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Restaurant workers quit at record rate

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Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#931

Post by ajsnigrutin »

AKSucks wrote: post #853
akiselev wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's depressed it's because business owners who hire undocumented immigrants (often knowingly, even assisting with GC/visa fraud to pass I9 verification) are never, ever fined or punished. Enforcement is a farce.

Enforcement isn't a farce, its just focused on workers because employers are powerful and workers aren't. The reason republicans are so hardline on immigration is because "illegal" workers are really easy to coerce and exploit. They don't call the health department when you make them shit in a hole in the field. They don't call OSHA when you deny them access to water out in the field. They don't call the attorney gen…

> Enforcement isn't a farce, its just focused on workers because employers are powerful and workers aren't.

I don't think many companies are powerful against ICE, especially small restaurants... there are probably political reasons why they choose to target employees and not employers.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#932

Post by jatone »

andrewlgood wrote: post #880
toxik wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Medicare fraud really a meaningful amount compared to how much it pays out? Europeans have had the same issue for decades, you can’t give things away without some grifting. But that’s part of the cost. Usually not a very large one either.

Just a quick looks suggests it is a big issue. Hard to get firm estimates (presumably because we only know about the people who get caught) but one estimate has it at 7% of total expenditures of $700 billion which puts it at around $49 billion / year. https://safeatlast.co/blog/medicare-fraud-statistics/

which is less than the fraud in private insurance industry, which is 10%.

https://www.propublica.org/article/we-asked-prosecutors-if-h...

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#933

Post by pcmoney »

amyjess wrote: post #732
pcmoney wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the owner who has operated a cut throat, extremely demanding, razor thin margin for years folds because they don’t understand basic labor supply and demand? Keep in mind this person has mostly likely done in depth analysis on how to make their most popular item at the same quality but for 2% less of some expensive ingredient. I know one phenomenal restaurant owner who spent an entire year to get the cost of their…

If you can't stay open while paying people a living wage, you deserve to go out of business. I would rather have nothing but chain restaurants owned by megacorps than have people working for less than a living wage.

What do you think will happen when the chains beat out the smaller restaurants due to economies of scale?

They will raise prices because there are no competitors and lower wages because there are no alternatives. They will collude. They will extract the maximum economic value out of every community that they are in. Enjoy your nothing

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#934

Post by chaostheory »

the_gipsy wrote: post #835
chaostheory wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that costs money. Are we as customers willing to pay for it? While a lot of us on HN can afford the price increases, not everyone else can. I have a feeling that wage increases will come, but there will be less employees and the remaining better paid employees will be augmented with technology in order to serve more customers ie more automation

A business is not a business if it’s only profitable on exploitation.

A business is a business if it has customers. It only stops being a business if it loses those customers or it's no longer profitable. Whole Foods was one of the 1st grocery retailers to treat their workers better, yet at the same time many people nicknamed the store as "Whole Paycheck". What customers are willing to pay for or more importantly what they are able to pay for is also an important part of the conversation.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#935

Post by seattle_spring »

lumost wrote: post #890
seattle_spring wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they could go to a reasonably priced college for $40k or less and get just as good of a job. $120k is a jokingly high amount of tuition.

Reasonable priced such as an in-state university? https://www.umass.edu/financialaid/undergraduate/undergradua... In-state: 30,656 * 4 = 122k Out Of State: 51,181 * 4 = 205k

You picked a total outlier, a very prestigious public school in one of the most expensive states. University of Utah, for example, is a relatively good school and costs about $8k / year for in state tuition.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#936

Post by Sophistifunk »

ookdatnog wrote: post #849
Sophistifunk wrote: post #592

In two years we're going to see a lot fewer eat-in restaurants, a lot more kitchen-only joints, and those kids who used to be wait staff will be on the dole, or marching in the streets. Much like movie theatres, cheap quality dining is going away.

I don't see why you compare to movie theaters. The decline in movie theaters was, afaict, driven by a drop in demand, which in turn was driven by affordable home theater setups, increased availability of movies to watch at home, ... In contrast, your argument for why eat-in restaurants are about to disappear in large numbers is entirely based on a decrease in supply of cheap labor. You don't argue at all for why ther…

No, my prediction has nothing to do with a false labour shortage, and everything in common with movie theatres. They were precarious businesses, and there's been a huge shock to both industries from which I don't think most of the individual businesses will recover.

Theatres might have made it, if hollywood wasn't also at an all-time low in customer esteem and (IMO) quality of output.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#937

Post by Sophistifunk »

snovv_crash wrote: post #873
Sophistifunk wrote: post #592

In two years we're going to see a lot fewer eat-in restaurants, a lot more kitchen-only joints, and those kids who used to be wait staff will be on the dole, or marching in the streets. Much like movie theatres, cheap quality dining is going away.

