-40%
| tax for a privilege of working for a big corporation that
| only contribution to their society are the salaries they
| pay. All the rest gets siphoned out to tax havens. So far
| neither the so called left nor right have a clue how to
| fix this. That is a next level entitlement for
| corporations to expect people build infrastructure for
| them for free.
| 8note wrote:
| In a market system, a company that takes less profit
| would keep their prices low and put the other company out
| of business.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| This isn't correct. The amount of costs passed along to
| the consumer depends on the supply and demand
| elasticities of each particular market. That's Econ 101.
| ehnto wrote:
| Which is a healthy cleanse of an exploitive economy, and
| America definitely has an exploitive economy, make no
| mistake.
|
| A minimum wage is a decision a society makes, that says
| "this is the minimum market rate for a human that we
| consider non-exploitive", it's not an economic decision
| made to maximize GDP or profit. If a company can't afford
| to operate in a way that's non-exploitive then it needs
| to reconfigure or die out, because it doesn't belong in
| your society.
| geofft wrote:
| Yes. That's the point.
|
| First, inefficient employers like McDonald's have an
| entrenched position in the industry because of their
| massive scale and their real estate holdings. A new
| entrant in the market already has an uphill battle - if
| they don't want to rely on government subsidies (e.g.,
| because they want to attract employees who would rather
| be paid directly for their work), their task is even
| harder.
|
| A free market in the sense Adam Smith meant it - not a
| free-for-all, but free to enter - would treat it as a
| policy goal that new companies would have a fair shot at
| competing.
|
| I'd understand the argument that government welfare and a
| low minimum wage are important to support new entrants,
| by making it possible for them to compete against the
| entrenched companies. But that's not what's happening;
| it's the entrenched companies that are effective
| beneficiaries of these policies (cf.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-
| among-...).
|
| Second, passing the costs along to the consumer _along
| with_ raising wages has the effect of increasing the
| purchasing power of low-income consumers. If the minimum
| wage goes from X to 2X, which causes the cost of items at
| McDonald 's or Wal-Mart to go from Y to 2Y (which it
| won't, because labor costs aren't the entire costs, but
| for the sake of argument assume they are), then people
| being paid the minimum wage are in basically the same
| position for their everyday purchases: they get twice as
| much money, but they spend twice as much money. But
| they've also got larger expenditures - renting or buying
| a home, buying a car, paying medical bills, etc. The cost
| of emergency surgery isn't going to double just because
| the minimum wage goes up (even though much more of the
| cost is labor) - surgeons are paid way above the minimum
| wage already.
|
| What this means is that people being paid a high minimum
| wage are equally able to live their ordinary lives,
| because they can afford the increased cost of goods made
| by other minimum-wage employees, but they are more able
| to make expenditures that improve their lives (e.g., more
| able to deal with medical issues before an emergency) -
| and more able to make purchases that stimulate the
| economy. Instead of buying N hamburgers a year and a car
| that costs Z which they use for five years, they can now
| buy the same N hamburgers a year and a car that costs
| 1.2Z.
|
| As long as government policy continues to enable both
| wages and prices remaining low, the economy is stuck.
|
| (It does mean that the relative purchasing power of
| _rich_ consumers goes down - they can buy the same number
| of vacation homes, but they can 't buy as many McDonald's
| hamburgers - but that hardly seems like a concern. You
| can only eat so many hamburgers, and they're probably not
| buying very many hamburgers from McDonald's anyway.)
| didibus wrote:
| That seems fine no?
| davemp wrote:
| The government giving more to minimum wage workers instead
| of raising minimum wage feels like a roundabout way to
| subsidize businesses that don't way living wages.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| That's exactly how it works in many european countries,
| especially the ones without a legal minimum wage (Austria
| for example), so people working "slave" gig jobs
| (cleaners, delivery, construction and hospitality
| workers, etc.) where if they earn below a certain
| "livable' threshold, get various tax credits, subsidies
| and benefits from the government to reach that "livable"
| threshold, which, while it sounds good, it creates a
| perverse incentive where employees arrange with the
| employer to be paid as little on paper as possible to
| still qualify for the government subsidies and then get
| paid the rest under the table (tipping is expected here
| for this reason) which just moves the burden from the
| employers of paying a livable wage to the customers and
| to the taxpayers which are basically subsidizing their
| business.
| varispeed wrote:
| What strikes me as weird is that parties that call
| themselves left-wing opt for this kind of hand outs
| without realising they are in fact subsidising the rich
| with workers' money. How this can fly?
| tnzm wrote:
| Left and right wings belong to the same vulture.
| brigandish wrote:
| This is what's happened with housing benefit in the
| UK[1], it's basically a subsidy to businesses in high
| rent areas. It was PS500M a week, I shudder to think what
| it is now.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06bnbpx
| taurath wrote:
| The government already does that in terms of food stamps.
|
| A job in the richest country in the world should not pay
| starvation wages.
| wonnage wrote:
| Same argument is used by Americans to justify sweatshops in
| SE Asia. TBF, not much you can do about working conditions
| in other countries, so you might as well rationalize it and
| wear cheap clothes. It says a lot about an individual who
| chooses the same strategy for their own countrymen too.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >but they get to work as opposed to staying at home and
| degenerate (mentally and physically)
|
| If I don't have a job I go workout during the day, learn
| new skills, and read. Without kids that is, with kids I
| take care of the kids.
| watwut wrote:
| Unprofitable business paying below mininum wage distorts
| the market. They are in direct competition with businesses
| who do pay minimum wage and have advantage.
|
| Otherwise said, these not ending is bad thing.
|
| And none of that is for benefit of worker.
| blihp wrote:
| If raising the minimum wage will do them in, they're
| already halfway there if things are _really_ [1] that dire
| and will end up there soon enough. So yes, people are
| better off not working for those types of businesses. If a
| business can only remain solvent by paying unreasonably low
| wages, it puts downward wage pressure on competing
| businesses and traps unskilled workers in a labor pool of
| dead-end jobs with little hope of escaping it/them and no
| time to do so since they're always scrambling to make
| enough money pay the most urgent bill.
|
| There are plenty of things society needs done to keep
| displaced workers productive (with better pay and a sense
| of actual accomplishment) while giving them breathing room
| to figure out 'what next?' I don't believe for a second
| that we're doing workers in the sub-basement of the economy
| any favors by keeping them locked down there. It isn't a
| binary ( _either_ they work in these crap jobs _or_ they
| sit at home and deteriorate) decision... there are a
| variety of options between the extremes.
|
| [1] I'm suspicious of the majority of cases where this
| claim is made. A rational business person would see that
| such a business is already marginal and that they would
| likely be better off shutting it down and redeploying the
| capital elsewhere for a better return. This happens all the
| time. If the owner can't see this, keeping the business on
| life support isn't doing anyone any favors.
| TOGoS wrote:
| > there are a variety of options between the extremes.
|
| There are a variety of options completely outside of that
| continuum.
|
| Like, how about a democratically planned economy where we
| intentionally work on things that actually help society
| instead of just whatever happens to make the most profit
| for the current owners?
|
| I think a big part of burnout is that the work we're
| doing is clearly pointless. I'm stuck writing debugging
| shitty Android apps all day. Can I please go plant some
| forests or something?
| malandrew wrote:
| > I'm stuck writing debugging shitty Android apps all
| day. Can I please go plant some forests or something?
|
| If this was the status quo, there'd be just as many
| people thinking "I'm stuck outside doing manual labor
| planting trees. Can I please spent time doing something
| mindless sitting at a desk in a climate controlled
| workspace instead?"
|
| Someone out there is deriving value from the android app
| you're debugging or else it would not be economically
| viable to keep paying you to do that job.
| TOGoS wrote:
| > there'd be just as many people thinking "I'm stuck
| outside doing manual labor planting trees
|
| Then we could trade jobs for a while. Part of the problem
| (for us knowledge workers) is that we get pidgeonholed
| into doing one thing because that's where we have enough
| experience to convince someone to pay us to work on their
| thing. Not to mention that switching jobs or taking
| breaks is more annoying than it ought to be because
| health insurance and other benefits are tied to
| employment.
|
| > Someone out there is deriving value from the android
| app you're debugging
|
| The CEO. Who already has enough money that he could
| retire if he wanted. I don't think people in general
| would miss our buggy app if it disappeared tomorrow. I do
| miss the trees when they disappear, though.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Almost as if humans don't naturally adapt well to doing
| single isolated jobs for long periods of time. A sort of
| labour alienation, you could say.
|
| I'm not saying it's not economically efficient to split
| up jobs this way, but it sure isn't good for your state
| of mind.
| malandrew wrote:
| > while giving them breathing room to figure out 'what
| next?'
|
| I'm dubious of this claim. My experience from observing
| many friends in this situation at different economic
| levels (enough savings to take a break in US.
| Unemployment benefits in Europe) is that they rarely use
| the time to figure out what is next. Instead they most
| often use the time to relax and only spend time trying to
| figure out what is next when pressured to do so by
| impending financial circumstances (doing nothing depletes
| savings for those in America and unemployment benefits
| run out eventually in Europe).
|
| Whether the amount of time afforded by savings or
| unemployment is 3 months or 2+ years, it's only the last
| 1-2 months where most people spend time figuring things
| out.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| This is a very nice way of saying "I asked my poor
| friends to confirm what I want to believe."
|
| When all you have to look forward to your entire life is
| some slog of service industry jobs with little to no
| benefits or vacation, of course you maximize the amount
| of time you spend on your own life. Poor people deserve
| to relax, and I have never had a job in my tech career
| that compared to the stress or exhaustion of my minimum
| wage jobs.
|
| If I get fired now, I'd be happy to go find my next
| career move. Back then, you would have to drag me into
| another restaurant.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Plenty of small businesses, especially restaurants,
| appear to me to be sustenance operations. Many owners
| appear happy just to not go broke and pass the job to
| their kids.
|
| That's an OK life.
| JackFr wrote:
| > [1] I'm suspicious of the majority of cases where this
| claim is made. A rational business person would see that
| such a business is already marginal and that they would
| likely be better off shutting it down and redeploying the
| capital elsewhere for a better return.
|
| Now do family farms.
| leesalminen wrote:
| > [1] I'm suspicious of the majority of cases where this
| claim is made. A rational business person would see that
| such a business is already marginal and that they would
| likely be better off shutting it down and redeploying the
| capital elsewhere for a better return. This happens all
| the time. If the owner can't see this, keeping the
| business on life support isn't doing anyone any favors.
|
| I agree with you, I would never own a restaurant or bar
| personally. But profits are really ~10% for the average
| mom n pop restaurant. It's just how it is. So $1mm in
| annual sales makes you $100k, more or less. People like
| owning restaurants, despite their best financial
| interests.
| meowkit wrote:
| > People like owning restaurants, despite their best
| financial interests.
|
| And part of the problem is cultural. There is social
| capital that exists alongside human and financial
| capital, and because its hard to quantify we end up with
| this sort of hidden value that isn't accounted for.
| AJ007 wrote:
| 10% is when the restaurant is extremely successful.
| Average margins are lower than that.
|
| Arguably there are way too many restaurants, in part due
| to low interest rates. If there were fewer restaurants,
| the volume would go up and the average restaurant would
| do a larger gross and be able to handle low or lower
| margins.
|
| Consider that if someone lived through the last time the
| US had significant price inflation as an adult, they are
| 70+ years old. Costs are going up for anything with tight
| supply, including for labor. Very few working age adults,
| or business owners, have any experience with that. The
| transition will be alarming and painful but there is no
| back peddling now. Businesses with slim margins and an
| inability to rapidly raise prices just will fail.
| msbarnett wrote:
| > People like owning restaurants, despite their best
| financial interests.
|
| Which is fine, but then it's silly to base minimum wage
| policy on whether or not it will make somebody's already-
| irrational hobby business less profitable.
| tnzm wrote:
| >but they get to work as opposed to staying at home and
| degenerate (mentally and physically)
|
| That's a disgusting thing to say.
| hinkley wrote:
| Then you have the reverse problem where the stores or
| restaurants are renting their space. As the neighborhood
| density increases, their customer base goes up but so does
| rent. And since location matters, you can't just move if you
| don't like the rent prices, so they can squeeze you pretty
| hard. Goodbye profit margins.
|
| In my old neighborhood there were always a few empty places
| because they were pricing people out, and few wanted to pay
| the new prices.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| Insert Adam Smith quote about the rent of land.
| closeparen wrote:
| McDonalds is a franchise, isn't it? Corporate doesn't own the
| stores.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Some stores are corporate owned and operated.
|
| Most are franchise owned and operated, but corporate owns
| the real-estate the store is sitting on.
| [deleted]
| caymanjim wrote:
| Corporate owns 15% of ~36000 total stores, which it leases
| to franchisees.
| hrktb wrote:
| There was a good Polymatter video about this very topic:
| https://youtu.be/kJVj3vp-lho
|
| McDonald's model is pretty different from standard
| franchises.
| ab111111111 wrote:
| The whole point of a minimum wage increase is that it will
| increase all restaurants' wage costs to the same degree, at the
| same time. Meaning that going "down the street", potential
| diner's will find that all restaurants' prices have increased
| equally. So the business threat isn't that American consumers
| will abandon "Dale's" in particular for some other restaurant.
| It's that they will choose to eat at home instead of eating at
| a restaurant, or that they will order less food when they do go
| to one.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "it will increase all restaurants' wage costs to the same
| degree"
|
| In an ideal world full of law abiding citizens, yes.
|
| In practice, restaurants that cheat are going to win.
|
| I live in a country that has a lot of regulations in the
| hospitality sector and yet the "paid under the table, not
| officially employed here" phenomenon is everywhere.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > And all of this is free market capitalism at work. It is a
| continuous process of reinvention.
|
| I agree with this sentiment. Mostly. But I can't say it freely,
| or with impunity - I'm on the lucky end of the spectrum partly
| by my own hard work, partly blind luck to be born in a middle
| class family, partly because my country has racial equality
| laws that give me the opportunity. I can negotiate my own terms
| for work and when I'm out of work I can freelance or build a
| product. But I can't swallow looking at workers as a line on an
| income statement. Something about it feels uncomfortable,
| uneasy. Like casually throwing talent and skills into the ocean
| when theres still so much work to do.
|
| Sure, it's great for some. Most people in this forum are part
| of the economic and cognitive elite. I would expect words like
| automation to be thrown around freely because "optimization"
| and "free-market" are fantastic myths to belive in. They might
| even be self-fulfilling prophecies. They just never come up to
| help people get a leg up. Those families that could be paying
| taxes are going on welfare, which means we get taxed more but
| do we have a right to complain and try to dodge out of paying
| taxes to support the people we've put out of work for the sake
| of automation and progress? Would we be happy to automate to
| our hearts content if you had to pay more taxes?
| pnutjam wrote:
| Maybe we need some sort of wage floor or mandatory
| "minimum"...?
| neilwilson wrote:
| "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."
|
| It was examined. In 1944 in the Beverage Report "Full
| Employment in a Free Society". It concluded that people not
| earning sufficient to eat is an order of magnitude more harm
| than businesses not earning a profit and that the labour market
| should always be a sellers market, not a buyers market.
|
| "But watch out for technology and automation...that is the part
| of the equation that has been "solving" the labor problem"
|
| That's sort of the point. However micro-solving the labour
| problem with automation to drive forward productivity leaves
| you with a big problem - given wages are the primary source of
| demand, who are you going to sell the output of the robots to?
|
| The underlying assumption here is always that the private
| sector provides the jobs. Look at the vacancies vs the number
| of people without work that want it. Then you'll realise that
| the private sector is systemically incapable of supplying
| sufficient jobs to go around. It always stops short. Which
| means that jobs have to be topped up by the public sector to
| ensure there are enough to go around.
|
| If there are always 19 bones and 20 dogs, it doesn't matter how
| good the dogs are at bone hunting. Blaming the dogs for a bone
| shortage is desperately unfair.
| [deleted]
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > It was examined. In 1944 in the Beverage Report "Full
| Employment in a Free Society". It concluded that people not
| earning sufficient to eat is an order of magnitude more harm
| than businesses not earning a profit and that the labour
| market should always be a sellers market, not a buyers market
|
| This report is completely irrelevant in today's America,
| where everyone has more than enough to eat, especially if
| they are working.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > today's America, where everyone has more than enough to
| eat
|
| What are you talking about? Nearly 1 in 4 households
| experienced food insecurity during the pandemic.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-
| in-...
| xyzzyz wrote:
| "Food insecurity" has nothing to do with not having
| enough food to eat. It's a term designed to confuse.
| kixiQu wrote:
| "Food insecurity is the limited or uncertain availability
| of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or limited or
| uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially
| acceptable ways."
|
| "Food insecurity is a household-level economic and social
| condition of limited access to food, while hunger is an
| individual-level physiological condition that may result
| from food insecurity.
|
| Information about the incidence of hunger is of
| considerable interest and potential value for policy and
| program design. But providing precise and useful
| information about hunger is hampered by the lack of a
| consistent meaning of the word. "Hunger" is understood
| variously by different people to refer to conditions
| across a broad range of severity, from rather mild food
| insecurity to prolonged clinical undernutrition."
|
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-
| assistance/fo...
| malandrew wrote:
| > who are you going to sell the output of the robots to?
|
| to other people employing, manufacturing or investing in the
| robots
|
| Gains in a society goes to those that are doing something
| useful to contribute to increase productivity, such as
| providing the labor that increases the productivity or
| providing the capital to make that increased productivity a
| reality. While they won't get the gains, bystanders to this
| process benefit from cheaper costs due to increased
| productivity.
| 8note wrote:
| Is there enough people doing that to justify the scale of
| robot based manufacturing?
|
| I've only seen costs for stuff go up with inflation, and
| most people don't have wages that track inflation. The
| owners benefit from the cheaper costs, but nobody else does
| malandrew wrote:
| define "stuff"
|
| When adjusting for inflation, most things are getting
| cheaper. It is only a few goods that are getting much
| more expensive after you adjust for inflation and almost
| all of those things have one thing in common: government
| meddling and regulation.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| > the financial model is set by the fixed or imperative costs,
| i.e. the cost of rent
|
| Rent for commercial spaces is set to what the market will bear,
| and that is _also_ determined by the same financial models with
| labor prices as input. "Restaurant owners aren't getting rich
| off of exploiting labor; their landlord is" just means that the
| haircut should be getting taken off of the _landlord 's_ profit
| margins.
|
| Now, this isn't a panacea - there are some distortionary
| effects from squeezing the rents that landlords can charge, and
| it favors high-skill and low-labor businesses by competing away
| higher bidders on commercial real estate, but it's not like
| business owners will feel 100% of the incidence of a minimum
| wage hike. Some will go out of business, which will lower
| commercial rents as vacancies rise, which will save a portion
| of the businesses that would die based off first-order effects
| alone.
| Iv wrote:
| I agree but let's continue with that story. Let's remember that
| the beginning of the story was the labor shortage. So not
| enough people to serve in all restaurants at a competitive
| price.
|
| Let's suppose some restaurants decide to raise prices.
| Customers decide to go to a place that's cheaper but... it is
| packed. Shortage, remember? Free market dictates that higher
| demand than supply makes the prices go up.
|
| If client CAN go to a cheaper venue then we are not in a
| position of shortage.
|
| In the end, look at places like Scandinavian countries:
| salaries are high and going to the restaurant is very
| expensive. When you think about it, being served by humans is
| actually a luxury and as global wealth progresses, this should
| become less and less common.
|
| I really hope that the future of restaurants is either fully
| automated fast foods or high end luxury restaurants that people
| work out of passion, and that you can afford maybe oncee every
| months.
| fwip wrote:
| A 10% profit can be a lot, if like many restaurants you're
| pulling $5-10k in revenue in a day. Many owners own multiple
| restaurants, too.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's a hugely risky business, especially if you're not a
| national chain. Most mom-and-pop restaurants don't last long.
| 10% isn't that big a return for that kind of risk.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| > raise prices and hope that customers won't just go down the
| street
|
| I always found the idea that restaurants need to compete on
| price strange. A typic Mexican restaurant is always going to
| lose to Taco Bell on that, so raising the price of your
| enchiladas or margaritas probably won't have much impact on
| traffic.
|
| We read a lot here about founders not setting prices high
| enough (see patio11 for tons of discussion). Or comment on
| backblaze being very hesitant to raise prices [0], but then buy
| into this idea that restaurants have set their prices optimally
| and that business will plummet if the $15 dish is suddenly $17.
| The truth is very few decisions on where to eat are driven by
| price (except at the high end) and instead are driven by
| experience and location.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20996555
| xyzzyz wrote:
| That $15 vs $17 difference per dish might be immaterial to
| you, but if you include tax and tips, it's a difference of a
| full hour of wage labor for a night out of a family with 2-3
| kids with parents earning average wage.
| bregma wrote:
| If a business model relies on the exploitation of the
| vulnerable, it deserves neither our sympathy nor our collective
| subsidization.
| 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.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| This assumes demand is inelastic to price.
| 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.
| michael1999 wrote:
| Sure. But labour is only a third of costs. And given the
| relative bargaining power of landlords, owners, and labour,
| the flow through to retail price might be less than you
| think.
| [deleted]
| dmitriid wrote:
| Ah yeah. You can always look at how Europe is empty and has
| very few, if any, restaurants with their minimum wages and
| healthcare. Oh wait...
| idrios wrote:
| You could have made this same point without being
| antagonistic about it. The parent's comment was valid and
| not in disagreement with yours
| fighterpilot wrote:
| I said that it would reduce demand, not that it would
| eliminate it.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Has it reduced demand in Europe?
|
| In general. Americans regularly have deep-rooted fears
| about giving fellow humans a chance at a decent life. Are
| _any_ of those fears substantiated?
