Earlier quoted context omitted.
If raising the prices drives away customers, you have now lost a notable value if you try to sell. Brand perception is (almost) everything. Unless you offer something truly unique or exceptional, you're replaceable in just about every market. There was a local beer taproom/bottle shop that I frequented a lot for years. Even as craft beer became more prominent and there were more local options, I liked it enough to ke…
Is this inflation creeping up in all the expected places? The value of goods is the same but the value of the USD is lower and thus we must increase costs. I don’t see it impacting brand perception if all prices go up.
Restaurant workers quit at record rate
491–500 of 961 posts
Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate
#492The title cites a record rate, but I can’t find where they say what the previous record rate was. It makes sense for a time like now to be when a record number of people are changing jobs. Is this a massive increase though, or a slight one?
Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like an oversimplification to me. If the owners could simply raise prices by 20% and suffer no economic consequences, I have little doubt they would. Thus, I can only surmise that it is not as simple as that.
Then maybe restaurants aren't a viable business? I know it sounds crazy because we've had them for so long, but maybe it's not sustainable to have so many of them? In any case, this seems like a great area to let the market figure it out. If restaurants go out of business the owners and employees will find something else to do.
I do think that if it's persistently difficult to find workers for non-distortionary reasons, prices will likely increase gradually with whatever attendant effects there are from that.
Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a false dichotomy, because those people can go and do something else. Even if we make an assumption that it IS a zero sum game (and that there are no other jobs), then we're into a wildly different conversation around how we deal with allocating finite resources in a culture that supports property rights, and no one is going to solve that in a hacker news comment chain.
> That's a false dichotomy, because those people can go and do something else. That is not automatically guaranteed. Part of the problem with the Western economies is that the mills/mines/etc. used to employ a LOT of people. A good example is the Natrona Heights steel plant. It used to employ something like 10,000 people at its height. After automation, it will now employ a couple hundred. Where do 9,500 people switc…
This is why we need to get past the idea that everyone needs to work to earn a living. Why does anyone need to earn the right to live? Our society has enough empty homes to house the homeless, and throws away enough food to feed the hungry. Why are people still homeless and hungry then?
Take your example of the steel plant. Presumably when the 9500 people were laid off, productivity remained the same (or increased) and costs went down. Where did the extra profit go? Was it dispersed among the remaining 500 workers? Was it used to help the displaced workers who devoted years building the steel mill and keeping it running? The very people who designed, forged, and brought on-line the machines which replaced them? No, the upside went to the owners, because they have a slip of paper that says they own the mill.
Our problem is not that we're automating away jobs, it's that the displaced workers don't get to share in the benefits of that automation. Eliminating a job is seen as a disaster, rather than a victory. We should want to eliminate terrible jobs, not keep them around just so someone can stay busy. And I guarantee you, people who don't have to work will find something to do. There's always work to be done, just not all of it is profitable (e.g. raising children, taking care of the elderly, volunteering, open source coding, etc.)
Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure things are more complicated than you describe, but it seems like they fear increasing prices will lead to closing, and to avoid this they're... just going to close?
There is a certain amount of investment needed to keep going. If you are going to close the restaurant next year you can keep the current tables, otherwise replace them before they get too worn out. Or maybe it is the fry machine at the end of life, replace it for $50,000. If the restaurant continues for a few more years it is worth it, to fix/replace things, but if the restaurant is doomed it is better to cut your l…
I realize this was in hypothetical terms, but do fry machines really cost $50k!?
Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a survival stipend competes successfully against a low-paying, high-stress, and absolutely miserable job conditions then the problem isn't the stipend, is it?
>conditions then the problem isn't the stipend, is it? It's laughable to make that comparison when the "survival stipend" is money for doing nothing. I'm not sure how any private enterprise can compete with that.
> I'm not sure how any private enterprise can compete with that.
By paying more, of course.
Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
That may be the case for some....but that is not the case for all. For one ancedote, my father in-law runs a restaurant with my aunt in-law (his sister). They are the only workers, and split the profits evenly. They are in the midwest (low taxes), and own the restaurant's property/building. They were able to completely shut down during COVID and restart back up, and have survived several economic downturns. They are…
I'm sure things are more complicated than you describe, but it seems like they fear increasing prices will lead to closing, and to avoid this they're... just going to close?
If your expected return on investment is negative, isn't the rational decision to not invest in the first place?
Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate
#498I think some businesses are going out of businesses because they stubbornly refuse to raise their wages.
In the vacation community where I live, there are two grocery/delis about a mile apart from each other. One is at a marina, the other is at a beach. They have almost the same business offering. Traditionally, both are fully mobbed during the sunny seasons.
Two weeks ago, I visited the one I usually go to -- at the marina. They had a sign at the front door, "Due to the labor shortage..." and they weren't operating their deli counter. No sandwiches. When I sent inside, it was empty. No customers. The one employee at the register was on their phone. Nothing going on. A couple of people pulled up in their cars, read the sign, pulled out and left immediately.
Drove up the road a mile to the other one. No sign -- it was busy like it usually was. Full house, busy counters and registers.
My son asked me why the other place wouldn't just raise their wages.. I couldn't answer, but I guessed it was more on a matter of principle than calculated reality. There's no way they were surviving or thriving. I joked that maybe the owner was an old cahoot who remembered when a soda was $0.05 and there was no way they were going to raise their hourly wages to $15 or more.
Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
Issue is that the only reason this slave wage class exists in food services is because of a coordinated lobbying campaign to influence politicians to keep it like that. Most people in this thread would be pretty upset if all tech companies got together tomorrow and decided to artificially cap salaries and bought politicians to enforce it.
>Most people in this thread would be pretty upset if all tech companies got together tomorrow and decided to artificially cap salaries and bought politicians to enforce it. Are you claiming that wages in the restaurant industry are kept artificially low because of companies artificially capping salaries, and that politicians are enforcing it? If so, is there a source for this? AFAIK the pay is bad purely because of m…
I don't think it's as common any more, but for many years a lot of states had "tip credit" laws (which were strongly supported/lobbied for by the restaurant industry) that allowed companies to pay tipped employees less than minimum wage with the assumption that they made up the difference in tips.
Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate
#500I think some businesses are going out of businesses because they stubbornly refuse to raise their wages. In the vacation community where I live, there are two grocery/delis about a mile apart from each other. One is at a marina, the other is at a beach. They have almost the same business offering. Traditionally, both are fully mobbed during the sunny seasons. Two weeks ago, I visited the one I usually go to -- at the…
It's not just wages - like alot of what we can do is making shitty jobs less miserable, ensuring everyone gets some amount of vacation and sick time, insuring everyone has cheap or free healthcare access, ensuring everyone has relatively fixed schedule - eliminate punitive workplace policies, on stuff like attendance and other shit that makes being there miserable. Like, you can do a hell of alot to reduce peoples day to day misery.
There used to be some sort of a tradeoff, there used to be a ton of jobs that didnt pay well, but they were not miserable places to work at, that was kinda the tradeoff, you know - you like, didnt get a ton of money, but the workplace wasnt awful. Those jobs still exist but they're rarer.