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Restaurant workers quit at record rate

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Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#601

Post by jackson1442 »

josephcsible wrote: post #581
browningstreet wrote: post #498

I 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 that businesses stubbornly refuse to raise wages - it's that they can't afford to. A lot of local small businesses were barely staying afloat even before March 2020.

If a business can’t afford to pay its employees enough make rent and buy groceries, perhaps it shouldn’t be a business?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#602

Post by dundarious »

WalterBright wrote: post #590
dundarious wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't apply for film school, but there are plenty of scam law schools that sell students on the prospect of massive future earnings my juking the stats. For example, it's common to say that some high percentage of past students are employed after graduation, but it's often an outright lie or the numbers are padded by the university giving low-wage sham jobs to most graduates. Of course, you _can_ find informatio…

If you can show me that simple google searches won't show reasonably correct information, that would be a good point. Besides, it seems weird that the senior class would never notice that the class that graduated just ahead of them is working at the car wash?

A bit late to find out in year n-1 of an n year program.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#603

Post by foobarian »

mirkules wrote: post #596
robotresearcher wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive question: why not raise prices?

Because if everyone raises their prices, the wage increase then effectively makes no difference. If everyone raises wages, they have to raise prices. For the restaurant, this means they have to charge more for the same service, and they have to pay more for their supply chain (because they also increased their prices). For the worker, that means they will pay more for things and services they need/want, because every…

All wages increasing is better than only the elite wages increasing and leaving service workers in the dust. They are the ones paying for the lunch.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#604

Post by lotsofpulp »

brandmeyer wrote: post #593
chrisseaton wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only person who thinks restaurant prices are pretty low? I'm sure they could go up quite a bit. Lunch out costs me maybe £15. Surely that could be £20 or so?

20 GBP for lunch? Even at 10 USD I'll buy lunch only once in two weeks. A 20 USD lunch is a rare treat for special occasions only.

The probability of the food from a restaurant being sufficiently tasty/nutritious is way too low compared to the effort required to make it at home for it to be worth spending 20GBP eating out all the time.

I also simply choose to eat out a maximum of 1 or 2 times a month. I can afford 20GBP, I just have better options.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#605

Post by sprafa »

a123b456c wrote: post #438
sprafa wrote: post #418

Let us keep remembering that there is no evidence that raising minimum wages increases unemployment (The Big Lie the economists use to defend their hypothetical model of how this works).

Here is some evidence. https://www.nber.org/papers/w23532

Gosh. Thanks this actually forced me to review the literature and actually yes you’re right and I was wrong. Turns out some pop econ articles I read recently where deceitful. The thing I did read about and seemed to hold up was rent control and construction - the effect there was small or minimal.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#606

Post by patrickthebold »

mirkules wrote: post #596
robotresearcher wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive question: why not raise prices?

Because if everyone raises their prices, the wage increase then effectively makes no difference. If everyone raises wages, they have to raise prices. For the restaurant, this means they have to charge more for the same service, and they have to pay more for their supply chain (because they also increased their prices). For the worker, that means they will pay more for things and services they need/want, because every…

Inflation is a factor, but it's not perfectly fixed to wage increases. E.g. if min wage goes up 30% we're not going to see 30% inflation rates.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#607

Post by LadyCailin »

mirkules wrote: post #596
robotresearcher wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive question: why not raise prices?

Because if everyone raises their prices, the wage increase then effectively makes no difference. If everyone raises wages, they have to raise prices. For the restaurant, this means they have to charge more for the same service, and they have to pay more for their supply chain (because they also increased their prices). For the worker, that means they will pay more for things and services they need/want, because every…

Citation needed. I can find plenty of studies that show it doesn’t. [0] Raising wages at the bottom doesn’t increase prices across the board, and so this benefits folks at the lower end more than it hurts.

[0]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41445397

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#608

Post by seriousquestion »

browningstreet wrote: post #498

I 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…

Given that we are outside observers, is it possible that they know something we don't? What might be some charitable explanations for why they don't raise prices?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#609

Post by brandmeyer »

awillen wrote: post #540
browningstreet wrote: post #498

I 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…

I think that for a lot of businesses, it's a question of what will happen when extended unemployment ends in September. If employees are going to flood the market and you can keep paying the wages you were paying pre-pandemic, then it makes sense to hold out, since if you raise wages now, you can't really reduce them later. You lose out on sales now because you're short staffed, but you keep your costs low in perpetu…

This argument works only if the labor and jobs don't have fungible alternatives. But while in-store retail and dine-in restaurants have been suffering, online-order retail and food delivery have been taking off. Plenty of workers are turning to the gig economy. At least there the apps aren't constantly degrading you, even if they are depreciating your car.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#610

Post by rdtwo »

trophycase wrote: post #573
browningstreet wrote: post #498

I 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…

Same thing is happening with entire buildings in my city. They'd rather evict their entire set of renters than lower the rent.

That’s a financing thing plus if you have an old building it’s probably better to evict everyone so you can build a new one
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