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Economic theory says yes. If prices of A go up and B is a
| close substitute, some people will shift from A to B.
|
| I doubt anyone has studied that rather specific question
| empirically, though, and even if they had it's not an
| easy question to study. So theory and common sense is our
| best bet when it comes to forming expectations here.
|
| I'm sure there are empirical studies about how demand
| shifts from A to B for other examples of substitute
| goods, though. Maybe start there?
| dmitriid wrote:
| > some people will shift from A to B.
|
| 1. Is this number at all significant?
|
| 2. Should theory prevent working Americans from having a
| decent life given that empirically restaurants and cafes
| are plentiful in Europe and are filled to the brim with
| customers?
| fighterpilot wrote:
| 1. Perhaps. Difficult to know the extent exactly. My
| guess would be yes, given theory, but we'd need a natural
| experiment to find that out.
|
| 2. This particular thing isn't really an argument against
| minimum wage, although I personally am not automatically
| in support of it for other reasons.
|
| I can see an argument that it creates poverty by making
| unskilled workers unable to compete with lower skilled
| labor overseas for manufacturing jobs. Effectively it's a
| ban on their ability to work (if their value add is less
| than the minimum wage) and make a living and can possibly
| go some way towards explaining the black youth
| unemployment rate. This robs them of their ability to get
| a foothold in their economy from which they can stabilize
| and level up. Why would a manufacturer keep their
| operations in the US if they have to pay minimum wage? Of
| course they're going to be _inclined_ to move overseas
| where it 's cheaper, especially if it's a low margin
| business.
|
| It's also rather intrusive and authoritarian, if two
| people want to get together and exchange one hour of X
| for $Y then I don't see that as any of your business, but
| this is more a point of personal values and it's more
| productive to focus on the utilitarian part of the
| argument.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > This robs them of their ability to get a foothold in
| their economy from which they can stabilize and level up.
|
| You're kidding, right? You're sayig that minimum wage
| robs people of ability to get a foothold in the economy?
|
| Please enlighten me how "getting a foothold" works for
| people that have to work several jobs just to barely keep
| afloat?
|
| > It's also rather intrusive and authoritarian, if two
| people want to get together and exchange one hour of X
| for $Y then I don't see that as any of your business
|
| What about if a bunch of people come together and agree
| this is a good thing? Oh, wait, that's called a
| government, and laws, and common human decency.
|
| > this is more a point of personal values and it's more
| productive to focus on the utilitarian part of the
| argument.
|
| Indeed. Because your personal argument basically devolves
| into: if you want to keep slaves or indentured servants,
| who am I to keep you from doing that?
| fighterpilot wrote:
| > You're sayig that minimum wage robs people of ability
| to get a foothold in the economy? Please enlighten me how
| "getting a foothold" works for people that have to work
| several jobs just to barely keep afloat?
|
| I explained why already.
|
| (1) If their value to an employer is less than the
| miminum wage, then that's going to contribute to
| unemployment, because an employer would now rather pursue
| automation or some other solution, or simply go out of
| business. That's what happens when you fix prices. This
| robs those people of the ability to get that first job
| that they can leverage for better opportunities later,
| and pushes people to drug dealing (which pays worse than
| minimum wage most of the time) and so on. It is terrible
| for social mobility and keeps people stuck at the
| absolute bottom.
|
| (2) Domestic unskilled labor is now uncompetitive with
| foreign unskilled labor. The government has effectively
| banned domestic unskilled labor from working those
| particular jobs which means manufacturing moves overseas
| and benefits foreign unskilled labor instead. This
| devastates communities that used to function on the back
| of manufacturing. > What about if a
| bunch of people come together and agree this is a good
| thing?
|
| Democratic != not authoritarian.
|
| Internment of Japanese was done by democratically elected
| representatives, and it was authoritarian.
| > keep slaves or indentured servants
|
| You can frame it like that, and I can point to
| communities that have been devastated and people that are
| chronically unemployed because of these kind of
| supposedly well-intentioned laws that fix prices. Who has
| the real moral high ground?
| dmitriid wrote:
| 1. If a business cannot pay its employees a _living_
| wage, it literally doesn 't matter if you decide that "an
| employee's value is less than the wage".
|
| 2. If a business cannot pay a _living_ wage, and has to
| cease existing or has to automate, let it cease to exist
| or automate.
|
| 3. "Cannot compete with third-world countries that offer
| shit wages and shit standards of living, and are
| ruthlessly exploited" really _isn 't_ an argument you
| want to present when advocating against minimum wage.
|
| 4. Price fixing !== setting minimum wage to a level that
| lets people, you know, live.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| > (2) (3)
|
| This is fairly ruthless towards the victims of this
| ideology - those that live in the communities left
| literally destroyed after manufacturers pulled out and
| those trapped in chronic unemployment.
|
| You can use emotive and loaded terms all you want
| (slavery, indentured servitude, exploitation), but the
| real-world negative human consequences and rather racist
| outcomes of these ideals are on full display for everyone
| to see.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > This is fairly ruthless towards the victims of this
| ideology - those that live in the communities left
| literally destroyed
|
| It's only ruthless in the US which couldn't care about
| people and doesn't provide them with safety nets.
|
| > You can use emotive and loaded terms all you want
|
| Says the person talking about "ruthless destruction". I
| don't use emotive and loaded words.
|
| > the real-world negative human consequences and rather
| racist outcomes of these ideals are on full display for
| everyone to see.
|
| In the US? Of course. However, the moment you look at the
| world _not_ through US-tinted glasses, it turns out that:
|
| - you can provide minimum _living_ wage to your citizens
|
| - you can provide healthcare to your citizens
|
| - you don't have to force a large portion of your
| citizens into barely surviving
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Sorry but that's moving the goalposts to safety nets.
| We're not talking about that.
|
| Minimum wages still cause many of those negative human
| outcomes (chronic unemployment, lower mobility, rural
| towns full of unemployed people, and so on) even with
| safety nets. Safety nets + no minimum wages would provide
| a much better humanitarian outcome than safety nets +
| minimum wages.
|
| And even if it didn't (which it does) this ideology is
| still responsible for significant human suffering and
| racist outcomes in the US right now, and is being pushed
| by zealots irrespective of this suffering.
|
| This is fairly typical of ideologies, no matter the
| actual human toll, the ideological vision must come
| first. I suggest you to visit a town that has faced
| factory closures and see the actual human toll to make
| this all a little less abstract.
|
| Leaving the discussion here, my friend.
| conanbatt wrote:
| Or unemployment..oh wait...
| dmitriid wrote:
| Unemployment varies from country to country.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/268830/unemployment-
| rate...
|
| 5.8% to 16%
|
| Comparable to the U.S.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/273909/seasonally-
| adjust...
|
| 4.4% to 14.7%
|
| Something tells me though that you really don't want to
| be unemployed in the US... And that a huge number of
| those jobs in the US are indentured servitude in all but
| name.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >With such a small profit margin, arbitrarily raising
| everyone's wages is likely going to kill the business.
|
| There are maybe ten lunch places within walking distance of my
| (suburban) office.
|
| The variety is _nice,_ certainly. I like having a bunch of
| options. I don 't think it would destroy society if I only had
| half the choices, though.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| There are plenty of countries who have had minimum wage for
| some time and have increased that minimum wage over time. So
| there have been lots of studies done on the impact of it.
| Here's one:
|
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
|
| > _This report includes the findings from a meta-analysis of
| the empirical UK national minimum wage literature. Similar to a
| previous UK minimum wage study by de Linde Leonard et al.
| (2014), this study finds no statistically significant aggregate
| adverse employment effect of the NMW and also no publication
| bias in the NMW literature. However, estimates for different
| sub-groups suggest some relatively larger adverse employment
| effects for some labour market groups, such as part-time
| employees._
| karmasimida wrote:
| Even with minimum wages at 15 dollars, it is still hard to
| say this is a decent job, although this is the already among
| the highest globally.
|
| The problem lies that the value of assets, especially housing
| etc, increase much faster than wages can catch up.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I honestly think that part of the problem is that the older
| people who make decisions on things like minimum wage
| remember their own minimum wage jobs. My first job paid
| $3.35/hr. $15/hr is $30K a year full-time. I barely made
| more than that at my first professional programming job out
| of college. It sounds insane to me on first hearing that
| $15/hr is not "decent" pay for an _entry level, non-
| skilled_ position.
| didibus wrote:
| What's the absolute number attached to that? 10% could be a lot
| or very little.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Fast food restaurants do fine in other nations. In sweden, one
| survey puts a Big Mac combo meal at 15% higher than in Fresco.
| About 1.50 different.
|
| https://www.expatistan.com/price/big-mac/stockholm/USD
| fallingknife wrote:
| You do know that businesses can also raise prices, right?
| 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.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| For start, people are allowed to work also in other places.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| If they have a better option than their current one, why
| don't they take it?
|
| Their second best option would typically pay less,
| meaning the workers would die off even faster.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| There are many effects here, for start if food places
| start going bankrupt remaining ones can raise prices and
| pay some sensible wage.
|
| And anyway, if getting unemployed means that you will die
| - then society has a large problems. (assuming country in
| XXI century, does not apply to historic situation where
| resources were not sufficient to feed everyone)
| 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.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| I view the government as setting up a playing field which
| entrepreneurs than explore to find profit opportunities.
| With welfare and especially the Earned Income Tax Credit,
| the government created a class of people who can be
| profitably employed by paying $X below the cost of
| living. This was intentional, a way to keep people in the
| market economy even though they're not productive enough
| to survive in current conditions.
|
| An entrepreneur who employs someone like this is like
| someone living in New York City in a rent-controlled
| apartment. You can't say they're not supporting
| themselves just because they couldn't afford rent in a
| pure market system. The actual system was purposely
| designed to make certain activities profitable that would
| ordinarily be losses. Without people taking advantage of
| those niches, the subsidies would be pointless.
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| The subsidies in this case do not exist so that
| businesses can exploit underpaid workers, though (and are
| not comparable to something like a rent-controlled
| apartment, where landlords are just prevented from
| charging so much that they'll drive out the workforce
| rather than actively subsidizing with things like food
| stamps or welfare). They exist because the US is
| reluctant to let people starve in the streets and die,
| the fact that you interpret them as an effort to "keep
| [unproductive] people in the market economy"
| notwithstanding.
|
| The government bumping up unemployment to the point that
| people don't have to take certain types of jobs that rely
| on underpayment for profitability does not contradict
| that goal, which is why many people are not that
| sympathetic to small business owners complaining about
| it.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Usually, this question is brought up when a business is
| struggling; like in this case, where restaurants are
| struggling. So the implied context is that other actions
| are asked for (such as subsidies or laxer laws). The
| question, like in this case, is whether it should not
| simply be written of as not providing value, instead of
| trying to fix something fundamentally broken by, for
| example, allowing worker exploitation.
| sdf131 wrote:
| You get paid what you're worth, not what you need.
| ativzzz wrote:
| So shouldn't likewise a business pays for what it needs, so
| if it doesn't find enough employees at a lower pay it needs
| to increase pay?
| 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.
| parineum wrote:
| A lot of people who support minimum wage increases don't
| think that way though. They _do_ think the local McDonald's
| is raking in cash and not sharing the profits.
|
| Conceptually, I agree with what you're saying (I also feel
| very strongly about off shore manufacturing for the same
| reasons) but, practically, when you increase the minimum
| wage, the poverty jobs will disappear and _eventually_ be
| replaced. The problem is the transition period. The real
| minimum wage is always zero.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > but, practically, when you increase the minimum wage, the
| poverty jobs will disappear
|
| If we're talking about raising the minimum wage arbitrarily
| high, then this is true.
|
| But this argument also gets made a lot when we're talking
| about a _specific_ proposal (such as $15). For a specific
| proposal this argument is not always true.
|
| It was raised _a ton_ in Seattle when Seattle was
| considering a $15 minimum wage. Endlessly. The main
| argument was that it would devastate employment for the
| jobs it was supposed to improve.
|
| Then the minimum wage increase passed and it didn't do
| that. Employment in those jobs actually went _up_ slightly
| (probably not a casual increase, probably more
| coincidental). But it certainly didn 't devastate the
| employment in minimum wage jobs.
|
| So, the argument is one that feels compelling since it _is_
| true in the extremes. But it needs to be evaluated with the
| facts of each proposal.
| Frondo wrote:
| Do you have anything to back that assertion up, that the
| poverty jobs will disappear?
|
| The only articles I've ever found that say that come from
| the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise
| Institute, and neither of those is anywhere near an
| unbiased source.
|
| All the research (excluding the pieces from those two think
| tanks) suggests that the job markets remain stable through
| minimum wage increases, and in some cases the labor markets
| actually gain jobs -- possibly because more money in the
| hands of poorer people is going to go right back out into
| the community, as a matter of need.
| bluedino wrote:
| A combo meal at many fast food places is nearing the $10
| mark, and has passed it for places like Firehouse or Panera.
|
| Labor is typically 20-30% of a restaurants costs, doubling
| that from say $9 to $18 would add another $2-3 to the price
| of a meal.
| humanrebar wrote:
| A teenager making change on bagel purchases isn't working for
| "poverty wages". And a business that providing tennagers jobs
| isn't being exploitive.
|
| I do think employers should be conscious about the kinds of
| lives they set their employees up for, though we can talk
| about that without overgeneralization.
| kixiQu wrote:
| https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-workers-
| older-88-percen...
|
| 88 percent of people making the federal minimum wage are
| older than 20. A third are older than 40. Median age is 31.
| More than half work full time.
| humanrebar wrote:
| You have a good point, and I appreciate the evenhanded
| approach. I'm still far from sold that "poverty wage" is
| a useful term if we want to have a healthy discussion. It
| leaves too much nuance out.
| vlahmot wrote:
| It doesn't though. Poverty is well defined (and is
| defined based on the number of people in the household).
|
| https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| So wages should be linked to the number of people in the
| household? Workers with more kids should earn more by
| law?
|
| We do this is Europe, we pay something called 'kid
| allowance'. In some places people make 10 kids for the
| allowance, ignore them or mistreat them and live on that
| money.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Name one state where someone making minimum wage can
| afford an apartment, food, healthcare, and utilities, and
| some form of transportation. I think it's fair to say
| that if you can't, that counts as poverty.
| humanrebar wrote:
| Who says that's the point of minimum wage? That's where
| we disagree.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| If you're agreeing that anyone living on that wage is in
| poverty, I think it's fair to call it a poverty wage.
| rbg246 wrote:
| Any gap in labor law leads to exploitation by a business
| owner, anything that can lead to business advantage gets
| used.
|
| Besides I found really distasteful when I was in my 20s
| being told that I didn't need the additional money because
| I didn't have a mortgage.
|
| I don't think we need to rely on employer moralism, so
| Dickensian.
| humanrebar wrote:
| I'm not arguing for ageism. I'm only arguing that
| "poverty wage" isn't a helpful term.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| I was a teenager working a minimum wage job. I also had to
| pay for housing, meals, healthcare, etc. Don't assume a
| teenager has a life less complex than yours.
| humanrebar wrote:
| With all due respect, you don't know me or what I've been
| through either.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Sure. Point stands: I was literally a teenager making
| change on bagel purchases. (Yes, actual bagel shoppe.) I
| was absolutely making poverty wages. If I did not have
| free meals from work as a perk I would have starved.
| humanrebar wrote:
| And I worked minimum wage and it allowed my poor
| household to make ends meet. And another minimum wage job
| helped me stay solvent enough to survive university.
| 8note wrote:
| In what location though? Living costs are notably
| different by location
| humanrebar wrote:
| Apologies, but I'd rather not reveal too much personal
| info. But I did get need-based financial assistance in
| university. And I did attend a low cost school for
| financial reasons.
|
| I didn't "pay my way through school washing dishes" or
| anything like that.
|
| I wasn't supported by my family so the extra income
| through low pay jobs was critical.
| 8note wrote:
| Oh no problem, I'm just pointing out that both your
| experiences can be valid at the same time
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Also, one can make ends meet and still be in poverty.
| Those aren't mutually exclusive.
| pnutjam wrote:
| How do you feel about kids saving for or working while
| attending college? It's pretty rich to say people don't
| deserve money when they need it.
| humanrebar wrote:
| I worked while attending college. I suspect the supply of
| those jobs will be affected, meaning marginally
| employable youth will just be unemployed.
| pnutjam wrote:
| But they are supposed to pay for an ever increasing
| tuition bill with 1990's minimum wage?
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| > A teenager making change on bagel purchases isn't working
| for "poverty wages".
|
| Aren't they though? You don't get a discount on rent
| because you're not 20 yet, and being under 20 doesn't mean
| you have rich parents that can subsidize your lifestyle.
| humanrebar wrote:
| I'm not arguing for low wages. But it's dishonest to
| conflate household income and individual salary.
|
| More specifically, having a roommate or two or living
| with some family unit is fairly normal at that age. So
| other income needs to be accounted for to make that
| _semantic_ argument stick.
|
| Of course not everyone can have employed housemates. But
| even in those cases, it's not clear to me that banning 16
| year olds from working those jobs helps all those 16 year
| olds. It seems likely that many of them end up worse off.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I'm sorry, but I think you absolutely have to give
| reasons to create a subclass. People do not need to
| explain why they should be treated the same.
| humanrebar wrote:
| How is paying a teenager to sweep a floor making a
| subclass? Seems like we're on a trajectory to replace
| that teenager with a vacuum drone, and I don't see as
| many teenagers employed in that world.
|
| The wealthy wouldn't notice. Their teenagers are
| entrepreneuring and racking up unpaid volunteer hours to
| pad resumes. The teenagers with jobs are the ones that
| could use the money.
| pnutjam wrote:
| It's pretty asinine to pretend these entry level jobs
| teach anyone anything. Let it be automated.
|
| The kids that are hard-working and poor will find
| something else to do. You don't have a right to exploit
| kids.
| dstaley wrote:
| Two things:
|
| 1. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, about
| half of people making minimum wage or less are older than
| 25 years old.
|
| 2. A single person working a full-time job (32 hours) at
| minimum wage makes $12,064. The US federal definition of
| poverty for this individual would be anything below
| $12,880. So yes, minimum wage workers are literally, by
| definition, working for poverty wages.
| humanrebar wrote:
| I don't find those talking points convincing.
|
| For one, even with your statistics, half of folks
| employed are school-age. Also, poverty is measured by
| household. Confusing the math isn't a good way to make a
| quantitative argument.
|
| But mostly your argument is a semantic trick around the
| word "poverty" to rationalize weighted terminology.
|
| Again, I have strong feelings that employers should be
| conscious of the lives and prospects of their employees.
| For instance, having policies that lead to irregular
| patterns of night and day shifts that _have_ to be
| unhealthy long-term. But we can have rational discussion
| about these issues.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > Also, poverty is measured by household. Confusing the
| math isn't a good way to make a quantitative argument.
|
| The figure they used was for a household of size 1, so I
| don't think they confused the math and I think they made
| a perfectly strong quantitative argument.
|
| https://aspe.hhs.gov/2021-poverty-guidelines#threshholds
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Where is a full time job 32 hours? We work 40 hours in
| most of the world, that is 25% more.
| WarChortle18 wrote:
| Many companies in the US limit their employees to 32 or
| 36 hours a week so they don't have to pay benefits. It's
| a horrible system.
| lolbert wrote:
| >without overgeneralization
|
| says they who are overgeneralizing
|
| you assume teenagers are only making pocket money, whereas
| there are definitely teenagers working so the family can
| make ends meet
| bp0017 wrote:
| Be careful with this argument, it's a talking point that
| over-represents the amount of these jobs held by teenagers
| earning pocket money. Quite a lot of minimum wage jobs are
| held by single parents or people just trying to stay
| afloat.
|
| By the way, even if it is just teenagers, I don't think
| that should somehow disqualify them from earning fair
| wages. They aren't being "provided" jobs, they work to
| produce value for a company, and and should be compensated
| fairly regardless of their financial situation.
| humanrebar wrote:
| I'm more concerned that teenagers in poverty won't be
| able to get jobs at all.
| rbg246 wrote:
| But you have said yourself it's 'bagel' money, it doesn't
| seem to be coherent to be defending both teenager after
| school jobs and teenagers in poverty.
| shkkmo wrote:
| You seem to have read too quickly, the poster was talking
| about someone working a cashier in a store that sells
| bagels, not about someone making money to buy bagels.
| humanrebar wrote:
| Teenagers getting whatever after school jobs they can
| contribute to incomes for households in poverty. If the
| McD's kiosk takes the cashier job, the family loses
| income. I don't _want_ households in poverty. I 'm just
| unconvinced by this mechanism. I'd rather see minimum
| incomes or policies to deflate housing costs.
| treis wrote:
| >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.
|
| Doesn't that just end with bankrupt businesses and unemployed
| workers?
| ncallaway wrote:
| Not really.
|
| Look at empirical studies of past minimum wage increases
| and you don't often see unemployment increase. The
| employment rate is often stable through a minimum wage
| increase.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Maintaining laws which force working employees into poverty
| in order to support inadequate business models is not the
| solution.
|
| Employees outnumber business owners - more people having
| spending power is vital for the economy.
| kukx wrote:
| Please, define what is a poverty wage, it is important. How
| much stuff one should afford to avoid being called poor.
|
| What is the change of the model in case of the restaurant?
| I can see only one, automate the jobs away to reduce the
| costs, namely replace humans with robots.
|
| But, if we consider these crappy jobs, what about people
| that are not qualified/able to do any more advanced jobs?
| People have vastly different cognitive abilities, it is not
| like we can teach everyone to code. It will not work.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > Please, define what is a poverty wage, it is important.
|
| The ability to afford adequate housing, food, and
| clothing. I'm not saying we should mandate people can
| afford a 1500 sq. ft. home, ribeye steaks every evening,
| and Ralph Lauren Polo threads, but how about at least a
| one bedroom, one bathroom apartment; nutritious,
| nourishing food; Walmart clothing at a minimum.
|
| > What is the change of the model in case of the
| restaurant?
|
| Removing the "tipping" system. Increase prices such that
| an employee can afford the above mentioned necessities.
|
| > I can see only one, automate the jobs away to reduce
| the costs, namely replace humans with robots.
|
| I think the industry will go here no matter what changes
| we do or do not make to policy, business models, etc.
|
| > But, if we consider these crappy jobs, what about
| people that are not qualified/able to do any more
| advanced jobs? People have vastly different cognitive
| abilities, it is not like we can teach everyone to code.
| It will not work.
|
| We either decide these people are expendable, or that
| they are human beings worthy of a baseline of a dignified
| life. I define a dignified life as the ability to have at
| least the minimums I described above.
| Kalium wrote:
| > how about at least a one bedroom, one bathroom
| apartment; nutritious, nourishing food; Walmart clothing
| at a minimum.
|
| It's interesting to see how standards have shifted over
| time. Not too long ago, it was considered sufficient if
| people could afford their own room in a boarding house.
| Those frequently had shared bathroom and dining
| facilities, and provided nutritious and nourishing meals.
| That was considered a worthy, dignified life by a great
| many.
|
| Boarding houses went away in no small part because they
| were zoned out of existence. Often on the grounds that
| they were an immoral existence and it was the duty of the
| best of us (read: richest) to mandate a correct social
| order for the lower classes.
|
| I find this interesting because it implies that we're
| going to continue to have this problem - a lack of
| dignity - no matter what we do. You can already see the
| ratchet turning. There are people who earnestly believe
| that food isn't nutritious and nourishing unless it's
| Organic (by some definition) and thus that universal
| access to Organic food is a moral requirement.
| leetcrew wrote:
| > how about at least a one bedroom, one bathroom
| apartment
|
| to me, this part sticks out like a sore thumb. a 1BR
| where? I make well above the median wage for my area and
| I can't afford a 1BR anywhere near the place I work.
| literally no one would consider me to be poor. a 1BR,
| coming with a private kitchen and bathroom, is a luxury
| for a single adult. it's not at all an efficient use of
| housing space.
|
| a more reasonable threshold would be a private bedroom
| with space for a desk.
| kukx wrote:
| > The ability to afford adequate housing, food, and
| clothing. I'm not saying we should mandate people can
| afford a 1500 sq. ft. home, ribeye steaks every evening,
| and Ralph Lauren Polo threads, but how about at least a
| one bedroom, one bathroom apartment; nutritious,
| nourishing food; Walmart clothing at a minimum.
|
| Now, what does adequate mean? I guess a place to sleep, a
| place to clean oneself, food and clothing seems like a
| reasonable bar for a wage above poverty. Are there many
| full time jobs in the US that do not allow that?
|
| > Removing the "tipping" system. Increase prices such
| that an employee can afford the above mentioned
| necessities.
|
| Removing tipping and increasing prices beyond the
| tipping, it reduces to just increasing prices. I guess
| not very smart people create these enterprises, if only
| they hiked prices... And seriously, they definitely
| increases them, it is just a necessity. But I would not
| call this as a change in the model.
|
| > I think the industry will go here no matter what
| changes we do or do not make to policy, business models,
| etc.
|
| We do not have to necessary speed it up. People are
| already having difficult with keeping up with the
| changes.
|
| > We either decide these people are expendable, or that
| they are human beings worthy of a baseline of a dignified
| life. I define a dignified life as the ability to have at
| least the minimums I described above.
|
| Are there really only two options? Is not that a bit
| simplistic? And what does that even mean, do you think we
| should provide everyone with the job that ensures they
| have the mentioned stuff. What if they have different
| needs. And what if they do not qualify for any job,
| should we provide them with the exact stuff that people
| who work 40h a week get, or the equivalent in money? How
| is that fair for those who do these boring jobs.
| ruined wrote:
| >Now, what does adequate mean? I guess a place to sleep,
| a place to clean oneself, food and clothing seems like a
| reasonable bar for a wage above poverty. Are there many
| full time jobs in the US that do not allow that?
