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

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

#321

Post by imtringued »

antisthenes wrote: post #241
matchagaucho wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That same owner could be paying themselves $25 per hour. The average small restaurant owner makes ~$50K per year and has very little line of credit. So unfortunately it's a zero-sum game. Increasing cooks to $20hr means reducing their own comp to $20hr.

It could very well be worse than that. A cultural shift may mean that people collectively decided that they will, for example, spend 8% of their income on eating out rather than 12%. That represents an aggregate decrease in demand and would indicate a negative sum game (something most of HN seems incapable of comprehending)

>That represents an aggregate decrease in demand and would indicate a negative sum game (something most of HN seems incapable of comprehending)

No, it represents a positive sum game because the job being offered is unsustainable and therefore should be replaced by a more sustainable job.

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

#322

Post by mavelikara »

antisthenes wrote: post #252
docflabby wrote: post #124

The real problem is inflation and excessive rent seeking. Rents are currently at the highest level on record in the US. Hard to get someone to take a job that won't even pay the rent. The wealth trickle up has changed into a torrent since covid, something is going to break.

Rent-seeking and regular rent in a landlord-tenant relationship are not the same thing. Rents did go up as a result of general inflation and the eviction moratorium, but that is not the same as rent-seeking.

Why is this comment is downvoted?

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

#323

Post by fredestine »

France_is_bacon wrote: post #308
smsm42 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're presenting it as he has an infinite money supply and just of pure stupidity and greed doesn't want to pay $20 or $50 per hour. Maybe his supply is not unlimited, and maybe nobody would buy a taco for $50 and he knows it, and he made the calculation and decided there's no way to pay all his costs, charge the price that people would be willing to pay, and make a profit. Now, if you know how to do it, there's a b…

Depends on how you look at it. If the owner has 10 restuarants, and is making $750,000 per year, let's say, then he or she does have an unlimited amount of money, compared to the workers, especially if the workers are making the federal minimum wage of $7.25. If they have a small mom and pop company that cannot pay workers at least $50,000, then they need to go out of business. Then, as more and more shops go out of…

I agree with you and the solution is to have them pay minimal wage + a % of profit sharing.

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

#324

Post by imtringued »

fallingfrog wrote: post #254
Aerroon wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the US can spend billions on fossil subsidies and trillions on military and foreign wars, it should be a no brainer to stimulate domestic the economy with universal healthcare. The numbers you're looking at are too small. The war on terror cost $8 trillion in 20 years.[0] That's $500 billion a year. Divide this by US population (330M) and you get $1,515. How much healthcare could you buy for that per year? And d…

Universal healthcare actually saves money . It’s a mistaken assumption that conservatives always pick the cheapest or most efficient option. They pick the one that’s cheapest for people with a lot of assets . Individual insurance is paid for mostly by the middle class; universal healthcare is paid by taxes, which means rich people contribute more than they benefit.

I agree. Public healthcare has a strong incentive to cure you because your health problems are a liability to the tax collecting part of the government. Meanwhile private healthcare charges you for being ill. There is no profit incentive for a cure.

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

#325

Post by mavelikara »

notanzaiiswear wrote: post #316
aynyc wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire foxnews channel is bitching about lazy people.

I don't have US TV. It sounds rather funny to me, though. The bitching about lazy people won't change anything. In contrast, bitching about greedy businesses may lead to harmful legislation.

> The bitching about lazy people won't change anything.

This is wrong. A Presidential candidate going on a crusade against "welfare queens" changed LOT in the US.

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

#326

Post by Ekaros »

imtringued wrote: post #324
fallingfrog wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universal healthcare actually saves money . It’s a mistaken assumption that conservatives always pick the cheapest or most efficient option. They pick the one that’s cheapest for people with a lot of assets . Individual insurance is paid for mostly by the middle class; universal healthcare is paid by taxes, which means rich people contribute more than they benefit.

I agree. Public healthcare has a strong incentive to cure you because your health problems are a liability to the tax collecting part of the government. Meanwhile private healthcare charges you for being ill. There is no profit incentive for a cure.

I believe in actual private system there is incentive to cure people. Or they choose someone else who can fix the problem. I countries where there is public health care people choose private options because they get things done and faster.

USA's system is perversion in all possible ways.

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

#327

Post by imtringued »

novok wrote: post #151
kdmccormick wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See: * Strongarming new user account creation even though most new users will immediately bounce. * Removing features from the free tier to "drive conversions" to premium, whilst ruining the quality of the free tier that drew users in the first place. * Filling the product with re-engagement nagware and notification bloat. etc.

To be fair although, the entire existence of a free tier is to draw in people to premium, usually funded by VCs demanding an exponential growth curve. If they were bootstrapped, the free tier is pretty much non-existant in practice.

I think the vast majority of VC funded companies could make a profit if investors didn't demand exponential growth. Overfunding and shutting down companies is a choice they are willing to make. What our economy needs isn't the next billion dollar company. It needs lots of small companies to get away from corporate power.

It's actually quite strange how VCs are trying to basically create monopolies. They are trying to find the business equivalent of real estate.

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

#328

Post by imtringued »

beervirus wrote: post #302
elliekelly wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economy has undergone a massive and fundamental shift because of the pandemic. It is disingenuous, at best, to say the increased unemployment insurance is “the only thing that’s actually changed.” Everything has changed. The demand for in-person services. Transportation and how (and even how often) we travel. Childcare. Education. Entertainment. Everything.

Ok. But people still need money. The people who were working fast food jobs a couple years ago and are now choosing not to work… how are they paying rent and eating? Government handouts are the one thing that has changed for those folks.

> how are they paying rent

Do you count an eviction moratorium as a handout?

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

#329

Post by pram »

gpsx wrote: post #206
smsm42 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're presenting it as he has an infinite money supply and just of pure stupidity and greed doesn't want to pay $20 or $50 per hour. Maybe his supply is not unlimited, and maybe nobody would buy a taco for $50 and he knows it, and he made the calculation and decided there's no way to pay all his costs, charge the price that people would be willing to pay, and make a profit. Now, if you know how to do it, there's a b…

This is market forces at work. There is not necessarily someone to blame, generally speaking. I expect we'll see prices going up, wages going up and margins going down. I think that is good since I think we have gone too far in the other direction. What frustrates me about economics (with my one intro class level experience) is that they could only talk about equilibrium. The dynamics of things changing like this is…

I’m not clear on your interpretation. Aggregate demand/supply and such models you find in Econ 101 are all about demonstrating the effect of things changing, as you just described. In a supply shock for example, convergence to equilibrium is the change.

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

#330

Post by [deleted] »

jzb wrote: post #110
rvense wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “That’s too much for cosmetology work.” So it's not even an economic argument, "If I pay that I'll go out of business"? It's just a moral one, "They don't deserve that amount of money"? I can't say I'm surprised, TBH.

That's the crux of it in a lot of cases. People have come to view a certain class of work as "not worth" paying a living wage. What's worse, the jobs they view as "not worth" a living wage are the ones that do the work we need (or at least really really want) done. If all the cooks, servers, cosmetologists, janitors, lawn care / landscaping, delivery drivers, warehouse workers and so forth stopped doing their jobs...…

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