Go to a country with high cost of labour (eg. Switzerland) and you'll see that restaurants work just fine. However, they are a lot more efficient and hire less staff. Waiters carry their own card machines, menus are ready for customers as they walk in, service times are a little bit slower.

I live in one of those high wage (for waiters) countries, tho less bork-bork more crikey, and restaurants are closing left and right, and those still going strong are getting more and more of their revenue from uber-eats & co. More owners are going to realise they can save a fortune on staff and rent if they switch to a kitchen-and-front-desk only business.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#938

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

ryathal wrote: post #891
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but where do most people actually work?

Still small businesses.

JP Morgan Chase don't agree with you in 2014:

"48 percent of all US employees work for small businesses, down from 52 percent in the early 2000s."

https://www.jpmorganchase.com/institute/research/small-busin...

The NYSSCPA didn't agree with you in 2017 either:

"Since 2014, the latest year for which there is census data, this is no longer the case. At this point, 39.2 percent were employed at either a large or very large company, while 26.5 percent worked at mid-sized companies and 34.3 percent worked at small companies."

https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-trusted-profes...

Atkinson & Lind ("Big is Beautiful") didn't agree with you in 2019 either, specifically taking on what they call the "myth of small business as the engine of job creation"

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/small-business-job-creati...

The Small Business Administration didn't agree with you in 2020:

"According to small business statistics from SBA, small businesses make 99.9% of US businesses and employ 47.1% of US employees."

https://smallbiztrends.com/small-business-statistics

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#939

Post by dundarious »

WalterBright wrote: post #925
dundarious wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So everybody should drop out after they first start to hear second hand info about it? And it’s their fault if they don’t or if they do but they’re on the tail end of the grapevine so it takes a few years? And that’s the system working justly? If you imagine the uncertainty and justifiable inertia involved in a realistic scenario, I don’t see how you can dismiss arguments that it’s not necessarily just the fault of k…

> So everybody should drop out after they first start to hear second hand info about it? Choices are: 1. continue, rack up $300,000 debt with no way to pay it off 2. change majors to something that pays Which do you think is the sensible decision? > just the fault of kids You're infantilizing them. They are adults. They can vote. They can drive cars. They can sign contracts. They can join the military and command oth…

My example was still for a law school. You've gone back to film school again.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#940

Post by dundarious »

argvargc wrote: post #847
dundarious wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is so drenched with florid contempt and disdain that it's actually really hard to understand what you're talking about. I'm trying to be charitable in my interpretation, but even leaving aside the style, it's extremely vague. What I've taken from your comment is: - this bad thing is like other well-known bad socio-political things (which ones?) - people are just going along with it without openly acknowl…

I sympathise, and appreciate your summary. I was intentionally vague about exactly what I was referring to, for the very reasons that form the subject matter. Specifically, stating it directly leads to wild denials, ostracisation, persecution and generally overwrought and unjustifiable discombobulation from many - as they puff about unwilling to accept it. From a less-reticent perspective: "On 12 July the British Gov…

Thank for you at least giving slightly more concrete examples.

There are a lot of semantic gymnastics going on in that blog post, specifically around identity groups:

- how lockdown/virus/vaccine skeptics _are_ an identity group,

- how lockdown rules and vaccine requirements are repression against those identity groups,

- how fascism is repression of identity groups,

- therefore a lot of people and governments are fascist now.

I think we'd both agree that it's wildly unjust that actual human beings have far fewer freedoms (a major one being freedom of movement) compared to corporations or their capital, so I can sympathize with the notion that more restrictions on biological beings is unfortunate, to say the least. But like in chess, we must play the board as it is, not as we wish it to be, and we're responsible for the predictable (especially policy) consequences of our actions.

The author is also a lockdown skeptic:

> Leading up to a (ritualised) date that announces a review of restrictions, the government generates terror on a mass scale – through its new gargantuan propaganda machine.

> The evidence mainly consisted of Sweden, Florida and other places that actually exist in the real world, and also the fact that the lockdowns haven’t worked

AND a virus skeptic:

> Imaginary variants, case numbers, double mutants (the possibilities are endless)"

And hence presumably a vaccine skeptic. These are further critical failures of analysis to add to that of "what constitutes an identity group and fascism".

Honestly, the _blog post_ itself almost reads like a psyop, but probably it's just the kind of nonsense that people like George Galloway and Aimee Terese are known for. Maybe if these failures weren't so central and didn't compound on each other, there'd be something else useful to say having read it.

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