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/14/minimum-wage-workers-
| cannot-...
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| And as an aside: This is for a two bedroom - and it is
| important to afford a two bedroom. Single parents often
| need to keep a two bedroom even if their child or
| children only visit every other weekend. A one bedroom
| often isn't significantly cheaper, and a studio isn't
| always cheaper than a one bedroom.
| ruined wrote:
| read the entire first sentence
| selimnairb wrote:
| Countries like Australia and France seem to have figured
| out the non-tipping thing. What makes us so special that
| it won't work here?
| cbozeman wrote:
| American exceptionalism... for every single thing...
| <image>1000_eyeroll_smileys.gif</image>
| shkkmo wrote:
| > Are there many full time jobs in the US that do not
| allow that?
|
| Very many.
| scaramanga wrote:
| > Now, what does adequate mean? I guess a place to sleep,
| a place to clean oneself, food and clothing seems like a
| reasonable bar for a wage above poverty. Are there many
| full time jobs in the US that do not allow that?
|
| I would say, a place where you don't have to share
| quarters with strangers, be exposed to violence, drugs,
| have your sleep interrupted, where the housing is stable
| enough that you don't need to leave work in the middle of
| the day to attend an emergency court petition to prevent
| your immediate eviction due to landlords non-payment of
| mortgage and interception of mailed eviction
| notifications, where you don't have to leave under cover
| of darkness with colleagues who know how to handle
| themselves as your bodyguards so that you can spend a
| month or two sleeping on a friends sofa while you try and
| wait for a room to open up in something resembling a
| half-way house for recently released prisoners.
|
| Cos I mean, those were about the best conditions I could
| afford while working for a profitable multinational tech
| company while I was developing a key piece of the
| Internet infrastructure that everyone on this site uses
| daily (in a wealthy area of the UK).
|
| I won't name the company, but it rhymes with "Clit
| Tricks"
|
| > Are there really only two options? Is not that a bit
| simplistic? ... should we provide them with the exact
| stuff that people who work 40h a week get ... ?
|
| Is _that_ not a bit simplistic? Is it really so difficult
| to imagine a world where working 40 hours a week is
| either a) dignified enough not to be totally demeaning
| and exploitative _and_ meaningful enough to carry some
| intrinsic reward, or b) pays noticeably more than the
| bare minimum required for an existence at least befitting
| the dignity of animals in a zoo, never mind human beings?
| 55555 wrote:
| A lot of the issues you reasonably want to avoid seem
| like they could be solved more directly by other means.
| The argument seems to be, "America is a hell hole, so
| everyone needs enough money to escape it." There are poor
| countries where people dont live in fear of eviction and
| the slums arent full of violence and drugs. Maybe it's
| too difficult to change culture though, and we should
| just throw money at the problem.
| scaramanga wrote:
| The fact that it can be done in a poor country is all the
| more reason that it's a scandal that it is not being done
| in a rich country.
|
| These poor countries don't have any special techniques or
| mystical cultural powers. For example, the fact that
| south Korea has adequate flood defences and the UK does
| not is not because Korean culture lends them a racial
| character uniquely cognizant of water management passed
| down from their ancestors over generations of rice
| cultivation or whatever... There is absolutely no reason
| the UK is unable to "throw money" at constructing flood
| defences (altering planning policy, etc.) if they were to
| so chose.
|
| The idea is not to "escape the hellhole" but to transform
| it in to "not a hellhole", through the direct, rational
| application of readily available, and completely
| straight-forward policy mechanisms.
|
| But maybe it's too difficult to use political policy as a
| tool to achieve desired outcomes and we should blame the
| victims, turning it in to a nebulous cultural or moral
| failing and then wait around for the culture to just
| spontaneously change itself, eh :)
| mannerheim wrote:
| Do workers who receive tips want it to go away? The
| friends I've known who worked jobs with tips seemed to
| think they would be paid less if tips were replaced with
| wage increases on the employer end; my understanding is
| that they made a significant amount of money in tips.
| Obviously this varies by individual, job, and
| establishment, though.
|
| There some restaurants that tried to go no-tipping, but I
| think it didn't work out for them because they had a hard
| time finding/retaining staff.
| ruined wrote:
| everyone i know who has worked tipped and untipped
| service models preferred the untipped model for stability
| and the reduced interference of sadistic/irate/careless
| customers. in fact these people have been pretty
| instrumental in wider implementation as they have moved
| on to other work environments and advocated for that
| change. this is in a state that doesn't count tips toward
| minimum wage.
|
| the largest harm of the tipping model is in states that
| _do_ count tips towards minimum wage. the wage paid by
| employer may be under $3 /h and the employee mostly
| survives off tips. this means that tips are only
| subsidizing the employer, because an increase in tips is
| matched by a deduction in the wage paid by the employer,
| to a limit.
|
| there are some rare instances, mostly luxury dining,
| where tips can far outpace typical restaurant wages. in
| this context the employer can afford to massively
| increase wages. there have been arguments made that these
| tips pay for the quality of service, but there is no
| reason this incentive and expectation can't come from the
| employer directly, and it would remove the uncertainty of
| irresponsible customers failing to tip.
|
| in all contexts, switching from tips to a real wage has
| many benefits to the employee when wages are adjusted
| properly, no detriments to the customer, and only harms
| businesses that are currently exploitative and doing
| harm.
| mannerheim wrote:
| If that were the case, then why did restaurants that
| switched to no-tipping models see the departure of much
| of their staff? [0] I would have expected servers to
| flock to those, but by the sound of it, tipping is
| reliable enough that servers can leave and go to a
| restaurant with tips and earn more money.
|
| > "Andrew was very disappointed," says an employee of
| Tarlow's restaurant group, Marlow Collective, who asked
| to remain anonymous. "But when we went to non-tipping, we
| pretty much lost our entire staff that had been there for
| ten years. He wanted to make it work, but it just became
| really difficult."
|
| > ...
|
| > But, it turned out, many front-of-house staffers were
| more concerned with making money than with maintaining
| the moral high ground. This February, Meyer admitted that
| he had lost 30 to 40 percent of his "legacy" staffers
| since 2015. (One Meyer employee told Grub last year that
| her wages dropped from $60,000 per year to $50,000 under
| the new policy.)
|
| > ...
|
| > Without widespread buy-in from other restaurants, it's
| just too easy for front-of-house workers to leave to make
| more money elsewhere. "About 40 percent of our servers
| were like, 'Hey, this is awesome, but I'm going to go to
| State Bird Provisions, where I can make 10 percent
| more,'" Vogler says. "And who doesn't want to make 10
| percent more? They're not freedom fighters."
|
| To be sure, maybe they didn't do a good job implementing
| it. But the cases I've read about restaurants switching
| to no-tipping usually seem to run into problems with
| servers being able to earn more money with tips than
| without them.
|
| I think perhaps part of the problem is that a uniform
| increase in prices will make people who would have tipped
| poorly decide not to go, and people who would have tipped
| generously now pay less. So before with the tipping
| model, the well-tippers were in effect subsidising the
| poor-tippers, but now the poor-tippers are gone so there
| is overall less revenue for the business and servers. But
| another issue is that they took some of the income earned
| from the higher prices and gave it to the kitchen staff,
| which would have been money that would have been
| available for the waitstaff.
|
| [0]: https://www.grubstreet.com/2018/12/restaurant-
| tipping-return...
| ruined wrote:
| of course you'll see staff leave if you cut pay. that's a
| deliberate choice by management, and not a question about
| tipped or untipped work.
|
| i doubt there is real effect on the orders that customers
| place, but nobody's publishing their books, so who can
| say. in a systemic change in which every restaurant
| transitions to an untipped system, there would be no
| concern about losing out to a restaurant that continues
| to lower prices by exploiting servers.
| mannerheim wrote:
| Is it a deliberate choice by management, or an economic
| reality? Perhaps they could have kept kitchen staff wages
| low and used the extra money to pay waitstaff more, but
| since it seems like other restaurants that adopted no-
| tipping eventually switched back to tips, it sounds like
| there just isn't the money to go around.
|
| Sure, if every restaurant switched to no-tipping, then
| waitstaff couldn't simply switch to a restaurant that did
| tips. But I would suspect they would make less money
| overall.
|
| Are restaurants without tipping losing out to a
| restaurant that is 'exploiting' servers if servers are
| choosing switch to that restaurant rather than stick with
| the restaurant with the 'non-exploitative' no-tipping
| model? I cannot see the logic in that. Are you saying
| servers who leave a no-tipping restaurant for a tipping
| restaurant are choosing to be exploited?
| ruined wrote:
| what? all that is required in the transition to fully-
| waged labor is to pay an equivalent wage to the former
| wage+tips. if management pays a lower wage, _that is a
| choice_ , because management has full control over what
| they rate hourly and what they write on the check.
|
| if the concern is that workers may be paid less, the
| solution is simply _don 't pay less_.
| mannerheim wrote:
| It would be difficult to pay an equivalent wage if after
| transitioning to no-tipping the restaurant is making less
| money than it did before.
| ruined wrote:
| If you can demonstrate that happens, to the exclusion of
| other reasons, publish it. I haven't seen that effect or
| known anyone to see that effect during such a transition.
| What I _have_ seen is a lot of bosses cutting wages and
| blaming everyone but themselves for turnover, and a lot
| of business owners with an ideological agenda making bad-
| faith arguments.
|
| The money is already there, and the current situation is
| that customers are literally giving most of it without
| obligation. It makes sense to formalize the relationship,
| and properly allocate responsibilities to the business
| owner.
|
| The entire debate is a deflection of responsibility for
| employee compensation.
| mannerheim wrote:
| There don't appear to be any direct studies on revenue,
| but the GrubStreet article mentions a study by Lynn
| (2018)[0] which looks at the impact of eliminating
| tipping on online reviews, which have an impact on
| revenue (but of course it's difficult to judge, since
| perhaps not all declines in Yelp scores are equal; maybe
| in that study declines/improvements in score had more to
| do with the quality of the food):
|
| > This study examines the effects of such moves away from
| tipping on restaurant's online customer ratings. The
| results indicate that (i) restaurants receive lower
| online customer ratings when they eliminate tipping, (ii)
| online customer ratings decline more when tipping is
| replaced with service-charges than when it is replaced
| with service-inclusive-pricing, and (iii) less expensive
| restaurants experience greater declines in online
| customer ratings when replacing tipping with either
| alternative than do more expensive restaurants.
|
| > ...
|
| > Given the already ubiquitous and increasing popularity
| of online reviews, and the influence that such e-word of
| mouth has been shown to have on consumers'
| purchasing/patronage behaviors (see Kim, Li, and Brymer,
| 2016; Ong, 2012; Zhang, Ye, Law, and Li, 2010), our
| results also have important implications for restaurants'
| bottom-line that warrant being underscored. For instance,
| in a longitudinal analysis (2003- 2009) of Yelp online
| reviews and revenue data for every restaurant in the city
| of Seattle Luca (2016) recently estimated that
| restaurateurs can expect a 9% increase in revenue for
| every one-star Yelp rating improvement. Thus, if the
| results of our study are shown to be reliable and Luca's
| (2016) estimate generalizable then it follows that low
| and moderately priced restaurants that decide to replace
| voluntary tipping with either automatic service charges
| or service inclusive pricing can expect to experience a
| nontrivial loss in profits as a function of lower online
| satisfaction ratings.
|
| The paper notes that raising prices whether through
| services charges or what will be a price increase for a
| significant percentage of the clientele:
|
| > Additionally, tipping is a form of voluntary pricing
| and price discrimination that results in approximately 25
| percent of customers tipping less than 15 percent of bill
| size and 65 percent of customers tipping less than 20
| percent of bill size (Lynn, 2017a), so replacing tipping
| with service charges or service inclusive pricing will
| raise dining costs for a quarter to half of restaurant
| customers and this is likely to reduce the overall
| satisfaction of those customers.
|
| One restaurant that had switched to no-tipping before
| abandoning had tip averages of 21%.[1] I don't know
| anybody who tips that much, but apparently they exist.
| But if you increase prices by 21% on all clientele, then
| the restaurant becomes more pricey compared to
| restaurants that do tipping. Someone who would have
| tipped 15% might just go to another restaurant and tip
| that much, whereas a particularly generous tipper who
| would have paid 25% to make the average about 20% between
| these two is now just paying that 21% price hike - that's
| an overall decline in revenue. And the restaurateur said
| his mistake was not raising prices high enough to cover
| both the waitstaff wages that they had been getting from
| tipping ($25-40/hr) and raises for the back-of-house
| staff; he says he should have raised them 40%! Perhaps he
| could have done so, but it seems likely he would have
| been doing less business and had to downsize.
|
| But OK, let's assume that somehow restaurants earn the
| same amount of income as before with hiked prices and no
| tipping, and that extra income is paid to the staff. If
| any money goes to the back-of-house staff, that means
| that the waitstaff would be making less than they did
| before. Do you think it's reasonable for waiters to be
| making $25-40/h while the kitchen staff is making
| $13-20?[1] I don't particularly think it is, and if
| tipping culture eventually ends (which, make no mistake,
| I am no fan of tipping), we would see waitstaff being
| paid less because now they can't switch to a restaurant
| where they can make more than tips, but we might see
| kitchen staff make more. However, this would necessarily
| mean that waitstaff are making less money.
|
| [0]: https://static.secure.website/wscfus/5261551/7004898
| /ijhm-ti... [1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/201
| 6/05/15/478096516/wh...
| ruined wrote:
| You're still talking about administrative decisions to
| compensate certain workers more or less. Again, if there
| is concern about workers being paid less, the solution is
| to not lower their compensation.
|
| I have no problem with raising back-of-house wages, they
| are typically undercompensated compared to front-of-
| house, even though the work is comparable and all of it
| counts towards the dining experience. Raising kitchen
| wages does not necessitate lowering server wages, and
| suggesting it does only encourages division and confuses
| the situation. It is worth noting that tip pooling with
| kitchen staff is standard practice in many restaurants
| despite being flat out illegal until recently, so the
| situation you fear already exists, and could be remedied
| by moving away from a tipping system to explicit wages.
|
| Again, it is worth formalizing the relationship and
| clearly allocating responsibilities.
| mannerheim wrote:
| > Again, if there is concern about workers being paid
| less, the solution is to not lower their compensation.
|
| Then kitchen staff will continue to be paid poorly. Just
| understand that's the tradeoff.
|
| > Raising kitchen wages does not necessitate lowering
| server wages
|
| How?
|
| > It is worth noting that tip pooling with kitchen staff
| is standard practice in many restaurants despite being
| flat out illegal until recently
|
| It's still illegal in many states. Meyer, one of the
| restaurateurs who switched to no-tipping and back, is in
| New York, where it's illegal both to add a service charge
| and to collect part of the tips to share with kitchen
| staff. Switching to no-tipping allowed him to compensate
| the kitchen staff more fairly, at the expense of the
| departure of his entire waitstaff.
| refurb wrote:
| That was my experience as well. Tips can often outstrip
| your hourly wage on good nights.
|
| If the choice was $10/hr + tips or $15/hr, I'd take the
| tips.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| > define what is a poverty wage, it is important.
|
| If you work full time as an adult and are Medicaid
| eligible, you're being paid poverty wages.
|
| > What is the change of the model in case of the
| restaurant?
|
| Raise the prices.
|
| It's already happened anyway, the market has plenty of
| elasticity. Restauranteurs always whine about how
| impossible it is to raise prices, yet they seem to manage
| to do so just fine.
| tomcam wrote:
| That's a really excellent idea. On the off chance that
| you may be wrong in a few cases, what happens if you go
| out of business after raising your prices enough to get
| wages high enough to be where you think they should be?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's why the government has minimum wages, which help
| the market deal with that.
|
| Fast service restaurants have already adapted. Five Guys
| or Chipotle cost more for a better product. McDonalds has
| to remind you on the wrapper that their burger contains
| beef.
| 6510 wrote:
| There is a working restaurant a few blocks away.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| And they're fully staffed. What do all the employees of
| the shuttered restaurant do?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| 60% of restaurants fail in the first year. The employees
| get unemployment (they aren't gig workers) and find
| another job.
| 6510 wrote:
| This is the system we are using. I don't have to like it.
| Scaling is done something like: If there is room for 4
| shoe stores and there are 7 its going to be difficult for
| all of them until 2 close.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I can see only one, automate the jobs away to reduce
| the costs, namely replace humans with robots.
|
| This is generally not possible at twice the cost. The
| robots generally suck and break down a lot. Now you've
| replaced a bunch of low-skilled, interchangeable staff
| who work like dogs with a fleet of mechanics and an
| engineering department.
|
| Half of the McDonald's automated kiosks I see are broken
| - and it's usually the store's entire system down, for
| weeks or months on end. I went to Home Depot today to
| grab some WD-40, and when I went to do the self-checkout,
| each of the four stations had a clerk helping the
| customer "self" checkout. To circle back to McDonald's -
| it's always been a joke how difficult some fast food
| clerks find their POS systems - where does this fantasy
| come from that customers are going to be better at it?
|
| When it is possible to automate a job away, _it is
| desirable_. It 's good that raising labor costs drives
| technology development. The better technology we have,
| the more comfortable we can all be, and the less we have
| to work _as a species._
| kukx wrote:
| > This is generally not possible at twice the cost. We
| get better at automation constantly. Thinking that just
| because today our technology sucks it will stay this way,
| is not reasonable in my opinion.
|
| > When it is possible to automate a job away, it is
| desirable. Yes, it reduces the cost (of the workforce).
| However, this change comes with a nontrivial social cost
| and a problem, what to do with the people that are not
| able to do more advanced stuff.
| rbg246 wrote:
| There are definitions and I believe another commenter in
| this thread has defined it very solidly about poverty.
|
| There will always be service sector jobs, this is the
| argument luddites were having in 1815 (I don't want to
| get into this as it is distracting from my main point).
|
| We should be ensuring that anyone putting in 40 hours a
| week should be able to support a family. The wealth is
| there to be able to create this society (not saying it's
| easy not saying there are not problems).
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Support a family? How many kids should I be able to
| support on my unskilled 40 hours/week?
|
| Look, I might be convinced that minimum wage is too low,
| though I'm much more inclined to leave that as a matter
| for the employee and employer to reach agreement on.
|
| But if you have no marketable skills and the only work
| you can get is entry-level minimum wage, you have no
| business starting a family as the sole income-earner.
| None.
| Retric wrote:
| That's a rather eugenic standpoint. I think the argument
| is actual children are part of those family's, it's up to
| society how to deal with it. Currently we subsidize
| business and families, but perhaps we could remove the
| business subsidy.
| kukx wrote:
| What does it mean to support a family? Is getting them
| sheltered, clothed and well fed good enough? I think it
| is way easier to achieve today than in almost any other
| time in a human history, even for the low earners.
|
| Restaurants are a part of the service sector. A service
| job does not imply that it is attractive. And they differ
| in requirements. The well paid ones get more and more
| complicated and hence, proportionally to the whole
| population, less and less people will be able to qualify
| for them.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| What does it mean to ask questions in bad faith?
