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It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

thehill.com

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Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#81

Post by mananaysiempre »

hanniabu wrote: post #49
mananaysiempre wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices can be very, very sticky? In my city it appears (to my uninvolved eye) that several levels of floor space sublessors need to run out of lessees by raising prices in order to pay (possibly their debt to) the higher levels, with a couple months’ latency for each, until retail can reasonably exist again.

If they start raising prices then CPI will start reflecting true inflation, and we can't be having that!

I doubt it’s that advanced, honestly, the commercial real estate market here is pretty thuggish.

And everybody’s prices are sticky, it’s seemingly part of how we define fairness. (See the haircut comment two levels up for an example from the consumer side.) I’m certain economists have loads and loads of strong words to say to all of us about this behaviour.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#82

Post by Larrikin »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #56
holler wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The barber shop I went to for years used to charge $35 for a haircut pre-pandemic, which with a ~$10 tip ($45) already felt real high. Now a haircut is $50 and I no longer go, opting instead to cut my own hair w help from my girlfriend. Maybe people don’t want $50 haircuts.

The salons in question are still charging $18 for a haircut.

Is this a complaint about an extremely cheap haircut?

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#83

Post by lordnacho »

jdavis703 wrote: post #48
atrus wrote: post #12

Painfully obvious too. My little local Mexcian place will be closing down because of a lack of cooks. Talking to the owner, he was complaining about government benefits, and how they all want $20 an hour. I don't understand it, that you'd either a) be willing to drive your business into the ground serving a limited menu because you won't hire a couple cooks at $20 an hour, or b) have a business so close to the brink…

There are a lot of businesses on the brink. My regular Italian spot went out of business in the depths of the pandemic. They re-capitalized and opened again but with higher prices. Their clientele is upper middle class (i.e. relatively price insensitive). But they still wrote a long letter explaining why prices increased (more benefits, more salary) and asking that people support their increased overhead by becoming…

Is it working for them? I get the feeling that it might, depending on the price level they were at previously. Perhaps the thing to do would have been to rebrand completely, make the place look a bit more fancy.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#84

Post by birdyrooster »

wazoox wrote: post #41
n8cpdx wrote: post #4

It's surprising businesses haven't turned to automation. At the very least, most of a restaurant's and a coffee shop's labor can be replaced with automated ordering, having the customer collect food themselves when it's ready, and using robots to prepare more of the food. they can do lattes with art all by themselves now. A lot of these businesses just can't survive if they meet the wage demands of people who have be…

> most of a restaurant's and a coffee shop's labor can be replaced with automated ordering, having the customer collect food themselves when it's ready... Which means "extracting free work from the customers", which is basically Marxism 101, "how to extract value from live work". My answer in such a place is to go straight out. I NEVER use the "automatic cashes", thank you very much. > ... using robots to prepare mor…

So you never order anything from e-commerce websites because you have to enter your own order and payment information manually? Sounds like a stupid way to interpret Marxism.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#85

Post by Ericson2314 »

maxlybbert wrote: post #72
atrus wrote: post #12

Painfully obvious too. My little local Mexcian place will be closing down because of a lack of cooks. Talking to the owner, he was complaining about government benefits, and how they all want $20 an hour. I don't understand it, that you'd either a) be willing to drive your business into the ground serving a limited menu because you won't hire a couple cooks at $20 an hour, or b) have a business so close to the brink…

> I don't understand it, that you'd either > > a) be willing to drive your business into the ground serving a limited menu because you won't hire a couple cooks at $20 an hour, or > > b) have a business so close to the brink of shutting down that an additional $20-50 an hour will shutter you. Restaurants run on notoriously thin margins ( https://upserve.com/restaurant-insider/profit-margins/ ). There's a reason resta…

Maybe we need buffet-style restaurants that serve nutritious perishable food without all the extra plating, waters, and other frivolities so people can bask in being served and pretend they are aristocracy.

Everyone cooking is a massive inefficiency, and yet paying for conventional restaurants is also uneconomical. Eating shelf-stable food is cheaper than cooking for most people, but only until the bad health effects catch up. Just like global warming, the market can only optimize over small time horizons without politically pricing in externalities.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#86

Post by aynyc »

atrus wrote: post #12

Painfully obvious too. My little local Mexcian place will be closing down because of a lack of cooks. Talking to the owner, he was complaining about government benefits, and how they all want $20 an hour. I don't understand it, that you'd either a) be willing to drive your business into the ground serving a limited menu because you won't hire a couple cooks at $20 an hour, or b) have a business so close to the brink…

You forgot option c) raise the price of the menu to cover the cost.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#87

Post by birdyrooster »

prepend wrote: post #76
wazoox wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of a restaurant's and a coffee shop's labor can be replaced with automated ordering, having the customer collect food themselves when it's ready... Which means "extracting free work from the customers", which is basically Marxism 101, "how to extract value from live work". My answer in such a place is to go straight out. I NEVER use the "automatic cashes", thank you very much. > ... using robots to prepare mor…

Robots are better at menial, repetitive tasks. No matter what you pay a cashier, they will never be better than an ATM. Free humans to do menial work. I think it’s pointless to try to improve wages for these low end jobs. Similarly with fruit picking. It pays poorly and is hard and dangerous. The solution isn’t to improve wages, but to automate. Humans shouldn’t be forced to do meaningless jobs.

According to the parent commenter Marxism 101 is to treat humans like pitiful cogs that need to do the same shit work over and over and over. I’m a leftist but I think peoples quality of living is much more than a good wage. Automating certain shitty jobs can free up spend for giving other more fulfilling jobs a better wage.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#88

Post by lotsofpulp »

prepend wrote: post #22
atrus wrote: post #12

Painfully obvious too. My little local Mexcian place will be closing down because of a lack of cooks. Talking to the owner, he was complaining about government benefits, and how they all want $20 an hour. I don't understand it, that you'd either a) be willing to drive your business into the ground serving a limited menu because you won't hire a couple cooks at $20 an hour, or b) have a business so close to the brink…

It’s easy to understand. If your customers won’t buy Mexican food at a high enough price to pay $20/hour, it’s better to close than to stay open and lose money. Labor is the highest cost for a restaurant (higher than rent) so bumping wages from $15 to $20 may not be possible if you can’t also raise prices by 30%. This may be hard to understand for us rich programmers. But it’s quite simple for companies that have rea…

> It’s easy to understand. If your customers won’t buy Mexican food at a high enough price to pay $20/hour, it’s better to close than to stay open and lose money.

I think the root problem is that most restaurant dining experiences are not worth the $30+ per person for enough people compared to cooking and eating at home.

I would like to see more places where you order at a register and bus your own food with minimal overheard and maximum investment in the quality of the food rather than the whole waiter and ambiance schtick.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#89

Post by beej71 »

n8cpdx wrote: post #4

It's surprising businesses haven't turned to automation. At the very least, most of a restaurant's and a coffee shop's labor can be replaced with automated ordering, having the customer collect food themselves when it's ready, and using robots to prepare more of the food. they can do lattes with art all by themselves now. A lot of these businesses just can't survive if they meet the wage demands of people who have be…

It's nice to have a server check on you even if seating and ordering are automated. It's worth something for the experience.

The last place I went to like that, the owner was working probably due to lack of staff.

He was wearing a Rolex Explorer II.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#90

Post by toomuchtodo »

Larrikin wrote: post #82
toomuchtodo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The salons in question are still charging $18 for a haircut.

Is this a complaint about an extremely cheap haircut?

Not at all, it’s an observation of a business model breaking down.
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