Perhaps consider paying people more.
Some of the businesses interview in this article claim they start their employees at $20/he but that's not enough to pay rent and too much to qualify for government assistance.
Tahoe's hiring crisis is unraveling small businesses during its busiest season
61–70 of 170 posts
Re: Tahoe's hiring crisis is unraveling small businesses during its busiest season
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
> people can get a sham job to get cheap housing? Yes. And then be charged with fraud.
I meant sham job in the sense of "legit job offer you don't plan to keep for a while just to qualify", not "false documents for non-existent job".
> sham job in the sense of "legit job offer you don't plan to keep for a while just to qualify"
Fair enough. I don’t know the text of the law.
Also, the entire county has a population just over 20,000; the city of Jackson, less than half that. This would cause problems for the employer who let it happen as well as the new resident.
Re: Tahoe's hiring crisis is unraveling small businesses during its busiest season
#63Honestly, I think this is good for Tahoe in the long run. The NIMBYs who constantly block development are getting a taste of their own medicine. When they’re finally fed up with the low staff and poor service they’ll see the need for affordable housing.
Yeah this comes up a lot in /r/LeopardsAteMyFace on reddit. Example thread (about this happening in the Hamptons):
https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/o9mbz8/t...
Re: Tahoe's hiring crisis is unraveling small businesses during its busiest season
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) The extended UI has indeed ended in a lot of places, it’s not solved the problem. 2) If you need to hold hunger and homelessness over people’s heads in order to make them work, maybe your system is morally bankrupt?
>>>If you need to hold hunger and homelessness over people’s heads in order to make them work, maybe your system is morally bankrupt? You mean the human condition? Life has always been this way and since we're not a post-scarcity society yet I don't see how any workable system would not be morally bankrupt by this standard.
> we're not a post-scarcity society yet
How can we be sure that we aren't? Or rather, how will we ever be able to tell whether we are living in a post-scarcity society, when artificial scarcity is imposed by those with political power?
We don't have true scarcity in housing. What we have is artificial constraints on building being imposed by the state.
We also don't have scarcity in basic foodstuffs. There's plenty of food. What we have is a system of distribution that requires that people exchange money for food, and the only source of money that most people have is to exchange it for their labor. We could instead just give people enough money to pay for basic food, energy and housing.
There is scarcity in other things, and there will always be scarcity in some things, even in "post-scarcity" societies. Capitalist market economies are usually very efficient at allocating such resources, and people would still have the incentive to work so they can get the extra things that they want to have for themselves or their families. Capitalism can co-exist with a post-scarcity society.
A workable but less "morally bankrupt" system would lower the cost of housing by using government policy to increase supply, and would give people enough cash to pay for basic food, energy and housing through a universal basic income.
Re: Tahoe's hiring crisis is unraveling small businesses during its busiest season
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> NIMBY/zoning laws prevent affordable housing from being developed Jackson Hole reserves some housing for those who work full time for an employer in Teton County [1]. This strikes me as a reasonable balance between wanting to control housing stock and maintaining access to cheap labour. [1] https://www.tetoncountywy.gov/720/Workforce-Homes
I sold my soul to the company store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip There was good reason to do away with such concepts.
> the company store
Night and day. Company doesn’t own the home. Company doesn’t own the stores you shop at.
Re: Tahoe's hiring crisis is unraveling small businesses during its busiest season
#66It's not going to change until the UI benefits and eviction moratoriums end. What person is going to go and work all day for less money?? Seriously, if you don't work right now you are getting UI, Food Stamps, and you don't have to pay rent. It literally doesn't not make economic sense to work right now for many people.
1) The extended UI has indeed ended in a lot of places, it’s not solved the problem. 2) If you need to hold hunger and homelessness over people’s heads in order to make them work, maybe your system is morally bankrupt?
2) Maybe we should think of citizens as dependents, and increase America’s gdp to offset the costs associated with that. An American poor first politic. To be moral, of course.
Re: Tahoe's hiring crisis is unraveling small businesses during its busiest season
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sold my soul to the company store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip There was good reason to do away with such concepts.
> the company store Night and day. Company doesn’t own the home. Company doesn’t own the stores you shop at.
Not entirely different. Any non-dollar payment takes they employee's purchasing power out of the free market. Tying one's housing options to one's employment opens the door to similar abuses as company stores. Does a fired employee loose thier housing?
Re: Tahoe's hiring crisis is unraveling small businesses during its busiest season
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the company store Night and day. Company doesn’t own the home. Company doesn’t own the stores you shop at.
Not entirely different. Any non-dollar payment takes they employee's purchasing power out of the free market. Tying one's housing options to one's employment opens the door to similar abuses as company stores. Does a fired employee loose thier housing?
> Any non-dollar payment takes they employee's purchasing power out of the free market
Where is the non-dollar payment?
The law says landlords must rent certain units to people who work locally. The company is never involved except in verifying employment. If the employee wants, they can commute through the pass to Victor, Idaho and earn exactly what they were earning before.
Re: Tahoe's hiring crisis is unraveling small businesses during its busiest season
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I meant sham job in the sense of "legit job offer you don't plan to keep for a while just to qualify", not "false documents for non-existent job".
> sham job in the sense of "legit job offer you don't plan to keep for a while just to qualify" Fair enough. I don’t know the text of the law. Also, the entire county has a population just over 20,000; the city of Jackson, less than half that. This would cause problems for the employer who let it happen as well as the new resident.
It "causes problems" when you "let" an employee quit a job too soon?
Edit: I know HN hates tedious back-and-forths, so let me just jump to the substantive point: any time you have a situation where you have special carve-outs for an essential good, you're not really solving the problem, you're just encouraging people to game it. See the past thread about enrolling in college part time to get health insurance.
Re: Tahoe's hiring crisis is unraveling small businesses during its busiest season
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took a weekend trip to Ocean Shores Washington last weekend, and…the restaurants were all packed and wanting of long waits due to lack of servers and cooks. Resorts towns have been hit really hard, but this might also have to do with them laying off all of their staff at the start of the pandemic. Did they just expect these people to wait around?
No? They expected to have a chance at surviving as a business. And many didn't.
Surely yes, they had to make a really hard decision, though I don’t think this consequence was foreseen even if it wouldn’t have changed the decision much.