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| To ask those questions of which everyone knows the
| answers and of which raising the subject is 'impolite' :)
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Wow---you need to look around.
|
| Finding shelter is exponential Harder now than any time
| in my memory.
|
| We have a homelessness problem that it unpresidented. I
| would bet more people are now than anytime in history.
| (Pioneers could camp when they were tired. Cavemen
| weren't ticketed for sleeping under a ledge.)
|
| Hell--30 years ago certain states were still offering
| homesteads. There's not an inch of land in the USA that
| live for free. (BLM land requires you to move every two
| weeks. Only some BLM land us open to camping.)
|
| Try taking a nap in your closest park, or open field. You
| will get poked by a angry cop. You will understand
| loitering/trespass laws innately.
|
| People, especially in service jobs, are living on top of
| each other. Why was the Corona virus so prevelant in the
| hispanic communities?
|
| As to your previous statement, "We all can't be Coders."
| I have personally know three older Programmers. Two died
| because they aged out of the industry, and became
| homeless. The other is currently being harassed in
| Richardson Bay by Sausalito cops, and the coast guard,
| over a dispute of the seaworthiness of his sailboat.
|
| One was Jim Fox. A huge contributor to Word Star. He
| ended up in San Rafael wearing a fuzzy Penguin outfit
| begging. He died a few years ago.
|
| You might be one of those Service applicants in a decade?
|
| (I'm not going to debate this guy. My biggest worry post
| Covid is the huge increase in homelessness we are going
| to see. The government needs to open up any excess
| federal, state, and local to to free camping. We need to
| put up tent cities. I feel it's going to get very ugly.)
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| At least in the US, that's just not true. Rent and
| healthcare costs (which together are the majority costs
| for low income people) have risen way faster than
| inflation since the 1970s.
| syshum wrote:
| >>which force working employees into poverty
|
| I think you have a widely unorthodox defination of "force"
| as no one is forced to take any job at any wage.
|
| Force in the equation would come from the government using
| the threat of government violence to force a wage on a
| business owner.
|
| A person that voluntary accepts a job for X wage is not
| "forced" to do so.
| atoav wrote:
| Yeah but the job market is not a free market, because not
| getting a job is existential for those seeking the job,
| while the company can usually just survive when a
| position is not filled for a certain time.
|
| This means to make this a free market many nations did
| the reasonable thing and introduced measures like minimum
| wages and unemployment benefits. This way when you loose
| your job the balance of power evens out a little and the
| job market works better for all involved (workers have a
| highee chance of finding a job they like, companies have
| a higher chance of getting people that like them, really
| shitty companies get an incentive to change).
|
| In the US all shitty work places have no incentive at all
| to change, because everybody and their dog is struggling
| to make ends meet. That means no matter how slavishly
| they treat your people, there will always be another
| person desperate enough to throw themselves into the
| grinder. Result: No incentive to change for the company
| and people who feel like society ows them nothing.
|
| I don't think that is recipe for a bright future, but who
| am I to judge.
|
| So from a systemic perspective minimum wage is like a
| limit you can set for how desperate you allow people to
| get. And quite frankly. 15 USD is still less than if you
| had adjusted the original minimum wage for inflation, so
| come on.
| malandrew wrote:
| > because not getting a job is existential for those
| seeking the job
|
| Before jobs offered by others existed, not working in
| some form would have been existential for those people.
| This is the de facto state of existence. You'd have to at
| least do some form of hunter/gathering or subsistence
| farming.
|
| This increasingly common idea that individuals no longer
| are obligated to provide for themselves is wild. The only
| way around it is to obligate others to provide for you
| instead of providing for yourself. The last time this was
| a common idea in the United States was in the in the
| antebellum South.
| syshum wrote:
| >>15 USD is still less than if you had adjusted the
| original minimum wage for inflation, so come on.
|
| This is a myth that is often repeated, but I have yet to
| see it proven.
|
| The Original Federal Min Wage was passed in 1938 and was
| $0.38 per hour, Adjusted to 2021 that would be $7.14
|
| In 1981 it was raised to $3.35, in 2021 dollars that
| would be $9.76
|
| In 2009 it was raise to where it is today, $7.25 ($0.66
| lower than a pure inflation increase should have been)
| and is 9.26 in 2021 dollars
|
| So if you want to do a pure inflation adjusted min wage
| it would be no more than $10 not $15
|
| I can find at no point in the history of Federal minimum
| wage would have wage inflation adjusted be more than
| $15/hr today. I can debate the merits of minimum wage,
| the ethics, etc, but we have to be having a debate with
| actual facts not political talking points.
| newdude116 wrote:
| What is inflation?
|
| If computer processing power becomes cheaper an cheaper,
| but real estate housing value double in a decade, we have
| 2% inflation?
| syshum wrote:
| That is moving the goal posts, the comment I was
| responding to was "15 USD is still less than if you had
| adjusted the original minimum wage for inflation, so come
| on. "
|
| Given the context this would be the standard model upon
| which dollars are adjusted for inflation over time, tools
| like usinflationcalculator.com make this easy to factor
| in what that would be
|
| If you want to shift the debate to "what is inflation"
| that is fine, but that is not the debate I am having in
| this comment thread
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Yeah but the job market is not a free market, because
| not getting a job is existential for those seeking the
| job, while the company can usually just survive when a
| position is not filled for a certain time.
|
| This is, to begin with, not true. It's common for small
| businesses to be operating at the margin. If you don't
| have someone making the sandwiches then you don't have
| revenue and you still have rent and utilities. That math
| puts you out of business in a hurry and then the owner
| (whose wages came out of the revenue they now don't have)
| is facing the same circumstances as the employee.
|
| But on top of that, even if you existentially need a job,
| that doesn't mean you need _that_ job. You can pick the
| one that pays the most.
|
| Where this falls down is when all of your alternatives
| are terrible. But if all of your alternatives are
| terrible, prohibiting you from choosing the one that was
| the least terrible (e.g. because it's right across the
| street but pays $2/hour less instead of being a two hour
| commute for $2/hour more) is not actually helping you.
|
| To do that you need something like lower housing costs
| (so the wage you can earn is enough to live), or some
| kind of free community college so you can learn a trade
| that pays better, or a UBI. Not a minimum wage that could
| take away the job you currently existentially need.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Housing cost is directly link to wages, when wages
| increase then the rent goes up, sometimes more than
| wages. This is because housing is in very limited supply
| (some artificial due to zoning and regulations) and extra
| income will be sucked out as rent.
| atoav wrote:
| > You can pick the one that pays the most.
|
| Oh sweet summer child. When you are in debt and struggle
| to survive on a day to day basis, time is your enemy You
| _cannot afford_ not to take a job. And if you are lucky
| enough to be able afford it today, you might not
| tomorrow.
|
| Another thing: many people need _more than one job_ as it
| is now. Guess what: if you pay people a decent living
| wage more people can actually get jobs, because less
| people _have_ to do two or more. If your business is so
| inefficient it can 't support minimum wage labor, it was
| doomed to fail before. Again: even McDonalds manages to
| pay minimum wages in Europe and their prices are roughly
| comparable. You are being gaslighted by the people
| profiting from that modern form of slavery.
|
| you are right in recognizing that living costs are an
| issue as well, and they are an issue in many big cities.
| The known solution for this issue is publically owned
| housing which you shouldn't put into their own districts
| (thus creating ghettos) but mix them in throughout the
| city (Vienna's "Gemeindebau" is a good example for this,
| Vienna repeatedly got the title "City most worth living
| in" over the past decades). Don't only put poor people
| into these houses, make them decent and make them
| something people want to live in. Make them cheaper to
| rent than other flats (this way the rents in the
| surrounding areas cannot go up so fast). But most
| importantly: this must be done from the public side --
| nobody else in control has the incentive to act in ways
| that lower rents.
|
| Aside from all this, what the US really needs to do is to
| look at all the other countries that are comparable to
| the area you are living in and wonder why they are doing
| so well without all the doomsday scenarios your
| politicians make tou believe (both socially _and_
| economically). Whenever I talk to US citizens about this
| they are either completely delusioned ( "I live in an
| oligarchy") or they pretend their problems are so unique
| the rest of the industrialized world never had to deal
| with comparable things. "Who knows, maybe it cannot be
| solved at all", they say, while it was solved literally
| one country over since half a century ago.
|
| That's like wondering whether man will ever be able to
| move faster than a horse, while your neighbouring country
| has airplaines they use on a daily basis.
| brigandish wrote:
| > Oh sweet summer child.
|
| Please try to keep the snark out. If they were snarky to
| you then I say go for it but I didn't notice they were
| snarky to you and, regardless of whether you agree with
| them, their contribution to this discussion is
| worthwhile.
|
| Let's try and keep HN a cut above.
| syshum wrote:
| >>and they are an issue in many big cities
|
| Housing is an issue in big cities largely due to
| government policies that both limit inventory (building
| and zoning regulations) and limit profitability (rent
| control) that make is extremely undesirable to create new
| housing.
|
| The solution to this is NOT government housing but less
| government regulations about building new housing
| atoav wrote:
| > The solution to this is NOT government housing but less
| government regulations about building new housing
|
| Where and when did this work? Have you any examples?
| malandrew wrote:
| Tokyo. Prices have largely remained flat for the same
| unit of housing for decades because there aren't nearly
| as many government restrictions on construction of new
| housing.
| hamiltont wrote:
| Not who you replied to, but I believe the current popular
| answer is to refer to Japan. Numerous articles have been
| written regarding how they managed their housing crisis
| by deregulating zoning and building permits. You'll have
| to read up on it yourself, it's beyond me to summarize as
| it's a complex topic and the model is not perfectly
| exportable. Partially for "real" reasons, such as Japan
| has so many earthquakes that many houses are not intended
| to last for 100+ years which affects the home economy.
| Partially for social reasons, e.g. wealthier nations view
| homes as investments (more-so than as a place to live,
| like we view an apartment), and people push tons of
| local/state/federal rules to ensure their investment
| always grows in value. The easiest way to make the value
| grow is to ensure there are no more homes e.g. NIMBY
|
| One article to get you started (nothing special about
| this one, it's just the first I saw from google):
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-housing-crisis-in-
| japan-ho...
| brigandish wrote:
| I live in Japan and can tell you that those conditions
| lead to ugly, low standard buildings that seem to me to
| be among the very top complaints foreigners living here
| have about the place. The incentives are completely
| skewed here and seem just as likely to be corrupt as any
| other place. There's plenty of discussion about it on
| these boards, this one comes to mind
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26399071
|
| As to the earthquakes/natural disasters bit for why they
| build relatively disposable homes - does that happen on
| the west coast of the US, for instance? I'm genuinely
| interested, if anyone knows.
| malandrew wrote:
| > ugly, low standard buildings
|
| ugly is subjective so I won't touch on that.
|
| The low standard one is reasonable as that is what keeps
| costs low. The alternative is high standard and high
| cost. You can't really get high standards for low costs.
|
| If the government dictates that all housing needs to be
| high standard, the collateral damage to that policy is
| that you can only build housing that prices people out of
| the market.
| malandrew wrote:
| > many people need more than one job as it is now
|
| Needing only one job is a historical anomaly as a result
| of an industrial society. Historically, people would have
| to perform a variety of tasks to provide for oneself.
|
| Furthermore, more than one job de-risks someone's
| situation just like a consultant with many clients can
| handle the loss of a single client and not see their
| income fall to zero.
|
| It's the total hours of paid labor over N jobs that you
| should look at instead. If you do 60 hours a week at one
| job or three jobs for 20 hours each, you're doing the
| same amount of labor with less risk.
|
| The only qualitative difference between one 60 hour job
| and three 20 hour jobs is the benefits received from
| working 40+ hours for a single employer, but this isn't
| an issue with how many jobs you work. It's an issue with
| an artificial asymptotic condition created by an act of
| legislation by government.
|
| Every time legislation creates artificial asymptotic
| conditions, you're going to get actors that optimize
| around that artificial boundary condition. If you want to
| avoid the circumstance, you need legislative solutions
| that are continuous in nature instead of asymptotic.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > This is, to begin with, not true.
|
| I will never stop being amazed at how Americans argue
| that something decent is wrong, or untrue, or even
| impossible... when Europe exists.
| plankers wrote:
| It does get old eventually.
| syshum wrote:
| I will never stop being amazed that European's think
| Europe is a Utopia that the rest of the world should look
| to as a model.
|
| I do not want the US to be Europe, that is nothing short
| of a dystopia for me a person that wants Individualism,
| and individual freedom. rejecting Authoritarianism and
| Collectivism
|
| If people in the US like the EU model soo much then i
| encourage them to expatriate to that location. Stop
| trying to make the US into the EU
| dmitriid wrote:
| > I will never stop being amazed that European's think
| Europe is a Utopia
|
| I never said Europe was Utopia. All I said was, _decent
| living_.
|
| > that is nothing short of a dystopia for me a person
| that wants Individualism, and individual freedom.
| rejecting Authoritarianism and Collectivism
|
| Ah yes. Says the person from a country where charities
| stop giving aid to poor African countries and redirect
| their aid to Americans.
|
| > If people in the US like the EU model soo much then i
| encourage them to expatriate to that location.
|
| Those who have the means to, do.
| danielrpa wrote:
| I've never known anyone here in the US (friend, coworker,
| family member, acquaintance etc - Internet forums don't
| count) who has moved to Europe permanently. I know that
| many do, obviously, I just don't one personally. At the
| same time, I personally know many Europeans living here
| and have seen many more coming over the years.
|
| I can't find hard data, but probably we should not say
| that "those who have the means to, do". It's likely more
| of "a tiny percentage of those who have the means to,
| do".
| dmitriid wrote:
| > It's likely more of "a tiny percentage of those who
| have the means to, do".
|
| Yes. However, the main reason I phrased it the way I did
| is that "if you don't like it, move to a different
| continent" is a very arrogant approach.
|
| An American barely surviving on minimum wage is very
| unlikely to move to Europe.
| danielrpa wrote:
| Interestingly, America is one of the best places to be if
| you are wealthy (part of the motivation on this thread).
| So it's also unlikely for a wealthy American to move.
|
| Believe it or not, a lot people, in poverty or otherwise,
| really like the unique things in this country and most
| would rather have it this way than to move to Europe
| (which has its own share of major problems despite being
| a cool place overall).
| dmitriid wrote:
| This article is still relevant: https://www.theguardian.c
| om/commentisfree/2012/sep/19/europe...
|
| Also, poor people rarely know the reality of other
| countries. I have friends in the States who firmly
| believe that Europe is a hellhole even though they are
| literally a medical emergency away from a bankruptcy.
| syshum wrote:
| Maybe that is because they value something more than Free
| Healthcare. Maybe they are not willing to trade this
| liberty for the safety of government services.....
| dmitriid wrote:
| Ah yes. The liberty to die. The liberty to go with
| untreated chronic diseases. The liberty of not being able
| to change shitty jobs.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| What is an example liberty that pertains in the US and
| not in Europe?
| malandrew wrote:
| > An American barely surviving on minimum wage is very
| unlikely to move to Europe.
|
| And even if they did they would be far less likely to
| contribute meaningfully to the commons in Europe to
| support that social safety net. Therein lies the rub.
|
| The only way to provide the productivity that funds the
| social safety net is when those providing the safety net
| far outnumber those consuming it. As this gets out of
| balance, those providing it start to resent those
| consuming it.
|
| When it gets out of wack, you get situations like the DDR
| and North Korea, where the government needs to erect
| walls to prevent the productive people from escaping that
| shitty deal.
|
| You can only achieve this balance in a high trust society
| where there is social pressure not to be on the consuming
| side for longer than is reasonable to get back on the
| producing side.
|
| Guess what destroys that high trust condition? Bringing
| in outsiders faster than can be assimilated and/or
| eliminating the expectation of assimilation as the US is
| doing and Europe is now starting to do.
|
| It's not that you can't bring in outsiders and maintain a
| high trust society. You can. But that takes work and it
| requires an acknowledgement that a high trust society is
| something that we should be trying to preserve while we
| do things that can hurt the current state of trust in a
| country.
|
| From a trust perspective, the US is at a low probably not
| seen since either the Civil War or the Great Depression.
| We should solve the trust issue if we are to have any
| hope of building the social safety net features that rely
| on high social trust as a foundation.
| Scheherazade wrote:
| Yes, the obviousness of the limited capacity of
| multicultural integration should have been easily
| deducible to anyone in a position of real power back in
| the 70s and 80s when the decison was made. Yet, for
| several decades major countries, having decided to go
| down the multicultural road, also decided against a
| sustainable rate of integration over centuries, such as a
| constant 0.2% annual immigration influx until 2200 CE.
| The key decision makers instead favoured a destructive
| course of short term profits within their lifespan, and
| immense long term costs, that has led to the current
| outcomes with all the eventual consequences.
| ddingus wrote:
| Only 30 percent of the USA travels abroad.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| No one is "forced" to pay rent or food or for education
| or healthcare. Yes, you are correct.
| rbg246 wrote:
| You don't think needing to survive forces or keeping your
| human dignity forces you to find a job?
|
| That's the way I see it.
| syshum wrote:
| I think we as a society have put in place lots of social
| programs, to the tune of billions and billions of dollars
| a year to ensure "survival" is not at play here.
|
| Further at the end of the day wages are not the problem,
| cost of living is, economic value of labor is. Waving a
| magic wand and proclaiming a new min wage does not
| resolve those root issue, it may in some limited
| circumstances help a few people for a limited amount of
| time, but you need to resolve the root issue which
| mandated minimum wages increases is not going to do and
| often harms the very people you are looking to "help"
| nostromo wrote:
| That job might not exist at all if the government
| mandates your wage to be higher than the value of your
| labor.
| rbg246 wrote:
| Certainly, it's a balancing act.
|
| But equally is it ok for people to work hard and long
| hours and only barely make Or not quite make ends meet?
|
| Sorry I should note that I am not saying you are
| advocating for the above(could be misread).
| sokoloff wrote:
| I guess the question is what do you do when you find
| people who present with that situation: that they're
| perfectly capable to hold down a job but only to create
| $10/hr of economic value by their labor.
|
| If you set the minimum wage at $15/hr and do nothing
| else, you have made that person worse off than today.
| Everyone around them now has more money, so everything is
| becoming more expensive. They now can't find or keep a
| job, because any employer who employs them is losing at
| least $200/week, $10K/year by employing them.
|
| I don't know what the optimal solution is, but it's not
| clear to me that the above is it.
| Qwertious wrote:
| The problem here is, most peoples' wages are defined by
| their _leverage_ , not their value. For people in those
| situations, the benefit of minimum wage is that _most_
| people below that wage immediately get leverage in the
| form of _legal requirement_ to pay them (or anyone else)
| min wage.
|
| This isn't a matter of improving the situation for
| _everyone_ , it's a matter of improving the situation for
| the _majority_ of min-wage workers.
|
| If someone genuinely can't provide $10/hr of value, then
| either 1) they need to upskill (and there are social
| services for that, although perhaps not in the US idk) or
| 2) they're like one of those literal retards who are
| becoming literally unemployable, and the solution is
| either to subsidize their employer (which is okay in this
| instance because you're not subsidizing a race to the
| bottom like you are with subsidizing normal e.g.
| McDonalds wages) or put them on a disability pension.
|
| But realistically, most people are capable of upskillinng
| and that's what they should be doing if they're not
| valuable enough to an employer.
| rbg246 wrote:
| Equally the status quo is not tenable and clearly not the
| solution.
|
| There are many people coming up with solutions but
| clearly 'free market' adjustments have failed an
| increasing number of workers.
|
| But I will disagree with your economic value question, I
| think service workers are undervalued greatly.
|
| There is a giant disconnect between wage and economic
| value, the market is terrible at connecting the two.
| lanstin wrote:
| Generally the math works the other way. I worked in a
| Wendy's for a while; I made minimum wage and most of the
| people made a little bit more. We cleared $30,000 a month
| profit for the owner ($100K revenue, $70K for expenses
| including all of our wages). If a company is so inept
| they can't generate a bit of value from people, then to
| be frank, as a society we can afford to be without them.
| Look at the minimum wage as a filter to remove companies
| that are so unsuccessful, that they disappear before
| dragging down the citizens.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| 30% profit for a fast food restaurant is not credible.
| It's too competitive. I worked for McDonalds (a long time
| ago, but...) the best store in the market made a little
| over 10% profit. Others made less, or even lost money at
| certain times of the year.
| tomcam wrote:
| Pretty amazing! Way way better than any of my friends who
| have owned restaurants. Did that $30,000 profit include
| paying off the mortgage, various forms of insurance,
| legal fees, accounting fees, taxes, and so on?
