671–680 of 961 posts
I'm amazed with the amount of ignorance in this thread from people who've never run a restaurant yet alone run a business for that matter.
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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…
That’s only if everyone makes about the same, which is less and less true due to rising wealth inequality. As it stands now, there are people making $200k/year and people making $30k/year, raising prepared food prices isn’t going to chip off everyone’s income the same way.
A rise in interest rates would have much more effect on upper income buying power than a $5 increase in the cost of lunch.
It's interesting that when labor costs shoot up (and let's be honest, that's what this is, you can get people to take those jobs if you pay enough) it's a 'shortage,' but we don't really call skyrocketing medical costs a 'medicine shortage' or skyrocketing rents and home prices a 'housing shortage.'
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Why do you say that? Genuinely curious...not trying to troll.
Restaurants operate with notoriously small margins, it is probably hard to raise wages and keep prices down enough to be competitive.
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 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 da…
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Of course you have lower rates of people collecting unemployment when you end unemployment extensions. You can lower it to 0% by killing the program altogether. You'd be better looking at rates of employment.
Unemployment rates refer to the share of workers who are out of work, not the share who are receiving benefits - i.e. it’s the rate at which people are unemployed, not the rate at which they are “on unemployment”
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In high school, I worked at a fast food joint to make a little extra money. There were no expectations to pay rent or other essentials. But you'll say that it's not kids working these jobs, so we need to provide a livable wage. What about getting these people skills for better jobs? I'd rather attack that problem than make Wendy's sandwich maker a viable career.
>I'd rather attack that problem than make Wendy's sandwich maker a viable career. Why shouldn't Sandwich Maker be a viable career? They definitely contribute more to society than HR professionals or agile coaches.
If I fundamentally disagree with fast food as objects of consumption than I might think every job in this field should not be viable. There are costs to society (“externalities”) that places like Wendy’s are not held responsible for (obesity epidemic).
All said, Sandwich Maker is a viable career, to me, if its in a boutique/gourmet shop where the food is prepared from scratch and with precision care. The prices will be higher, extra skill is involved, and then the Maker can command a higher wage.
The meme of whether or not fast food is a viable/respectful career is just a manifestation of more fundamental problems with growth optimized capitalism.
There is only one thing to do in this situation! We have enough people available. So raise wages until the labor shortage is resolved. Pretty simple, let's go, Team USA. Hello? Team?? Oh, I'm sure we're all onboard with the plan and in this together.
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…
Well, all businesses run operations dif and have dif margins, so let's not forget that. I run a recruiting company. From our data a few things have popped up. First, people want higher wages in the lower wage industries. They are asking for $15-20 per hour. Second, lot of these people don't want to go back to the same labor jobs they had - they want to do something different. the problem with this is that they want t…
Your comment is informative, but, come on. This "fiasco" is supply in demand in action. When it (occasionally) favours the workers, it doesn't deserve to be described so negatively.
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I'm not sure a waiter at a good steakhouse is making a good living. It's been a while since I worked food service, so I might be making some poor assumptions, but: 1. Most waiters don't get health benefits 2. Most waiters don't get retirement plans 3. Most waiters are at the whim of the restaurant managers 4. There's only so many tables you can turn in a shift, and tips average under 20%. 5. Most waiters don't get an…
Even with your understated numbers, with everything being as worse as possible, you ended up with a pretty decent wage for 5 evenings of work. In reality, half of the US population lives in a state with a regular minimum wage for waiters (California, New York, Washington, and a bunch of other states), and the other half averages $5/hr which is $7800/yr if you work 30 hours a week. Also there's cash tips that aren't r…