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's an amazing level of transparency to share all the
| company financials with the minimum wage workers.
| refurb wrote:
| So if someone else is willing to work for those wages
| (they don't really need the income or have minimal
| expenses) you'd tell them "tough, it's illegal to work
| for that wage now"?
| 6510 wrote:
| That question never happens in places with a minimum
| wage. What you can do is support your employer by showing
| up early and/or helping out a few extra hours after the
| shift. Nothing in writing or by force.
| refurb wrote:
| As an employer you'd be crazy to do that. Nothing would
| stop that employee from turning around and demanding back
| wages.
| 6510 wrote:
| I've really had a lot of jobs. I would just do anything
| for a while just to see what it is like. In some places
| it is as if Hitler won the war, in others the boss or
| manager becomes a good friend. You don't demand back
| wages from a friend.
| Frondo wrote:
| Since that is how the relatively uncontroversial minimum
| wage law (which has been around since 1938) works, yes,
| society has generally decided that we do want to tell
| people, "it is illegal to work for some very low wage."
| And, while not the parent poster, I agree that it is a
| useful policy.
| refurb wrote:
| That's a very US centric point of view and appeal to
| authority. Just because it's been the law for almost 100
| years doesn't mean it's the ideal approach.
|
| And several developed countries have no floor other that
| agreed by through collective bargaining.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080515/5-
| dev...
| didibus wrote:
| I think something is missing from this equation, which is
| the balancing act. The value of labor is dynamic, it
| depends what people are willing to pay, and what is the
| price of other costs.
|
| How I see it, labor cost have been cut, while rent has
| gone up and prices have gone down.
|
| If you increased minimum wage, it would put pressure on
| prices to go up and rent to go down, both would increase
| the value of the labor itself.
|
| I think this whole dynamic is way way harder to model and
| predict how it'll play out then everyone makes it out to
| be. None of people's simple projection account for it
| all. Even economists with fancy models backed by
| simulations, math, and all that can't figure out the real
| outcome and often disagree with one another on what would
| happen.
|
| It's not as easy as saying, half the restaurants are
| going to shut down, and leave empty all those commercial
| space. What happens next? Maybe some customers start to
| be willing to pay even more to get back some of the great
| restaurants they lost, or their proximity to them. Maybe
| landlords have to lower their rent for something else to
| fill in the vacancy, etc. Maybe everyone is happy with
| only half of the restaurants remaining, and each of those
| restaurant is making twice as much now allowing them to
| hire more staff and pay even higher. There's a lot of
| balancing act that could happen.
| scaramanga wrote:
| The government has much better options than mandating a
| living wage.
|
| It can simply pay you the wage as an indirect subsidy to
| stimulate production.
|
| It can employ you in the construction of infrastructure.
| The infrastructure of the US is dilapidated to the point
| of national disgrace.
|
| It should still mandate living wages, the same way it
| should not allow employers to lash their employees or own
| them as chattel, or any number of other practices which
| are both immoral, and cannot find any temporary
| justification due to exigent circumstances (eg. literal
| struggle for national survival...)
| 8note wrote:
| More specifically, the value of your labour minus the
| profit that the capitalist wants to make off your labour
| 8note wrote:
| People are required to eat. Charging for food and only
| being able to work at X wage is force through collusion.
|
| It wouldn't be by force if people did not need to pay for
| the basic necessities
| atoav wrote:
| I don't see it. McDonalds pays minimum wages in most european
| nations, yet their menu isnt that much more expensive than in
| the US.
|
| Maybe they have a slimmer margin over here, but they are
| still profitable. That implies that the model is (in
| principle) just alright, but there are financial flows that
| will have to change in the US. Of course you don't like to
| pay more for the labor you use to generate profit -- ideally
| you wouldn't have to pay anyone at all!
|
| If you can't run you business with minimum wage labor, maybe
| tou are not good at doing business and should change careers
| instead? Because many businesses in many nations have not the
| slightest issue doing just that.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Well, without knowing how the Corp is setup, that's a bad
| example as this could easily exist: an international
| company can very easily be paying for high wages in one
| nation (ie loss leading) by low wages in another. Or
| staying profitable and with open doors. And so on.
|
| Unless you've done an FSA class and you can explain me your
| thinking more, it's worth appreciating there are a ton of
| levers that impact Corp finance. Same way you have
| performance trade offs for one algo vs the other.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| If their entire European, Australian and New Zealand
| operations weren't profitable, why would they run them at
| all? They wouldn't use American profits to support them,
| they'd shut them down.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Mm does this make sense: Profitable is a spectrum, end of
| the day it all reports back through McD USA. ebtida in EU
| might be a bit lower than ideal because of laws changing
| over time. So, to make numbers, they can juice things in
| USA.
| atoav wrote:
| You are aware that when you say "they can juice _things_
| in USA ", "things" stands for people?
| dogman144 wrote:
| You are aware that you can either use soft language, or
| discuss in the terms that are actually used, right?
|
| What's more important: sensitivities or understanding how
| the decisions actually work so you're in the mix to
| change things with the audience to change it?
|
| They can wait out ethics based arguments for decades, and
| they do.
|
| The moment a community activist actually starts calling
| corps out on their sh*t from the perspective that's
| actually used to build these policies, then the corps
| lose their main advantage which is ignoring calls to
| ethics like this which don't work as they're not at all
| related to the MBA's incentive structure who makes that
| decision.
| kjksf wrote:
| It makes zero sense for McDonalds (or Starbucks or anyone
| else) to operate a money loosing restaurant.
|
| Furthermore, 82% of McDonald restaurants are franchises
| i.e. not owned by McDonald.
| https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/03/what-
| perce...
| dogman144 wrote:
| The franchise part is interesting, although McD's owning
| them or not doesn't matter as the cash flow is what's
| relevant. In this case I wonder what the terms are for
| franchise owners in EU vs USA and if they account for
| higher wage laws.
|
| There are a number of reasons corporate entities operate
| certain or many stores at a loss. Very well known example
| is flagship locations that are locally at a loss, but
| earn for the brand on other ways. Example being Times
| Square NYC locations. This still makes sense at a
| franchise model, but less likely I bet.
|
| EU isn't a flag ship obviously, but I also didn't say
| loss. Loss leading is similar, but not a perfect analogy
| (sure).
|
| My earlier example still holds, even with franchisees per
| the term, but you should expand your bad event set to
| loss or low profits. On the net, being in Europe is worth
| it despite higher operating costs, but maybe USA
| operating costs need to be lower as a result.
|
| I mean this all to say, there are so many factors
| involved such that it's a false premise argument without
| controlling for intra-market differences.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Are you seriously arguing that yhe entire EU McDonald's
| market is operating at a loss? That makes zero sense.
|
| Clearly it is possible to operate McDonald's in the EU
| and not burn money. Thus clearly there is a fast food
| business model that involves paying higher wages. Does
| this mean that every fast food store will remain
| profitable with the same hours? Probably not, but it does
| clearly mean that some fast food stores would be able to
| stay open and profitable.
| dogman144 wrote:
| No I said loss leading probably wasn't a good analogy.
| Did you not read that?
|
| However, McD EU could be less profitable, McD picks up
| the slack.
|
| This is fairly straightforward financial accounting.
|
| Which is all to say: without discussing this from
| knowledge of a form 10k or similar details is a very weak
| argument approach.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Then your whole point is pointless, the OP granted the
| possibility of McD EU being less profitable in their
| original post.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Yes, and then OP said this which is why I responded:
|
| " That implies that the model is (in principle) just
| alright"
|
| It implies any number of things, but not that if the
| model works in EU it can also coexist with the same model
| in the US. The scenario I said is an easy and fairly
| common example of why they could not coexist.
|
| Without breaking out a form 10k and a fair bit of
| financial statement analysis, it's somewhat like saying
| that "well I get 1GB internet in NYC, it implies the
| model for fast internet works so we could do it in
| Montana tomorrow."
|
| To the extent that it's important to know and discuss the
| actual factors involved such that the MBAs doing these
| decisions at McD will take you seriously, that
| implication is seriously flawed. Hence, why this hasn't
| changed since Milton Friedman and the 80s. Ever wonder
| why that is? It's because arguments made without any Corp
| fin awareness don't work with the audiences with the
| power to change it.
| [deleted]
| Aunche wrote:
| Their menu may not appear much cheaper in the US, but
| McDonalds is much more aggressive with price discrimination
| here. You won't find the same promotions, value menu, and
| coupons in Europe.
| atoav wrote:
| There is generally not a big coupon culture in Europe.
| Most people don't bother wasting their time. People with
| a money problem usually collect bottles for recycling
| purposes.
| andrepd wrote:
| What are you talking about?
| porknubbins wrote:
| McDonald's here pulled way back too though (last I
| checked before trying to eat healthier and deleting the
| app). Probably not the worst thing in the world to have
| fast food be a little more expensive.
| Strs2FillMyDrms wrote:
| The problem is not that the margin is small, is that big
| companies get to cover the losses of the uncertain(unforeseen
| situations) with the foreseeable profits, while at the same
| time (as an extra bonus from their government lobbying)
| maintaining a minimal labor cost. The price of their product is
| unreachable to small business, small business are not failing
| because the labor is too demanding (I know you did not
| explicitly stated this, but it could be construed as if). They
| are doing so because the competition is too big.
|
| This is my cynical approach... A right-to-center leaning person
| is in no position to argue "handouts are to blame", or
| "zoomers/millenials want it easy"... a truly right-to-center
| political commentary should be telling restaurant owners "Work
| smarter".
| angmarsbane wrote:
| If businesses didn't have to pay for health plans, would that
| free up enough to pay higher wages?
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| Almost none of the jobs in question include health benefits,
| so it's not really a factor.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Well you're describing a situation where there needs to be
| general rise in the cost of labor. Its competition against
| competitors that don't raise wages that is the problem, right?
| Balgair wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance here, but won't capitalism sort this all
| out?
|
| Businesses need to raise prices. Some do and less people buy
| from them. Some can't make ends meet and close. Now the number
| of businesses is less. So, the number of open jobs is less.
| Potential employees now have a lower 'supply' of jobs. The wage
| for those jobs then falls. Somewhere in there, a new
| equilibrium is reached and everyone is unhappy for a while.
|
| I'm not trying to discount the emotional pain that comes with
| this process. Putting your life into something that just blows
| up is hard. Especially when you had nothing to do with it. I
| feel for those owners, the situation is the opposite of fun.
|
| But this is how capitalism works. The US is not a planned
| economy like China. Capitalism is core to the system
| (bastardized as it is). Markets change and shops close up. It
| sucks, but this is the process as I understand it. If I'm
| understanding it wrong, I would _very much_ like to know
| because then I really am missing something big, and that 's not
| good.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| There's another option: reducing hours of operation. Some hours
| are much more profitable than others.
|
| That's not necessarily bad for workers. It might mean holding
| more than one job, which is common in the food 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.
| count wrote:
| 10% profit is not necessarily very modest. 10% of $50M is a lot
| of money. 10% of $50K is not a lot of money. 10% only sounds
| 'modest' in relation to SaaS/software margins which are
| ridiculous. Walmart's gross margin is only ~28%. Many
| manufacturing companies compete across 3-5% margins. If the
| base number is big enough, that's a ton of money still!
|
| %'s are a bad way to measure this, for that reason. Labor isn't
| even the majority of cost for restaurants (avg is apparently
| around 34% fully loaded [1]).
|
| [1]https://totalfood.com/busting-restaurant-labor-cost-myth/
| varispeed wrote:
| The need for wage controls is more apparent in the tech
| industry. If a hypothetical company with 100 employees
| registers 10 billion profit and apart from CEO and the board
| employees make 5 figure salaries, then there is something
| horribly wrong going on. I think we need a regulation that
| beyond a certain threshold company should redistribute 30% of
| profits annually among the staff on top of their salaries.
| There should also be other restrictions - for example I'd vote
| for complete removal of dividends. Only way to get paid from a
| company should be by being an employee and getting a salary
| taxed as everyone else. The rich have so many loopholes, it is
| crazy that we allow them to get even richer on the backs of the
| hard working no name people.
| conformist wrote:
| Making sure that dividends are taxed like other types of
| income could make sense - not sure how this currently works
| in the US? Removing dividends all-together? That doesn't seem
| like a good idea, because why would anyone invest in a
| business, if there is no potential for future cash flows
| arising from it? Even companies that don't generally pay
| dividends have value, because they could. So removing
| dividends would also require another mechanism to incentivise
| investing in businesses in the first place?
| 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.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| We hear this same diatribe every time this topic comes
| up.
|
| "Fast food work is a stepping stone to a better job!"
|
| Have you been to a McDonalds or Wendys recently? Most of
| the workers are in their 30s-40s+. The concept of a low-
| wage "stepping stone" job is a fallacy that people have
| subscribed to to justify paying unlivable wages.
| 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.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| If there are a dozen people in line to take the job who will
| have to return to a third world country if they dont get it, no
| amount of worker solidarity with other Americans will increase
| your wage because every single job will be filled by a foreign
| worker for whom minimum wage is still many times higher than
| what they get in their home country. There is no way around the
| immigration issue. Covid wont last forever.
| 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.
| readme wrote:
| Man I worked those kinds of jobs, and I still can't believe I
| worked for so little. When you are at the bottom the world looks
| real different.
|
| No one is "too lazy" the wages don't pay enough to support even a
| single adult in most places!
|
| Most impoverished adults would have a better chance of climbing
| out of poverty if they DID NOT work at low or minimum wage jobs
| at all and instead foraged for nuts and berries.
| refurb wrote:
| The first example just glosses over "tips are shared". When I
| worked for tips it was typically as much as my hourly wage or
| more on some nights.
| adamsiem wrote:
| Labor shortage. For my beer garden, I couldn't find part-time
| workers. However, I could hire people with full-time jobs who
| wanted to work 1-2 standing shifts each week in a fun place with
| a respectful community. I think we are more the exception than a
| Dale's (article reference), but this answers the labor shortage
| vs. terrible jobs question for me.
| uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh wrote:
| The wage issue is generally portrayed in a binary light, with
| "liveable vs unliveable", but a min wage hike will invariably
| cause middle earner increases (boss, the frycook makes 25, I
| might go do that and just write code in my free time), raising
| the floor, and then were back where we started except everythin
| is N percent more expensive. The real crooks in medicine must
| have a hoot everytime they see McDonalds take the fall for the
| debased living conditions of the photogenically appaling.
| 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".
| bradlys wrote:
| A lot of people I know who stop being software engineers do
| it because they found something more profitable. (Management,
| executive track, founding their own company, etc.) Part of
| the reason is that salary progression after the first 10
| years is _generally_ flat for IC level. Yet, it continues
| almost indefinitely for other tracks or roles related to
| software.
| luckylion wrote:
| That's a different issue though, isn't it? The money in
| software development is still much better than in most
| industries.
|
| I don't think millions of people are thinking "well, I
| could make lots of money in software ... but management
| pays much better if I get one of those jobs ... so I better
| go into [unrelated, lower paying field]".
|
| What I'm trying to say is that software is very attractive
| compared to other jobs, but still we don't see everyone
| rushing into it. I believe that's because money isn't the
| factor.
| chii wrote:
| > salary progression after the first 10 years is generally
| flat for IC level
|
| that is expected, if the salary matched the value creation
| of an IC. There's a limit to how much work one can produce.
|
| The reason management has a higher progression is because
| they do different work, and thus the ceiling is different.
| But a ceiling does exist.
|
| The only "work" that has no ceiling for compensation is
| equity ownership.
| bradlys wrote:
| I agree to some extent but I find that as an IC
| (especially in startups) you can add even more value than
| random middle manager or even some executives. Yet, you
| still don't get compensated like that.
|
| Many CTO's I've dealt with were a net negative in terms
| for the company - yet, they still get 10x the equity and
| much higher salary. So... :/
| 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?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Some people truly love problem solving and don't have to
| believe in the product to feel fulfilled. The 2 million
| dollar house with a Model S in the garage and the money to
| start any hobby at any time doesn't hurt either.
| bradlys wrote:
| I mean, that's nice but it doesn't really afford a typical
| professional middle class lifestyle that you would see
| outside the SF bay area. (Unless partner is at FAANG or
| surgeon)
|
| You're mostly stuck at liquid comp of $180-220k tops.
| Obviously if the startup works out, hallelujah. But if it
| doesn't - that salary sucks for trying to have a home in a
| nice school district along with some normal vacations and
| what not.
| luckylion wrote:
| > You're mostly stuck at liquid comp of $180-220k tops
| [...] that salary sucks for trying to have a home in a nice
| school district along with some normal vacations and what
| not.
|
| Do you mean "in SF, where the cost of living is extremely
| high", or are you suggesting that you can't have a
| comfortable life on $180k/year?
| bradlys wrote:
| Yes - SF Bay Area.
|
| Obviously you could live like a king in some other
| regions but they wouldn't pay $180k most likely for
| random startup senior software engineer.
| 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.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Means testing in social services is such a terrible idea. It
| creates nothing but perverse incentives like you describe.
| Programs like food stamps should be available to everyone who
| wants them. I don't care if a billionaire uses food stamps,
| they still need to eat. If too many rich people use the
| program, tweak tax rates until it balances out.
|
| It's a waste of our time to go through and double check that
| only those that 'deserve' a handout get one. It makes
| everything less efficient, creates bad incentives, and builds
| a social stigma around the programs. ("Oh, that program is
| only for _really_ poor people. I 'm not _really_ poor, so I
| shouldn 't use it.")
| chii wrote:
| > tweak tax rates until it balances out.
|
| that just makes the whole system inefficient - the rich pay
| a bunch of taxes, then try to obtain all of those benefits
| for having paid those taxes to try even it back out.
|
| So why not just tax less, and let them spend the money
| directly?
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Because not everyone has enough money to feed themselves
| in the US. Start from a position that everyone should
| have food assistance available if they want or need it.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I'd rather an inefficient system than one with holes in
| it. Better someone getting aid who doesn't need it than
| someone not getting aid who does need it.
| biztos wrote:
| Doesn't this just become a mini-UBI for food budgets?
|
| That could be pretty interesting.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Countless trillions stashed in offshore tax havens in
| Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados,
| Belize, Bermuda, Brunei, BVI, Cayman Islands, Cook
| Islands, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, Dominica, Dubai,
| Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Isle of Man,
| Jersey, Labuan, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg,
| Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Monaco, Montserrat, Nevis,
| New Zealand, Panama, Seychelles, Singapore, St. Vincent,
| St. Kitts, Switzerland, Turks and Caicos and Vanuatu seem
| to indicate that spending into the economy isn't
| something that the wealthy like to do.
| 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?
| sbierwagen wrote:
| The impoverished don't spend that much on car insurance.
| They do spend a surprising amount on _cars_ , though:
| either many repairs, or buying replacement used cars when
| the last one gives out.
|
| If they're really in a bad spot, they'll be buying these
| cars _financed._ You don 't want to be in a position where
| you're paying off a car that long since was sold for scrap
| steel price at a junkyard.
|
| Also a smartphone is a must: they often don't have a
| traditional computer at all! An internet-capable phone
| might be the only way they can access email, unless they're
| truly destitute and using libraries for internet access.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| I've lived on minimum wage before. Those numbers are not
| realistic.
| 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.
| robocat wrote:
| > and you ca[n] choose to self insure if you have
| sufficient cash set aside.
|
| I think you are ignoring the third party risks - damaging
| an expensive car or hurting someone. In that situation,
| you use insurance if you want to protect your money. If
| you have no money, insurance make little sense, and you
| just suck up the risks of pranging your beater.
| simfree wrote:
| Self insurance is not legal if you do not meet your
| state's requirements for cash set aside for self
| insurance purposes and vehicle count. This is usually a
| sizable sum of money that you need to set aside to self
| insure.
| dstaley wrote:
| > Outside of collector/classic car insurance policies or
| parked insurance, there is not $200 to $300 a year car
| insurance in the USA.
|
| Absolutely beg to differ. I was on a high-deductible,
| low-benefit plan for a two-year old used economy car in
| Louisiana with no marks on my driving record for
| $250/month. The insurance cost was more than the monthly
| cost of the car. That being said, it was more than the
| state mandated liability insurance, but it still wasn't
| anywhere near the levels of insurance I now have in
| Washington State on a brand new Tesla Model 3. As you
| mentioned, it's highly dependent on where you live, but
| it's absolutely feasible to be paying $200-$300/month for
| insurance.
|
| Edit: Apologies to parent comment. This was a reading
| comprehension failure.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Louisiana is high because of the plaintiff friendly
| courts where even minor accidents are litigated, the
| trial lawyers making money off of it, and the traffic
| courts which bargain down speeding tickets to brake tag
| violations all the time (which is priced in by the
| insurance companies)
|
| Source: I live in New Orleans.
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| The user you replied to said per year, not per month.
| dstaley wrote:
| Well that'll teach me to read the comments after a full
| day of work. Thank you for the correction!
| 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.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Minimum coverage, modest car, clean record, over 30 is
| ~$220/mo for most carriers here, $150 if you're eligible
| for USAA.
|
| For each factor you change you can add another 15%-40%.
|
| I'm paying $400/mo for 2 cars, no collision, above min
| medical.
| v0x wrote:
| That seems very high. I pay $28/mo with USAA. Clean
| record aside from a minor at-fault collision a few years
| back.
|
| edit: Upon further review, it's actually double that
| ($56/mo), as apparently it's billed in two-week
| intervals.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > That seems very high.
|
| Yep. We all pay very high rates.
|
| Household insurance isn't any better. We lost our last
| house because insurance increases over 4 years doubled
| our monthly mortgage payment.
| havernator wrote:
| Liability insurance in the US may end up paying out for
| medical bills.
| 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/
| dv_dt wrote:
| One side effect of the US not having universal healthcare
| (and overpaying massively for healthcare as one result)
| is that leaks into litigation on other insurance for just
| about everything from cars to homes to retail business
| etc...
|
| Our non profit Parent teacher association and the schools
| themselves have to carry insurance for events in case
| someone happens to get injured.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| You can get cheaper coverage, but it's barely insurance
| at that point. They'll sell you the bare minimum that's
| legally allowed to be sold as insurance even if it
| doesn't cover liability, medical costs, etc.
| 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
| aliceryhl wrote:
| If you go by the numbers in the post I responded to, this
| isn't true, at least not where I live. The $1400 figure
| is pretty much exactly what I pay in rent, and I have no
| problems getting to work with public transport for
| $100/month.
|
| To be fair, I live in Europe, but this is why I asked the
| question "is it really that bad?", to which the answer
| appears to be yes.
| 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.
| aliceryhl wrote:
| Fair enough. I guess it really _is_ that bad in the US.
| 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.
| refurb wrote:
| You're clearly out of touch and over inflating numbers.
| $200/month for groceries is nothing but cheap carbs?
| $1400/month for rent? Are they living in their own 1
| bedroom in the middle of the city?
| Pfhreak wrote:
| $50/week in food is doable, but it takes some careful
| planning. I'd be impressed at someone who could purchase
| fresh vegetables and fruit, balanced whole grain carbs,
| and a healthy protein of their choice, spices sufficient
| to produce a reasonable variety of meals, plus some
| occasional luxury food items for that budget.
| 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.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Are people doing office work for $7.25 in Houston?_
|
| In that it's in an office building, yes. But it's not
| office work like sitting at a desk.
| jvp wrote:
| It may not be office work, but I bet it's location
| dependent (restaurant, janitor, grocery store).
| maxerickson wrote:
| Office jobs are less interchangeable than service jobs
| though. I'd expect someone with a job in a grocery store
| or restaurant to always be looking for a position closer
| to where they wanted to live compared to an office worker
| looking for suitable, better positions in locations that
| that would have a shorter commute.
|
| (the service workers would be looking for better
| positions too, but the pay differences between similar
| positions are smaller there)
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Those office workers rely on a huge infrastructure of
| other services -- food preparation, cleaning, maintenance
| workers, parking lot attendants, etc. etc.
|
| The people who work those jobs should have the same
| access to their worksites as anyone else. Our willingness
| to tell people who make less money they should just "live
| farther away" and have longer commutes is awful. No, we
| should fix our cities so that we support a range of
| incomes and workers in one place.
| AngryData wrote:
| Does that matter when there are plenty of other
| businesses and services doing not office work to support
| the office workers?
| [deleted]
| 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."
| robocat wrote:
| > 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."
|
| Should we live in a world where we are wage slaves where
| 100% of our earnings are spent on the bare necessities
| such as food and shelter?
|
| One of my friends has $20 to spend on herself after her
| frugal bills and doing a body crushing job (no "fat" like
| retirement savings, or medical insurance). I look at it
| like she earns 50 cents an hour.
|
| Surely we work to be able to spend some money on the
| pleasures of life? Or is that a dream only for the middle
| class? Work usually costs us immense amounts of time, let
| alone the other personal costs of work for many.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| > Should we live in a world where we are wage slaves
| where 100% of our earnings are spent on the bare
| necessities such as food and shelter?
|
| No.
|
| > Surely we work to be able to spend some money on the
| pleasures of life?
|
| Money doesn't buy happiness. The best things in life are
| free. And sure, if you have money to spend on fun things,
| have at it. If you don't and you want to, try finding a
| way to do it. It really is up to you. But the idea that
| if you do not have disposable income to engage in
| consumerism you're going to be unhappy, well I'll just
| say that's a terrible starting point for your argument,
| and a mindset that breeds unhappiness quicker than tight
| finances.
| gtyras2mrs wrote:
| > Money doesn't buy happiness. The best things in life
| are free.
|
| No. No. Happiness is extremely difficult to find if you
| are financially insecure.
|
| Money has a marginal effect on happiness after a certain
| limit. But to say money doesn't buy happiness is an
| utterly stupid lie repeated for ages by those that have
| more than enough money.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _2 tanks a week?_
|
| When I lived in Spring and commuted to the office at 610
| North and I-45, it was 2 tanks a week for the 35 minute
| drive. That was 7 years ago.
|
| > _200 bucks a month for shit tier food? Ever heard of
| cooking?_
|
| One week of food for one person:
|
| 2lb white rice, $1.5 1lb beans, $1.25 2lb ground meat,
| $10
|
| 1gal milk, $4 1lb sharp cheddar, $5 1 loaf bread, $3.5
|
| total... $25. Times four weeks, you get $100. I never
| claimed to be good at cooking.
|
| > _1400 a month rent?_
|
| Due on the 1st, late on the 3rd.
|
| > _" I should be able to have extra money for fun"_
|
| There's nothing wrong with wanting extra money for fun.
|
| > _" I blow my money on things I can't afford and then
| blame the world for being broke."_
|
| Minimum wage doesn't _have_ money to blow things on
| things they can 't afford though.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| $1400/mo for rent seems exorbitant, especially if you're
| working a minimum wage job.
| rmorey wrote:
| The Rent Is Too Damn High
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Our rents that were $1400 last year are over $2000 for
| the same properties.
| kieselguhr_kid wrote:
| Exorbitant rent is a fact of life in major cities
| madengr wrote:
| Minimum wage was never intended to cover all the above, and
| it never has. Minimum wage is for teenagers working after
| school or weekends, or students with no (yet) marketable
| skills.
| 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.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| He is making a distinction between cost to survive (I.e.
| food, shelter, etc) and cost to have the job (I.e.
| transport).
|
| "net pay is below zero" means (In his interpretation)
| that the cost of having the job is greater than the
| amount the job pays. This is unrelated to the cost of
| surviving.
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There are places where the commutes from the suburbs to the
| city where the jobs are costs $20-50 a day, if not more.
| 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.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Why would someone near the bottom quintile of income rent
| in an average cost area? What is the bottom quintile rent
| for an apartment?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| I've looked for about 20 minutes and haven't been able to
| find a reliable figure nationally, so from a quick search
| on apartments.com for Minneapolis (random city not known
| for high cost of living), the 20th percentile studio
| apartment is $1000. If you want to split an appartment,
| I'm going to check 1 bedroom, since 2 unrelated people in
| a studio isn't really practical. Then the 20th percentile
| is about $1150. (on average for these apartments, parking
| is an extra $100 or so which you need if you have to shop
| by price, not location).
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| 20th percentile apartments don't get advertised on
| apartments.com, that costs money.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| So do you have a link to a reliable figure as to what
| 20th percentile rent is? "I'm sure you would agree with
| me if you knew a statistic that I'm not going to share
| with you" is hardly a convincing argument.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| I'm not doing your homework.
|
| The original post said the average cost for a studio was
| $900. You claim that the 20th percentile cost is $1000.
|
| That doesn't make any sense whatsoever, so you go figure
| out what the real numbers are and then we can talk.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| I claimed 20th percentile _IN MINNEAPOLIS_ was $1000.
| That just means Minneapolis is more expensive than the
| national average. You 're the one claiming that a 20th
| percentile apartment is affordable on minimum wage, so
| how about a source for what that figure is?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| For some other random cities using the same methodology
| (1 bedroom) Wichita: 500 St Louis: 650 Columbus: 800
| Pittsburgh: 850 Dallas/Fort Worth: 950 Nashville: 1000
| Orlando: 1200 Sacramento: 1200
|
| What methodology would you use to find this data if
| Appartments.com isn't reliable?
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| It's not that apartments.com isn't reliable, I would
| assume it reliably reports the data it gets.
|
| But most apartments don't get rented through
| apartments.com, and the ones that don't are skewed
| towards the lower end of the market.
|
| The 4-flat where the owner is renting out the other 3
| places and living in one of them doesn't show up on
| apartments.com. I don't know where you find good
| comprehensive data, you tell me. But if you are looking
| at bad data because you can't find good data, you are the
| drunk looking for his keys underneath the street light
| not because he lost his keys there but because the light
| is good.
| 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.
| kristjansson wrote:
| I think quoting the unsustainable part of OP instead of
| the net pay part led to lots of misinterpretation.
| Sustainability in a pay context is IMO strongly linked to
| a living wage, or at least a survivable 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?
| Frondo wrote:
| Or raise the minimum wage, raising the wage floor for all
| workers, and putting more money in the hands of poor
| people (who are generally much, much better at managing
| it than anyone else, due to the need to.)
| WalterBright wrote:
| Frontline (I think it was) many years ago ran an episode
| on 401k plans. There was a medium sized company that
| offered an identical 401k plan to all its employees, from
| the bottom to the top salary levels.
|
| They found that the higher the income level, the better
| percentage returns the employee had on the plan. The
| lower, the worse performance.
|
| The 401k plan offered several investment options.
|
| Clearly, the higher income people were making better
| investment decisions. The conclusion was the company was
| going to offer seminars on basic investing, though who
| knows how that turned out.
|
| There's a lot more to personal finance than balancing a
| checkbook, though many can't do that, either.
| Frondo wrote:
| What does this have to do with people who are making
| poverty wages?
| WalterBright wrote:
| It has to do with your claim that poor people "generally
| much, much better at managing it than anyone else".
| Frondo wrote:
| I don't see how a news entertainment program you saw many
| years ago actually addresses how well poor people are at
| making the most of their very limited dollars.
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I always wondered whether instantaneous payment would help
| solve this.
|
| For example, our digital infrastructure could pay people
| per second and it could instantaneously show up in a bank
| account; if people were never waiting for these Delta
| function payments, maybe they would be less prone to being
| exploited by systems that seek to smooth out these Delta
| functions.
| 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.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > there's a horrible lack of common decency and respect by
| supervisors and managers of low-wage workers.
|
| Yeah, if the entire culture creating class/media/academia is
| agreed that people who don't have college degrees are
| worthless failures or at best need other people to make their
| decisions for them there's not going to be much respect going
| round. The Anglo West is not Japan.
| [deleted]
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| There is the additional factor that, at least in fast food, a
| salaried manager often makes a lower hourly rate than if they
| were paid at minimum wage plus overtime. It's an industry
| filled with horrible bosses because the good bosses either
| leave or ran the math and declined the promotion in the first
| place.
| richardjennings wrote:
| "and now the exploited have been drained dry".
|
| I do not think this is true in the absolute currently. I do
| think that the modern economies are imparting pressures that
| will make this more true over time.
|
| The question every one asks is "What is the point?". The answer
| is increasingly, there is no point.
|
| What about the answers previous generation might have had; send
| money home, improve life chances with an education, provide for
| a family, get a foot on the ladder, eat.
|
| I think 20 years from now on one side looks like very low birth
| rates, mass homelessness and high suicide rates. For those that
| own assets now - a Parisian utopia surrounded by the former.
|
| And for those that do continue to try, a room the size of a
| double bed containing an on-suite bathroom, kitchen diner,
| living-room and sleeping space - all in one! with no prospect
| of ownership.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| > a room the size of a double bed
|
| No one's building those, so maybe a tent in or near an
| abandoned mall.
| [deleted]
| richardjennings wrote:
| Not the most prestigious news outlet - but fact checkable
| and perhaps a vision of the future:
| https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14815353/househunters-slam-
| tin...
| [deleted]
| 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.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Imperialism is bunk and an artifact of a movement predicated
| on deception, so, there's that. I think the whole critical
| theory basically lets itself out on reasonable discourse.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Lenin's work more than a century ago is very much still
| relevant today. If you haven't read it, give it a try
| https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/
| parineum wrote:
| Would a communist United States not trade with China?
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Currently, US capitalists exploit workers both in the US
| and in poorer countries, with the later being super-
| exploited. Under this arrangement, the vast majority of the
| value created by both groups of workers is captured by a
| handful of capitalists.
|
| A socialist US would cease exploiting other countries
| (including China) and instead pursue mutually beneficial
| trade (much like China does). This would likely include
| some amount of reparations and re-building of local
| industry, easily funded with the vast amount of value no
| longer stolen from all workers.
| IdiocyInAction wrote:
| Exploitation that ultimately helped lift a billion people
| out of poverty in China.
|
| A socialist US would probably, like most prior countries
| that called themselves socialist, be a poor, oppressive
| hellhole.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Poverty has decreased in China in spite of US
| imperialism, not because of it. Most notably, poor
| capitalist countries have had poverty increase in the
| past several decades instead.
|
| All countries that have had a successful socialist
| revolution so far were oppressed impoverished ones. They
| all then went on to develop very quickly, in spite of
| constant attack from the imperialist countries. An
| already-developed former imperialist country would face
| no such challenges.
| parineum wrote:
| China lifted itself out of poverty when it became a
| capitalist, dictatorial oligarchy.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| No. It was only allowed to develop after making deep
| concessions to imperialism, including special economic
| areas where capitalism is allowed.
|
| Thankfully the working class is still in control of the
| state, as we've seen the limits on capitalism tightened
| recently, especially during covid.
| parineum wrote:
| You think the working class is in control of China? The
| working class that has nets installed in their job
| provided dormatories because too many of them are
| commiting suicide?
|
| Those people are nearly slaves.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| A certain level of exploitation is demanded by
| imperialists in exchange for capital investment and
| allowing trade. The working class of any victim nation is
| forced to accept deregulation like this if they wish a
| change at developing.
|
| Vietnam made a similar choice in a similar position. In
| both countries working conditions and labour laws have
| been steadily improving. This change is only possible if
| the workers as a class are in control of the state.
| parineum wrote:
| US trade with China is currently mutually beneficial.
| That's why China participates.
|
| Give me more detail on what that means. If the US
| Communist party took over absolute leadership of the US
| tomorrow, what differences would there be in the US China
| trade agreement.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| The amount of benefit is not equal. Imperialist countries
| (US, western EU, etc.) have extremely favourable terms
| obtained under military threat. Often onerous terms are
| imposed, like privatisations or deregulation.
|
| One recent example is Bolivia's rare earth mining. A
| German company was offering only ~5% of the value of
| extracted material in exchange for the capital required,
| while a Chinese SOE offered 50%. Not long after there was
| a US-backed fascist coup which was only recently
| defeated.
| parineum wrote:
| Still no specifics.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| As I said, first the imperialism would stop. No more
| military threats, no more WTO enforcing unfair rules,
| forgiving all IMF loans, etc.
|
| That would allow trade to no longer be based such an
| extreme difference in the price of labour, so the victim
| countries could retain a majority of the value of their
| labour. By no longer losing value to profits at every
| step of production and distribution, consumer prices
| wouldn't have to increase and could even be lowered in
| most cases.
|
| Merely dismantling the US army would vastly reduce global
| carbon emissions. Building high density housing, public
| transportation, universal healthcare, public utilities,
| etc. would further reduce the US's majority
| contributions.
|
| Countries that were kept poor for centuries could be
| gifted low-carbon energy sources as part of reparations,
| so as to not need to emit carbon to develop.
|
| A lot can be done once the oppressor countries stop
| constantly extracting value for a few individuals.
| parineum wrote:
| > That would allow trade to no longer be based such an
| extreme difference in the price of labour
|
| That doesn't make sense. The entire reason the WTO was
| interested in China (and any other poor country) was
| because they had cheap labor. It's not like the WTO is
| depressing wages.
|
| >By no longer losing value to profits at every step of
| production and distribution, consumer prices wouldn't
| have to increase
|
| Wait, we pay everyone more but we don't have to pay for
| production and distribution?
|
| >Merely dismantling the US army would vastly reduce
| global carbon emissions. Building high density housing,
| public transportation, universal healthcare, public
| utilities, etc. would further reduce the US's majority
| contributions.
|
| I agree but it's completely non-sequitar.
|
| > Countries that were kept poor for centuries could be
| gifted low-carbon energy sources as part of reparations,
| so as to not need to emit carbon to develop.
|
| Again, non-sequitar but what are these countries going to
| do with some solar panels? They're dirt poor. You might
| as well buy them some air pods.
|
| > A lot can be done once the oppressor countries stop
| constantly extracting value for a few individuals.
|
| It's not a zero sum game. Richer countries do extract
| value from poorer countries but the poorer countries also
| extract value from the richer countries. Just because the
| majority of the advantage comes from the richer country
| doesn't mean the poorer country is losing, they just win
| much less.
|
| In general, you're making a lot of points about globalism
| that I generally agree are problems but you're offering
| no solutions past stop doing the bad thing and everything
| will be good. I don't care about labels of imperialism,
| oppressors or communist, I care what actually can be done
| in the real world to make the world work better. Keep in
| mind that while China is sort if at odds with the WTO,
| it's not because they don't think it's ethical, they
| don't like it because it's not them.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| WTO terms are designed specifically to extract profits
| and prevent independent development. Refusing such terms
| comes with sanctions, coups and sometimes invasions. The
| US army are ultimately the enforcers of this
| exploitation.
|
| Solar panels are quite useful in many poor countries,
| actually. But indeed much more is needed in terms of
| means of production: agricultural equipment,
| infrastructure, factories, etc. Expertise and technology
| (which are restricted by IP laws) are also needed. All of
| this is what the Belt and Road Initiative does.
|
| If you look at it over time, the poor countries only get
| poorer over time. It may not be a zero sum game, but
| development is actively prevented. The only exceptions
| are countries where workers have at least some control
| over the state.
|
| That's where the solution lies: ending the control of
| capitalists over the world. The poor countries have
| succeeded a few times with good results, but the rich
| countries doing it would have a much bigger impact.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| As a more recent example, the vaccine apartheid
| https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-129-vaccine-
| apart...
| randomopining wrote:
| Under military threat? Yet no specifics on that.
|
| CCP does baiting with predatory loans to lock countries
| in with easy money up front.
|
| You sound like you're biased
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Has the US not invaded, coup-ed and threatened numerous
| countries? Is it not now occupying several? Does it not
| have bases encircling all countries opposed to its
| imperialism? I thought this was common knowledge.
|
| The IMF, World Bank and European Central Bank do indeed
| offer predatory loans with strict conditions (like
| privatisation, deregulation, austerity) and at usury
| rates. Countries have a choice between this and being
| blockaded through military power, like Iran, Syria,
| Libya, DPRK, etc.
| randomopining wrote:
| How is encouraging democracy directly equal to
| imperialism?
|
| The US doesn't want autocrats who can subvert us
| geopolitically and kill their own people.
|
| Fact is that countries in our sphere are democratic and
| prosperous.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| That is the official narrative, the western democracies
| versus us autocratic barbarians everywhere else. Even if
| such an absurdity were somehow true, surely at least
| sovereignty should count for something.
|
| In reality, countries in your "sphere" are either allied
| exploiters or exploited (and not at all prosperous).
| Anyone that threatens profits is painted as evil,
| regardless of the truth. After so many sanctions, coups
| and wars based on what later turned out to be blatant
| lies, surely you could reserve some scepticism.
| zizee wrote:
| Honest question: why do discussions about minimum wage in the
| U.S. never propose having teenagers having a different minimum to
| adults?
|
| In australia we have a $12.50/hr minimum for 15 year olds. It
| climbs in increments until about $25/hr.
|
| This system allows teenagers to get a foot in the door for low-
| skilled jobs, and allows adults to get paid a livable wage.
|
| The result is that a lot of fast food jobs are performed by
| teenagers, and they are considered entry level jobs. Adults are
| then paid more, and take positions where they can add more value
| that what a teen can provide.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You don't want to create a class of people who get paid badly
| because their jobs are terrible (and also low-skilled.) The
| only reason you would want a lower minimum wage for young
| people is because young people are stupid, and you want to put
| them into a job where they can learn i.e. low-skilled, but
| ramping up over time, like an apprenticeship. Paying people
| almost nothing to work a horrible job because you can get away
| with it is just creating a slave class, and the primary
| beneficiaries are the companies that employ them.
|
| The gap between a juvenile minimum wage and an adult minimum
| wage should equal the value of the on-the-job training that the
| juvenile is getting. And there's really no reason to tie that
| to youth, although demographically it will be dominated by
| young people; adults might accept a lower minimum wage in
| exchange for education in the trade.
| lolinder wrote:
| You keep using the word class, but I don't think it's
| applicable here. If everyone in the country is subjected to a
| lower minimum wage while a teenager, there is no
| disadvantaged "class".
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Not sure why this getting down-voted. There are issues,
| like to what extent having teenagers work is useful or
| harmful to society in the first place, but a universal
| things everyone enters _and leaves_ isn 't a class in the
| segregated and hereditary sense.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Religion is a legally protected class; everyone is free
| to change their religion. Pregnancy is also a legally
| protected class, despite being one that half the
| population can enter and leave. Also, short term
| disabilities.
|
| I don't find this argument compelling, unless you're also
| arguing that employers should be able to pay people less
| for their religion or because they get pregnant (or
| choose not to get pregnant) or because they contracted a
| disease or injury.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| That's a different use of class, but an important one
| too. We want people's choices around families and
| religion to be free from outside coercion, so we have
| special protections. Short term disabilities are not a
| choice but also non-universal, and without the protection
| they might worsen into long-term ones.
|
| But being a teenager is a not a choice, and not something
| that happens to some people but not others. Again,
| there's many reasons we don't want to promote shit jobs
| for adolescents because of some nonsense about character
| building, but I think that's a rational distinct from the
| others.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Seems like you're reaaaally splitting hairs here. Young
| age is okay to discriminate against, but not old age
| (because you don't leave old age without dying). Anything
| people can enter and leave by choice is not okay to
| discriminate against if it's -important-, like family or
| religion.
|
| What about menstruation? That's pretty universal to women
| (not entirely especially with non-cisgendered), not
| really a choice (at least, not without encroaching on the
| same protections you'd want with pregnancy), and all
| those who do menstruate enter and leave it (both monthly,
| and at menopause)...what's your objection to
| discriminating against menstruating women?
| lostcolony wrote:
| So it's okay for businesses to discriminate against old
| people?
| grumple wrote:
| The disadvantaged class is poor people. Poor kids will have
| to work and will make less money while doing it than they
| should. So not only do these kids have to waste valuable
| time at low-wage jobs (rather than studying, being kids),
| but they get even less money while doing it. Wealthy
| people's kids won't work.
| tryonenow wrote:
| You're not going to create a slave class by paying teenagers
| a lower minimum wage for a couple years.
| scrozart wrote:
| This sounds exactly like what OP indicated.
| pessimizer wrote:
| A fast food job isn't an apprenticeship. It's just a shitty
| job. Management of a fast food restaurant takes a bit of
| generalizable, transferable skill, but there are always
| going to be an order of magnitude more workers than
| managers. A job where only 10% of the workers can move up
| is a dead end job for 90% of them. Every apprentice
| carpenter can become a carpenter.
| stirlo wrote:
| I disagree. While learning to operate a grill or deep
| fryer isn't a skill many are likely to need in the future
| there are dozens of generalist skills learned from your
| first job. Think teamwork, following managerial
| directions, following a roster, how to complete
| timesheets, how to deal with workplace conflict, how to
| deal with suppliers and customers, how to dress
| appropriatly, even how to count money/operate a register.
| Fast food jobs are a great place to make mistakes as a
| teen as the consequences are minimal and you can get
| another job easily. If you've never worked in any
| workplace you'll find it far harder to get hired.
| Guest42 wrote:
| Agreed, I think that a number of these jobs provide a
| fantastic introduction to business process but the resume
| doesn't necessarily translate into the opportunities that
| it could or should depending on a persons aptitude. As
| such, it becomes necessary to reconfigure resumes in a
| way that avoids jobs that might seem unwanted and
| highlights skills that appear more sought after
| regardless of how much they were tied to a job. I like
| the phrase resume driven development.
|
| A better path would be for employers to have internal
| training programs for gaining skills that can help one to
| climb the career ladder either internally or externally
| knowing that if a good person leaves that the reputation
| will attract suitable replacements.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| Shitty jobs teaches you one thing or two too. Who's to
| decide there's nothing to learn from a job, for 100% of
| people?
|
| I worked as a mailman between 11-13 y.o. It was a shitty
| job carrying ads and local newspapers weighting as much
| as you on a bike through hills in -10C snowy north. A
| shitty job, but I learned a thing or to; planning,
| discipline and value of money.
|
| Problem is when you're stuck at a shitty job with no
| option to change/improve at all. I don't see how that's
| the case for teenagers at entry level job.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| If you have kept a fast food job for six months you have
| shown that you will actually show up on time regularly,
| not steal (much) and do an at least adequate job. More
| generally most jobs don't lead to a qualification but do
| teach skills. The more responsible the job you've had in
| the past the more likely you are to do a good job with a
| new one. McDonald's does teach skills. If you want to go
| from a teenage hire to an assistant manager in under six
| months that's doable, and managing a McDonald's really
| does take skill and pay well. There are very few dead end
| jobs but there are plenty where most people hired there
| have no intention of getting promoted.
| Joeri wrote:
| Not everyone working there can be promoted, because there
| aren't enough of the good jobs to go around. Saying it
| boils down to personal responsibility ignores the fact
| that in many ways it is a game of musical chairs and
| there aren't enough good jobs.
|
| Granted, jobs can be created and the more skilled the
| labor force the better the jobs, so the number of chairs
| in the game can be increased, but on the other hand those
| aren't the kind of skills you're going to pick up serving
| burgers at mcdonalds.
| Fellshard wrote:
| Hang on, hang on.
|
| By definition, age is not a class, because by definition,
| /everyone moves out of that class/. Your entire proposition
| is faulty from the foundation!
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Not by choice though. If we can get younger or older by
| choice on a whim, I think your point would stand.
| Fellshard wrote:
| It doesn't matter! You could change class by a windfall
| inheritance or a sudden bankruptcy. Class does not bear
| choice as a prerequisite.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| One concern is that this makes teenage employees relatively
| more attractive and so increases the adult unemployment rate
| above what it would be with a uniform minimum wage.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| Is this a big issue in Australia?
| catmanjan wrote:
| Sort of, it's well known that you're unlikely to get a job
| at McDonald's as an adult
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| It's not. It really only affects those working part time
| jobs from 15 to the age of 18. Full time work is not
| allowed in most Australian states until the age of 17.
|
| There's far fewer 15-18 year olds than there are 18-65 year
| olds. There's also fewer again that can work during school
| hours.
|
| The idea that teenagers are being paid too much or have an
| advantage in Australians case and that therefore this
| should prevent changes to minimum wage laws is just a
| distraction. It keeps getting brought up by people
| desperate to push a position but who don't want to argue
| about the far bigger issue of adults trying to survive on
| minimum wage. Teenagers are an edge case in this discussion
| and they really shouldn't be the focus.
| broodbucket wrote:
| I don't know about big, but when I was at school-leaver age
| I would pretty regularly hear about friends getting way
| less shifts at their job once they hit 18.
| RileyJames wrote:
| Really? The OP provided an example of country and a policy.
|
| You've stated an opinion, as a theory with zero evidence.
|
| Youth unemployment in Australia is ~double the unemployment
| rate. 11.8% vs 5.6%
|
| https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/youth-unemployment-
| ra...
|
| Employment is more complex than hourly wage.
| secondstring wrote:
| Easy on that accusatory tone mate. They didn't claim that
| as their own opinion, but merely gave an alternative
| viewpoint: "One concern is that...".
| RileyJames wrote:
| Yea I'm in a bad mood, and that's not their fault.
|
| Fair enough to call that out.
| angmarsbane wrote:
| I had this concern until I realized teenagers have to go to
| school so there's a huge chunk of the day that they cannot
| work. Adults have to take those shifts.
|
| This realization also led me to determine that these jobs
| aren't purely for teenagers despite hearing all my life
| burger-flipping was for teens.
| [deleted]
| 8note wrote:
| Not all teenagers are required to go to school.
|
| Dropping out is possible, and usually 18/19 y/o don't have
| high school
| Kluny wrote:
| Plus, kids from unstable homes where the parents need
| them to earn money will sometimes drop out of school to
| help their family. It's best not to incentivize that.
| leetcrew wrote:
| very specific problems have very specific solutions. if
| this is the main concern, make it illegal to schedule
| school-aged children for shifts during school hours.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| 18/19 year olds shouldn't have a lower minimum wage.
| They're adults. Younger teens, sure.
| bluedino wrote:
| In some states, minimum wage is 1-2 dollars an hour *less* for
| 16/17 year olds
| monkeycantype wrote:
| In Au, current ceo at my work recently complained how
| frustrating it is having 16 y.o. s manage stores. Hmm wonder
| how that problem happened?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| In a hot labour market you take much worse employees because
| you can't get anybody better at the price you're willing to
| pay.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| whatever1 wrote:
| Then we should also give minors the right to vote, form unions
| etc.
|
| What you propose is exploitation, since you get to decide their
| rights and btw you also decided that their labor is worth less,
| but they have no say in all of these.
| punkra wrote:
| Came here to agree with this, there are laws against the
| federal government setting discriminatory minimums like this.
| In the eyes of just about any federal judge the original
| suggestion would get the entire bill shot down. Also people
| in this thread talking about how they think this is fair
| based on experience or cause "teens are stupid" thats
| entirely misguided of you all to think, there are kids who
| start working in some states LEGALLY at 14.5 years old,
| example: N.C. so when they are 16 or 17 they can legally be
| paid the same 'juvenile' minimum wage? No fast food company
| or grocery store will actively pay them more if they don't
| have to and that means less raises and how would all these
| companies even be monitored and audited for the crossover on
| ones 18th birthday? What about kids who are emancipated for
| their parents/legal guardians? What about kids who drop out
| of school and work? Do they all deserve to make less just
| because of their age? Geez, the actual obliviousness of
| people on this site is astonishing sometimes.
| ramshorns wrote:
| Paying poverty wages is wrong, and child labour is wrong. They
| don't cancel each other out.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Exploitive child labor is wrong. Allowing teens to willingly
| enter an employmemt contract is neither exploitive nor child
| labor.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Allowing teens to willingly enter an employmemt contract
| is neither exploitive nor child labor.
|
| Non-adult teens ("Teen" spans the border) are indeed
| children, and their labor - while in some circumstances,
| quantities, etc. - permitted, is regulated as part of the
| broader regulation of child labor (which is not a total
| ban, even for very young children, and is graduated by
| age.)
|
| Whether it ought to be within the scope of _acceptable_
| child labor or not is a separate discussion, but it is
| child labor.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| People learn skills by performing them. As parents we
| teach children life skills by having them help do the
| chore that daily life requires. When I have yard,
| mechanic, or construction work my children help. They
| have since they were able. I learned those skills by
| doing the same when I was young.
|
| By prohibiting capable teens from work, either by pricing
| them out or law, we are hobbling their ability to learn
| valuable work skills. As a result we end up with adults
| that are lacking simple work skills that would make their
| labor more valuable.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| No, a teenager is not a child.
| humanrebar wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with a teenager mopping some floors. On
| the contrary, I learned a lot from the experience.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| Is a 15-18 year old working fast food child labor?
| ramshorns wrote:
| Not really. I made the comment overly simplistic, probably
| 15 or 16 is a fine age to be allowed to start working.
| willcipriano wrote:
| child
|
| "1. a young person especially between infancy and puberty
|
| 2. a person not yet of the age of majority..."
|
| It depends on the definition of child you are using, I
| always thought the first to be correct.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/child
| Animats wrote:
| The US has that.[1] $4.25/hr for the first 90 days of
| employment for people 20 and under. McDonalds lobbied for it.
| It's not used much.
|
| [1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/32-minimum-
| wage...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Honest question: why do discussions about minimum wage in the
| U.S. never propose having teenagers having a different minimum
| to adults?
|
| Because its effect would be a transfer of jobs from working
| class adults to middle class kids.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I sincerely doubt that.
|
| 1) Kids are unlikely to be as effective. 2) There's not that
| many kids.
|
| It's all just motivated reasoning to argue against a
| significant minimum wage.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 1) Kids are unlikely to be as effective. 2) There's not
| that many kids.
|
| Neither of those even support the argument that a change
| from equal minimum wage would have the effect of moving
| jobs from adults to kids.
|
| The first would be a good argument for a smaller
| displacement effect from allowing teens to work _with equal
| minimum wage to adults_ conpared to not allowing them to
| work at all than would occur at equal effectiveness, the
| second semana yo be a sortear of an argument about the
| magnitude of effect but without a definition of what "that
| many" meand in context is only a sketch.
|
| > It's all just motivated reasoning to argue against a
| significant minimum wage.
|
| it's not an argument against 'a significant minimim wage'
| at all.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Because its effect would be a transfer of jobs from working
| class adults to middle class kids.
|
| Then corps would have to rewrite the application algorithms
| that serially discriminate against 1st time job applicants.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Then corps would have to rewrite the application
| algorithms that serially discriminate against 1st time job
| applicants.
|
| Places that hire people at minimum wage mostly wouldn't
| have that problem for those positions
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I know of no major corporations w/ a web application
| system, that do not discriminate against those w/o a job
| history. Pay does not seem to be a factor in this
| equation.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Why don't we ask the guy in Australia instead of declaring
| the results absque facta.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Do you think so? While companies are incentivized to hire
| kids, the kids don't get any more incentive to do these jobs
| though (wage stays the same), and neither would the supply of
| them grow.
| roenxi wrote:
| There is, hypothetically, a market price for these jobs. It
| is below the minimum wage (otherwise there isn't much point
| in the minimum wage). It is set by the pairwise
| negotiations of companies, customers and employees.
|
| If there is an avenue for the market to reach equilibrium
| (eg, by hiring children cheaply) then the market is going
| to try and take it. It will just create a class of jobs
| that adults can't get employed in because they cost too
| much to hire.
|
| It isn't a question of what the kids would _like_ , it is a
| question of what choices consumers and employers will offer
| them. If wages were set solely by employee's incentives
| then they'd all be paid much more than current market
| wages.
| 8note wrote:
| Do the kids become more incentivized to work if their
| parents income decreases?
|
| I would say yes
| Igelau wrote:
| Result: a class of families consisting of unemployable
| parents supported by the state and their own working
| children :(
| emodendroket wrote:
| I would say maybe it's not a dream society if we're
| creating a class of helots to maximize teenage labor
| force participation.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| "Why make things more complicated? We've always had one minimum
| wage; don't change what ain't broke." Nevermind the numerous
| fallacies, this is a typical thought pattern for Americans.
|
| Another bad habbit Americans have: they look only to their
| authority for answers (whomever that may be. e.g. the
| president, fox news, the church, etc). Go watch some Trump
| rallies to see this in action.
|
| I'm beginning to believe our education system has left us
| lacking even basic critical thinking skills and thus we can not
| have two minimum wages.
|
| Edit typo, and:
|
| Not all Americans are this way, obviously, but enough are and
| they're in the right areas to cause problems. (wrt areas, see:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering )
| bobthechef wrote:
| If you create two wages, then adults might not be able to
| compete for those jobs even though they likely need them more
| than the teenagers do. So unless you introduce quotas (there's
| your slippery slope), I don't see this as a good thing. Even
| with quotas, you run into budget constraints.
|
| There's also the fact that minimum wage cuts jobs. So if the
| budget allows for X hires at teenage wage and Y<X at adult
| wage, then it becomes even more difficult for adults to assume
| those jobs, meaning things like experience will count less in
| justifying the more expensive hire.
|
| Now without the minimum wage, you could at least give the adult
| a job at a lower wage than what you pay teenagers. It sucks,
| but if the choice is between no job and some job that pays
| below a fair wage, it seems the latter is preferable if you
| don't want to starve.
| dv_dt wrote:
| The average age of a fast food worker is 29.5.
|
| https://www.davemanuel.com/2011/04/21/the-average-age-of-a-f...
| tolbish wrote:
| Is that the mean age or the median age? The article doesn't
| really provide a source.
| kixiQu wrote:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/29/fast-food-restaurants-in-
| ame... This 2019 source has it at median.
| [deleted]
| enjoyyourlife wrote:
| That incentivizes companies to hire teenagers instead of adults
| unpolloloco wrote:
| Is that a bad thing (in the long run)? More people with work
| experience = more people who are enjoyable at higher rates
| later on. Maybe a bit of short-term pain, but everyone's
| better off in the long run?
| andromeduck wrote:
| Only if adults can't compete with teenagers.
| Igelau wrote:
| At that level, "cheaper" is the killer feature. There's no
| competing with the cheaper option.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Doubt it. Australia doesn't have a problem. And there are
| a finite number of minors, and they're not allowed to
| work full time any way.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| If you can't do the job you're not worth hiring whatever
| the cost.
| [deleted]
| DavidButter wrote:
| Could that possibly be a bad sounding thing that turns out to
| be a good thing? I am not familiar with Australian labor
| issues.
| hkarthik wrote:
| It also incentivizes teenagers to work instead of hang around
| parking lots being goofballs.
| qchris wrote:
| I _liked_ hanging around parking lots being a goofball. Not
| that it wasn 't a privilege to be in that position and that
| teenagers shouldn't be able to support themselves through
| work if they need or want to, but I'm also glad I didn't
| want or need to trade it in for a few extra dollars.
| asperous wrote:
| My issues with this are it's ageist and unequal, teenagers are
| people too. Many teenagers work harder and are smarter then
| many adults. It glosses over the fact that some teenagers sadly
| have to support children and adult parents as well.
| Symbolically it tells teenagers they aren't worth as much as
| adults. It could reduce age diversity in some jobs which can be
| important.
|
| I never understood the argument that middle class teenagers
| either should be given opportunities, or the opposite that they
| should leave those opportunities to adults. Society shouldn't
| be picking and choosing who gets what opportunities based on
| things as broad as age.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Kids are often not allowed to work full time and ARE required
| to go to school until 18.
|
| You can consider anti-child-labor laws to be ageist, and
| maybe you'll be technically correct but that's irrelevant.
| Age discrimination actually is good in this case. Kids should
| be in school and shouldn't be forced to have to work.
| fukmbas wrote:
| Why do the dumbest ideas come from HN?
| ianai wrote:
| There is a different minimum wage for minors for the first 90
| days in the US:
|
| https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/wages
| nimos wrote:
| I've never liked the idea we should expect businesses to provide
| a living wage.
|
| If we, as a society, think there is some sort of minimum standard
| for living. (We should) Then we, as a society, should pay for it.
|
| Increasing minimum wage seems like a roundabout unfair way of
| doing that via selective inflation. Which as far as I can tell
| would be largely a wealth transfer from the middle class to the
| lower class. Who spends a larger % of income at places people
| make minimum wage?
|
| I think the government should guarantee some minimum wage and top
| people who don't earn that. Obviously a lot of moral hazard
| issues and complications with a system like that but I think it
| is better to have businesses worry about employing people and
| governments worry about welfare.
|
| What seems to always be left out of these "if a business can't
| pay a living wage, should it be a business?" discussions is what
| exactly are people going to do instead?
|
| I'm ok subsidizing people's labour. I'm not ok subsidizing
| people's leisure.
| shkkmo wrote:
| >I think the government should guarantee some minimum wage and
| top people who don't earn that.
|
| That would be horrible. The bottom of wages would drop to zero
| (since offering above zero but below the government guatantee
| would provide no benefit in highering.) This would drag down
| other low wages since the jump from paying zero to paying just
| over minmum would be a huge cost increase for a minor highering
| benefit.
|
| UBI is really the only functional alternative to a minimum
| wage.
| nimos wrote:
| > Obviously a lot of moral hazard issues and complications
|
| Yes it would be difficult to implement. You would encourage
| people to seek higher paying jobs by progressively phasing
| the wage subsidy out. Or just not phase it out at all. No
| real difference between the two depending on income taxes.
|
| On the other side you could also target a certain cyclical
| unemployment rate and have a minimum wage employers must pay
| that fluctuates with that. That way there isn't an incentive
| to have "wink wink nudge nudge" pretend jobs.
|
| My problem with the UBI is I think the amount needed to be
| meaningful (1k+ a month) gives people enough money to check
| out of society and not be a contributing member. Its super
| inexpensive to live with friends somewhere kind of crappy and
| just do basically nothing productive.
| chii wrote:
| > UBI is really the only functional alternative to a minimum
| wage.
|
| i dont think that's true.
|
| re-education and re-training into higher value work is a
| better investment. it's just that education of adults isn't
| funded well by society, and thus the debt load for that re-
| education is too expensive for the benefit.
|
| I would argue that society should have a funding system where
| if you re-trained (may be in some category of work that
| society determins to be useful, like nursing), the cost of
| that education is only going to be placed on you if you
| earned above a threshold wage after graduating from training.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Education and training is solving a different issue, one
| that is orthogonal to the one solved by minimum wage or
| basic income.
|
| I think making public colleges free (similar to germany)
| would be a massive benefit to our economy. But making all
| education free doesn't do anything to help remove the need
| for the minimum wage.
|
| If you have an alternative to the minimum wage that isn't
| UBI, I would love to hear it.
| chii wrote:
| > one that is orthogonal to the one solved by minimum
| wage or basic income.
|
| no it isn't orthogonal - UBI and minimum is based on the
| premise that there exists people who would not be able to
| produce value that is enough to sustain themselves (aka,
| they consume more resources than they produce), and thus
| need the rest of society to pick up that slack
| (otherwise, they'd just die).
|
| I'm saying that people would always be able to sustain
| themselves if they are able to get trained to do
| something useful. As more knowledge is required in the
| modern day, this training becomes more expensive, and so
| society should make this investment, rather than place
| the entire risk onto the individual.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I wonder if this is evidence of friction in the labor market.
| Maybe all this terribleness had built up, but most people won't
| change paths in a big way because it upends their life for a
| while. You're not going to learn job B if you're already in job A
| because, even if job B is better, the first year of B will suck
| more than A while you're a newbie.
|
| But then a pandemic comes along and takes away job A, meaning
| that there's not extra friction to leaving job A. You've already
| left! All these people have gone to job B (or location B, or
| family arrangement B, ...) which was better all along, it's just
| that the change had too much additional overhead in normal times.
|
| Now you have places which depended on that friction wondering
| where everybody went.
| 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.
| parineum wrote:
| >Also, most places serve alcohol and teens can't serve.
|
| Considering how profitable alcohol is, I wonder if that
| regulation isn't a major factor in hiring under 21s.
| ketzo wrote:
| FWIW, many states allow you to serve alcohol once you're
| 18. But the "high schooler" lack is still in play.
| 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.
| humanrebar wrote:
| This. Anyone who says "teenagers shouldn't have jobs"
| comes from a place of privilege.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, someone who says "teenagers don't need jobs in the
| status quo" comes from a place of privilege.
|
| Someone can recognize the status quo and yet believe that
| the needs it creates ought to be changed. There was a
| time younger children needed jobs to. The reason they did
| was largely because the fact that they _could_ be
| employed drove down wages for adult workers. One who said
| children didn't need jobs at that time would be wrong,
| probably from privilege - children in working class
| families needed jobs. But they also shouldn't have had
| them, and them as a class not having them also eliminated
| the need.
|
| With teenagers the situation may not be precisely the
| same, but the divergence between perceiving what _is_
| needed _now_ and what _should be_ is the same.
| humanrebar wrote:
| Well, maybe where we disagree is that I see being
| employed by someone you're not related to as being a
| valuable life experience appropriate for a teenager,
| especially if you have loved ones around to teach you how
| to get, keep, and (if need be) leave a job.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| robocat wrote:
| My friends that worked hard while at school or studying
| have been relatively successful. They just seem to be
| more focused to earn money.
|
| The counter-examples I can think of involved drugs or
| health issues.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| I worked minimum wage jobs when I was 16, there were 14
| year old kids working at the same jobs. It wasn't like
| the kids who didn't work spent their after school time
| focusing on school. From what I recall, they mostly spent
| their time dropping by the fast food place to make fun of
| how stupid we looked in our fast food place uniforms.
| 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.
| AngryData wrote:
| $100 is not too much for internet, I pay a bit more than
| that and it is the only internet available at all outside
| of my cellphones poor 4g coverage.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I pay $100/month for internet, but that's basically the
| top tier offer (and I WFH every day). I could get a plan
| for $40.
|
| If I were low income, I could get a plan for as little as
| $15 to $25/month.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Federal income tax, state income tax and local property and
| sales tax. Social Security and Medicare taxes. I agree 30%
| is too high an estimate for below median incomes, but its
| closer 9-15%, according to this:
| https://thecollegeinvestor.com/34072/effective-tax-rates/
|
| And if you include health insurance--which in other
| countries is provided for and paid for with taxes--then it
| goes up. A lot.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > And if you include health insurance-
|
| OP explicitly broke out health insurance as a separate
| line item.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _$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._
|
| It's either pay that or get DSL in many places in the US.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Okay, half the tax rate and my point still stands. I
| responded to your other points in another comment of mine
| up thread. Feel free to address my rebuttal there.
| 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.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| There are a lot of inherent assumptions in your rebuttal.
|
| >Rent- get a roommate or rent a room instead of a one
| bedroom flat. Rent is reduced from $1400.
|
| While that is an option, it is not reasonable to make that
| assertion for the millions of people struggling without
| adequate housing. How can you tell people, with a straight
| face, that have been sexually assaulted, robbed, or
| battered by previous roommates that they should continue to
| put themselves at risk because they can't afford the market
| rate for a 1br apartment? Many people that are housing
| insecure face discrimination in their searches as well.
| Landlords have countless incentives and ways to refuse
| renting to people who they perceive as poor. Credit checks,
| wage statements, large cash deposits. Then there's
| everything they can learn during a showing. How do they
| dress, are they wearing Wal-Mart clothes or Patagonia? Did
| they bring their same sex partner? Are they BIPOC? Do they
| have a nice car or no car? Is everything they own in their
| car? I think that I've said enough to make this point but I
| can continue if you want.
|
| >Use a prepaid phone plan to reduce from $100.
|
| Phones are still several hundred dollars, and are
| effectively disposable items. In conversations about poor
| people we cannot assume they can afford to put up several
| hundred dollars for a used phone. $100 might be on the high
| end, but I am thinking more about the amortized all-in
| costs of phones. Stuff like cases, chargers, screen
| protectors, that often get sold to people at stores under
| high pressure sales tactics. We also need to consider
| access. If someone just broke their phone and need a new
| one ASAP or they'll lose their job they are at the mercy of
| what's available to them at that moment. They may not be
| able to shop around or know how to do a price comparison
| between providers. They may get coerced into signing
| expensive multi year contracts by dishonest sales reps of
| which the total cost is not apparent for weeks.
|
| >Use a slower speed or share internet to reduce from $100.
|
| That's not always an option. For years, the cheapest non-
| dsl, option available to me was cable internet, for over
| $100/mo without a contact. For people with housing
| insecurity signing multi year contracts is scary because
| they have no reason to believe they will live in the same
| place for that long.
|
| >Motorcycle or cheaper car to reduce from $530.
|
| Motorcycles are not a rational option for virtually
| everyone. They're unsafe, and at greater risk of being
| stolen in the areas poor people are congregated. I'm not
| saying the car payment is $400, but ones either paying more
| upfront for a reliable vehicle or on the back end in
| repairs. If one gets burned enough by scam repair shops and
| used car sales people they'll inevitably look to cars with
| manufacturer warranties. Poor areas have more sketchy
| repair shops and high pressure used car sales lots that
| straddle people with high interest car payments, even if
| they qualify for great rates.
|
| >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.
|
| I think you're making wide assumptions that are not
| reflective of the reality poor people face. It is callous
| to assume that poor people have the same ability and
| education to know how to navigate things like loans, auto
| repair, comparison shopping, house hunting, etc while
| they're possibly homeless and probably working in excess of
| 40 hour weeks barely scraping by. This is my lived
| experience, I've seen too many families that do everything
| right get absolutely crushed into homelessness because the
| company the worked for blew up, they got scammed, or were
| disabled by a workplace accident. These conversations are
| overly reductive when we cannot focus on the specific
| contexts under which people fall out of 'normal' society
| into homelessness or near homelessness. Without this
| context we cannot have reasoned discussions about the
| factors that lead to homelessness and prevent people from
| escaping.
| prepend wrote:
| I think I'm making likely assumptions. Obviously,
| individual experiences will vary, but when trying to
| estimate and model cost of living, assuming that everyone
| was sexually assaulted or traumatized so badly that they
| can never live with another is not useful. It also
| denigrates sexual assault victims by assuming that they
| are alone, without family, friendless, or without a
| spouse. It is possible for one to recover from sexual
| assault and find non-assaulter roommates and this is
| extremely common. Both based on personal experience and
| housing data (extrapolating from percent of population
| sexually assaulted with percent of population living in
| households with greater than two adults).
|
| I'm talking about my lived experience here and find it
| odd how you're finding rare, negative edge cases that
| don't disprove my point.
|
| I'm not saying that every single person can get internet
| for less than $100. I'm saying it's unreasonable to
| assume $100 for budgeting purposes. In the rare situation
| where the only option for internet is $100 and one must
| have internet the systemic solution isn't to pay the
| person an extra $100, the solution is to reduce the cost
| of internet. Rewarding the exploitative company charging
| $100/month only makes things worse within the system.
|
| Similarly with phones. $100/month or $1200/year is a poor
| assumption for someone who needs their salary to go
| towards more important things. In 2019 I bought a new
| iPhone6 from Walmart for $100 with a no contract prepaid
| mobile plan for $20/month. Annualized costs of only $340.
| I cracked and scratched the screen but if I had had to
| replace it I would have spent an additional $100.
|
| For "normal" society and to understand people's
| experiences I think it's valuable to model what is
| typical and then use that as a baseline to plan
| protection for edge cases. In my head I'm thinking "What
| should we plan to fix this?" Planning and modeling with
| assumptions that edge cases are most common means that
| our mean values will be way off and we'll have wasted
| resources.
|
| I've seen too many families that waste $180 on phone
| plans every month because they don't know there's a
| better way, corporations market expensive plans more
| heavily, and conventional wisdom reinforces that this is
| routine and acceptable.
|
| If I'm only netting $2k/month and I'm spending $100/month
| on a phone, that is a problem with me that I can easily
| fix. If society is trying to get me to buy a new phone
| every year and have an expensive plan, that's hard to
| struggle against and overcome. The solution isn't to
| reinforce bad decisions, but to help.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| >...when trying to estimate and model cost of living,
| assuming that everyone was sexually assaulted or
| traumatized so badly that they can never live with
| another is not useful.
|
| I'm not assuming this of people, but that's quite an
| extreme projection you're making... Rather I'm stating
| that telling people to find roommates or rent a room is
| generally bad advice, if they're not first time renters
| then it is reasonable to assume they have valid reasons,
| that should be respected at face value, to not live in
| communal environments. Modeling the cost of living around
| communal living environments is ignoring the reality of
| how people want to live on a fundamental level. What
| people freely choose to do is different than what people
| with only bad options do. Communal environments are
| notorious for the factors I mentioned above, and many
| people refuse to deal with that, at great cost to
| themselves.
|
| >find it odd how you're finding rare, negative edge cases
| that don't disprove my point.
|
| My point is that 37k is insufficient for a single person
| to live independently in many, many, cities. 74k is also
| insufficient to raise a family, hence the growing
| movement of child free people.. Snide paternalistic
| advice like get roommates, get a cheaper
| phone/car/internet/etc is insulting and blaming the poor
| for being being poor. If you'd like to give free
| financial advice, and are qualified too do so, I can get
| you in touch with an organization offering these services
| in your community. If not, your arguments come across as
| made in bad faith. I've given you reasons why these
| common pieces of advice aren't always helpful, in good
| faith.
|
| >I'm not saying that every single person can get internet
| for less than $100. I'm saying it's unreasonable to
| assume $100 for budgeting purposes. In the rare situation
| where the only option for internet is $100 and one must
| have internet the systemic solution isn't to pay the
| person an extra $100, the solution is to reduce the cost
| of internet. Rewarding the exploitative company charging
| $100/month only makes things worse within the system.
|
| Okay, but hypothetical person needs internet today and
| telling them they shouldn't be paid more because the
| government should instead make internet cheaper is,
| absurd. It does nothing to help them and marginalizes
| their problem. If the government can't regulate ISPs like
| utilities what reason do poor people have to expect
| relief in the form of government aid? Just. Pay. People.
| More. 44% of households spend 100 and less per month on
| cable internet[] which in many places is the only option
| outside of dsl.
|
| >Similarly with phones. $100/month or $1200/year is a
| poor assumption for someone who needs their salary to go
| towards more important things. In 2019 I bought a new
| iPhone6 from Walmart for $100 with a no contract prepaid
| mobile plan for $20/month. Annualized costs of only $340.
| I cracked and scratched the screen but if I had had to
| replace it I would have spent an additional $100.
|
| That's great. But we can't assume people made a bad
| choice to lock themselves into an expensive phone
| contract, rather we should give them the benefit of the
| doubt and recognize that most people are not paid enough
| to live a dignified existence. What is someone who lost
| their job to do about their contract? What was affordable
| yesterday may not be tomorrow. This type precarity makes
| people act rashly.[0] I'm really trying to focus on the
| types of situations that poor people find themselves in,
| not the nuances of their budget. $100 less on internet
| and cell isn't world changing.
|
| >For "normal" society and to understand people's
| experiences I think it's valuable to model what is
| typical and then use that as a baseline to plan
| protection for edge cases. In my head I'm thinking "What
| should we plan to fix this?" Planning and modeling with
| assumptions that edge cases are most common means that
| our mean values will be way off and we'll have wasted
| resources.
|
| We are already wasting resources everywhere. We should
| plan to fix expensive housing, healthcare,
| transportation, telecommunications. there's no political
| will from establishment politicians. In the mean time
| let's have some humanity and help people instead of just
| talking about it and sending out the occasional pittance.
|
| [...your other comments about how much people should
| spend on phones here]
|
| *You're way to focused on the phones. The point is
| everyone is an edge case somehow. Planning for averages
| forces more people to run into more edge cases. Say
| hypothetical person is now paying $50 for internet and
| $50 for their cell a month. What say you now?*
|
| [] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1034487/united-
| states-mo...
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5422783/
|
| Tldr:
|
| You're not putting yourself in the shoes, nor the mindset
| of a poor person. Try to do that. When the next meal, or
| bed is uncertain thinking rationally is hard. It's easy
| to point at a hypothetical budget and say you can do
| better. It's another thing to walk in the shoes of
| someone who's not as intelligent, gifted, connected,
| wealthy, or whatever as you.
| wolfhumble wrote:
| A person that buys a 5 year old version of an iPhone, is
| probably either a frugal person and/or a person that does
| not have too much money. To me it seems like a person
| that is used to think about how to stretch her/his wage.
| I find it interesting that you can say to this person:
| "You're not putting yourself in the shoes, nor the
| mindset of a poor person". Have you walked in this HN
| member's shoes in different stages of her/his life?
| prepend wrote:
| > live a dignified existence
|
| I think spending $340/year on a decent phone is pretty
| dignified. I think it's comical to assume that dignity
| requires $1200/year in phone service.
|
| I've lived in poverty, I've worked and fought against
| extreme poverty and I'm not sure your basis of reality.
| Poor people live in group settings. I'm not sure what
| advice you would give to help them as me saying "get a
| roommate" and you saying "$37k is not livable" have very
| different levels of usefulness.
|
| I used a lot of help when poor (and still do now) and the
| most frustrating part was people who expressed their
| sympathy but did nothing to help me. I didn't want
| empathy, I wanted food and safety. Of course I'd rather
| have both empathy and food, but if I have to choose one,
| you know what I and most will choose.
| 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.
| AngryData wrote:
| So when can I get my broken wisdom tooth removed since im
| apparently covered?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _The bottom 99.9% in America enjoy healthcare_
|
| There are millions of people who are eligible for Medicaid
| but can't receive it because their states never expanded
| Medicaid under the ACA, and there are even more people who
| cannot afford health insurance, but aren't eligible for
| Medicaid.
| 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.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| in some ways its worse, the internet has literally made
| everything more competitive
| pydry wrote:
| Sure, I mean, you might be priced out of a home but you
| can play flappy birds.
|
| So that's something.
| reddog wrote:
| You might be interested to know that that phone also
| gives you access to all the worlds knowledge, all music
| and art, all literature and films, you can buy anything
| with it and have it delivered directly to you and you can
| instantly communicate with anyone in the world multiple
| ways at almost no cost. And you can play Flappy Birds.
| 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.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| LOL.
|
| In your rush to defend the actions of asshole bosses, you
| miss an important part: people who are trying to make a
| living with part time jobs are going to get another part
| time job. Not only are those people NOT more flexible than
| full time employees, but half the time they are less
| available than full time workers because they are stuck on
| a treadmill where not being at both jobs equals a loss in
| hours for the next week. There are tons of full time hourly
| employees who will JUMP at overtime.
| 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.
| humanrebar wrote:
| 68k would be a lot if rent was reasonable.
| 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...
| kova12 wrote:
| "which somehow fails to mention that the owner is a Covid hoaxer
| (he believes that doctors have been falsely labeling deaths as
| Covid-related) and has brazenly violated masking rules, and did
| not require employees to wear masks" - I could tell, this author
| strikes right where the problem is: his personal biases.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Coming from southern Europe, I have to say that we have been
| there 20 years ago and it looks ugly.
|
| In Southern Europe, the family (and not the individual) is the
| smallest decision making unit and it is typical to have 3
| generations of people living under the same roof, all of them
| supporting (and applying pressure to) each other in different
| ways.
|
| Parents and grandparents are helping youth financially. Youth in
| Southern Europe is typically highly educated, however, the job
| opportunities for high-skilled labor are quite limited.
|
| Naturally, there are two options for overqualified youth: leave
| the family and get an underpaid job that cannot help them anyway
| to break even, or keep relying exclusively on their family (with
| the attached daily complaining from their end).
|
| Result: Youth unemployment rates > 50%, businessess that cannot
| find cheap labor and close, economy that stays stagnant for
| decades.
| ipnon wrote:
| It would be quite a dilemma to choose between the livelihood of
| my dependent family and the opportunity to make more money
| elsewhere. What have been the solutions to this problem in
| Southern Europe?
| whatever1 wrote:
| There is no solution. Significant percentage of qualified
| youth is migrating to Northern Europe or US where there is
| short supply for high skill labor (doctors, engineers etc),
| the rest are just coasting with their families. Weddings and
| birth-rates are also plummeting, which indicates that youth
| also have low confidence about their future.
|
| The reason that this structure exists is that older
| generations accumulated wealth in an era that economy was
| roaring, and the state was able to provide ample support
| (free higher education, healthcare, high pensions). This
| cannot be sustained with the current stagnant economies.
|
| Only solution that I can think of is to embrace immigration,
| & impose tarrifs to imports from Asia, to restart low cost
| manufacturing & large scale agriculture in the south. This
| will also make available positions for high-skilled labor
| (engineers, mbas etc).
|
| The uglier possibility is that the states collapse due to
| their unsustainable welfare policies, and everyone goes back
| to their fields for digging.
| steve76 wrote:
| How about murders? Look at the murder rate. You just killed more
| people than bin Laden.
|
| You can't stop the murders. But you can land me a dream job? Puh-
| leeze.
| hooande wrote:
| People say "If a business can't afford to pay a living wage, then
| they should close". But won't that hurt consumers and distort the
| market?
|
| Personally, I _like_ having many options for food to eat. If all
| the marginal small businesses had to close because they can 't
| pay someone $15/hr to wipe tables, then we might just be left
| with large chains like Olive Garden or Cheesecake Factory. I
| think people should get paid what they are worth, whatever the
| job. But I also like being able to get food from small
| restaurants from different cultures.
|
| And if all the marginal restaurants close, won't that just give
| more power to the larger corporations? they'll be able to raise
| prices, lower wages, whatever they want because there will be
| less competition.
|
| Obviously, the unemployment increase / stimulus in the US will
| end at some point. And then there will be a lot of people looking
| for jobs at once. People should figure out what they think a fair
| wage is for entry level jobs and take it if it's being offered.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > But I also like being able to get food from small restaurants
| from different cultures.
|
| Right now, that only happens because some people aren't lucky
| enough to be born in the right house. People don't work nights
| and weekends for paltry wages out of their desire to serve
| people food.
|
| So it would hurt consumers. But it would help those who provide
| to the consumers.
|
| Imagine how expensive food would be if the people on this forum
| demanded to be paid "fairly" for weekend and evening work.
| devmunchies wrote:
| > People say "If a business can't afford to pay a living wage,
| then they should close"
|
| I have a cookie company that raised the pay after we opened our
| 2nd location (economies of scale, buying in bulk, etc).
|
| Its in my interest as an employer to raise the pay since it
| typically raises the buy-in from employees. Companies like
| Netflix and Costco pay at the top of the competitive range and
| it allows you to run a tighter ship.
|
| Payroll is a cost, sure, but it's also an investment if you can
| afford it. Raising the minimum wage removes that competitive
| advantage for me.
|
| It takes time to bootstrap a company. It still only pays me
| half an engineering salary after 3 years.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Companies like Netflix and Costco pay at the top of the
| competitive range and it allows you to run a tighter ship._
|
| There's the old exchange:
|
| > _CFO asks CEO: "What happens if we invest in developing our
| people and then they leave us?"_
|
| > _CEO: " What happens if we don't, and they stay?"_
|
| * https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cfo-asks-ceo-what-happens-
| we-...
|
| *
| https://twitter.com/richardbranson/status/449220072176107520
| shannifin wrote:
| >"Collectively, we should be thinking of different funding
| models, different ownership scenarios, and different growth
| imperatives. Failure to do so is simply resigning ourselves to
| another round of this rigged game."
|
| I don't accept the verdict that these economic hardships
| necessarily mean that "capitalism is broken" or "rigged" or that
| we need to rethink "ownership scenarios" (whatever exactly that
| means). The economy is a vastly complicated system of countless
| trades per day, and there are a lot of variables in flux that are
| making things very crappy for a lot of people. But I fear trying
| to make things better by blaming it on capitalism being "broken"
| or a "rigged game" is more likely to make things worse.
| 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.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| This should be comments #s 1 2 and 3. There are 5 billion
| people living in countries with lower standards of living than
| the US. The reason corporations unanimously support immigration
| is precisely because immigrants from poorer countries will work
| for less. This is why immigration from Guatemala is very
| unpopular in Mexico, but no one calls Mexicans racist for
| wanting to protect their hard won wages and standard of living.
| JackFr wrote:
| This is a call for UBI that unnecessarily demonizes low skill
| employers. There is a great human dignity argument for UBI.
| Demonizing employers who won't take a negative return by paying
| employees more than the value they generate isn't a good way to
| get there.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The problem that is never addressed in these "terrible job"
| "terrible wage. wages too low" stories is:
|
| Making dual income households the norm was _the_ mistake that has
| led us to this point. The reason that a fast food job is _so_
| impossible to survive on is that at one point, a single guy
| living in a small apartment and driving a modest car _could_
| afford that because his purchasing power was essentially _DOUBLE_
| what it is now.
|
| That isn't an option anymore. If you want to be single, you need
| to also have a high paying job to do it. The other option is
| poverty, and maybe social services making up some of the costs
| that for many households is being made up by their spouse.
|
| But it actually is a little worse than that, since it's being
| burned at both ends. For instance: I'm married. My wife and I are
| both extremely well paid software developers. This means that we
| have _TWICE_ the power to buy a house, buy a car, pay for
| services like cleaners, buy a couch, buy a TV, etc. So now not
| only is a single person 's wage lower due to a flood of the
| supply side, he's also screwed because the people doubling up on
| their income have pushed the demand side into the stratosphere.
|
| It _sucks_ , and it breaks my heart seeing the world that my
| single friends have to live in. Not only are they basically
| living in poverty, but it makes them unattractive to potential
| partners who they need to get OUT of that poverty.
|
| I honestly can't really even imagine what the solution is. We
| certainly aren't going to put the dual income toothpaste back in
| the tube. Central economic authority forcing businesses to just
| increase their wages also doesn't seem to be a solution either,
| since it obviously doesn't even try to address the underlying
| problem (labor economics, mostly).
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Being single more workable (it's easy to control spending) than
| having dependents (kids). Once you have a kid or two, your
| expenses become less predictable and things begin to pile up
| (literally, a larger house becomes a necessity rather than just
| a luxury).
|
| I see many people putting off kids or just opting out
| completely because COL increases have just made them too risky.
| [deleted]
| almost_usual wrote:
| The Fed flipped the trickle down economy to a trickle up economy
| to keep society going. The poor get poorer and the rich get
| richer as long as it continues, all of this liquidity ends up
| somewhere..
| aazaa wrote:
| > "We have four positions open," Christy Welch, the co-owner of
| Black Cat Bake Shop, told the Missoulian. "One is for a barista.
| We've gotten maybe three to four applications for that job, when
| we would usually get 20-25. We have three back-of-house positions
| and we've gotten no applications."
|
| > Current pay for most of those positions: $10.50 an hour.
| Overnight shifts get $11.50. Tips are shared. (Current average
| rental cost for a one-bedroom in Missoula: $1010 a month, up 27%
| from last year
|
| In other words, average rent is 63% of gross income. Completely
| unreasonable.
|
| It's hard to sympathize with the business owners here. If they
| want to fill positions, the answer is simple: pay more. And more.
| And more. Until you hit the price that will attract applicants.
| If you can't find applicants at any price that keeps you in
| business, time to fold.
|
| It's baffling how these stories that the article cites so often
| feature incredulous business owners shocked to discover they
| can't fill economically unviable positions. It's almost as if
| they think they're _entitled_ to sub-subsistence labor.
| _dps wrote:
| I'm with you re: "pay more if you want more applicants" but
| this does not sound like a situation where the jobs are
| economically unviable.
|
| When I was a student in LA in the mid-2000s I lived on
| basically this amount of money, inflation adjusted. I couldn't
| afford a one-bedroom, so I split the cost of a three-bedroom
| with two friends. This was a very common arrangement for people
| well into their late 20s, especially people in creative
| professions like writing.
| 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.
| anemoiac wrote:
| Maybe we should think about building a society that's less
| financially cutthroat. I'm not in the financial position of the
| potential restaurant workers discussed in the article, but I
| can't imagine wanting to work in a typical chain restaurant if I
| was. Not because of the work itself, and I'm not trying to
| downplay the value provided by restaurant workers either, but
| because I would feel that it was limiting my potential future
| earnings. Most chain restaurant jobs just don't seem to offer
| real opportunities for upward mobility and their unpredictable
| shift scheduling can make it difficult to work or study outside
| of them.
|
| Obviously, I'm coming from a position of privilege here, but
| putting myself in the shoes of a potential restaurant worker,
| assuming I wanted to put myself in a better long-term financial
| position, I would simply choose to _not_ be a restaurant worker
| and study /apprentice for something else instead. I'd imagine
| that actually working in a restaurant teaches plenty of useful
| life skills, but unfortunately I'm not sure that experience
| really translates into a marketable resume. Unfortunately, in a
| competitive job market, there's an opportunity cost associated
| with time spent in jobs that don't enhance one's desirability to
| potential employers.
|
| Now obviously not everyone has the option to simply forego low-
| paying work and become a student/apprentice, and I'm sure some
| people really like working in restaurants (even fast-food
| chains), so I'm not arguing that restaurants should simply
| disappear. Instead, I think we should work to reduce the
| competitive nature of our economy so that cheap, convenient food
| (or similar services) isn't effectively being subsidized by the
| existence of a permanent economic underclass with no career
| options beyond low-paying, so-called "low-skill" work. Fast-food
| workers should be there because they want to be there, not
| because it's their only option.
|
| American society is built around work and constant competition
| for better-paying work - that's certainly not unique to the US,
| but the high-levels of income inequality and winner-take-all job
| market dynamics sort of are (at least among countries with
| similar social + economic profiles). We should try to create a
| job market where people can choose full-time jobs they enjoy and
| excel at without worrying about whether they can afford to have
| children, maintain stable housing, or be able to retire some day.
| To do that, I'd expect that we need to reduce the power
| differential between the restaurant/business owners complaining
| about a lack of people willing to help them make money for low
| wages and the potential employees they're complaining about.
| 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?
| the_only_law wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Tomorrow? Definitely not going for anything's. In 60 years?
| I can't tell. It would all depend on if the risks work out
| or not.
| 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.
| the_only_law wrote:
| The issue is I'm not sure if it's something I can just dip
| my toe in to try. The more research I do that more apparent
| that the things I want to do will require an all or nothing
| investment.
| 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.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| switch007 wrote:
| And I think this will get worse now thanks to the pandemic
| and price increases.
| 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.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| From 2008 to 2014 everyone was talking about structural
| stagnation and then there wouldn't be enough jobs and chronic
| unemployment for a generation. Meanwhile economist like Paul
| Krugman and Stiglitz were saying additional government stimulus
| after the financial crisis would've solved the problem.
| 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.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Slightly Higher Prices
|
| I think it's more than slightly higher. Cherries and
| peaches are both stone fruit. They're grown in similar
| regions, and the trees are so closely related you see
| hybrids commonly marketed. Cherries are regularly 2x-3x
| the price by weight because the smaller fruit means
| they're more labor intensive. Raspberries are also
| noticeably more expensive than strawberries, and I assume
| it's because they're harder to pick.
|
| These are labor-intensive produce, so labor drives the
| price. Staples like wheat aren't, so an extra $5 per hour
| for someone driving a tractor really would be "slightly
| higher prices."
| 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.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Chipotle is big; they can do this. Most of their costs
| are also in store labor and rent, not food. If you're a
| small farmer, the distributor will pay you $x regardless
| of how you produce it. There's no market for strawberries
| picked by well-paid workers, so they don't care.
|
| What you're saying only works if you're Driscoll's and
| tell farmers to pay workers more or enough consumers
| demand it, but I just don't see much demand for this. The
| most we've seen is Fairtrade chocolate, coffee, etc., but
| there's only limited demand for it.
| 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.
| bogwog wrote:
| > automation is expensive.
|
| Especially without right to repair!
| 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.
| giantg2 wrote:
| 100% terrible jobs.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| God damn right. God bless Anne peterson for writing this, I could
| not have said it better. For once I have nothing to add. This
| world could be so much more than it is.
| 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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