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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

#361

Post by Ericson2314 »

yobbo wrote: post #347
Ericson2314 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> capital owners that lend around money at extortionate rates and run to the nanny state to print money and save their skin whenever their bets go sour. Guess which strata gets most of the flak. Your heart is in the right place, but you are doing the devil's work by accident. "extortionate rates" and "printing money" do not happen at once! We have low interest rates, which are good for debtors . The banks now will ge…

> The banks now will get very little interest on those mortgages Banks make relative profit on rates. Lower rates usually means the relative profit increases. Then, because as rates fall and prices increase, the volume of mortgages increases. As long as rates fall, banks win.

> Banks make relative profit on rates.

True

> Lower rates usually means the relative profit increases.

The spread increases? Not necessarily.

> Then, because as rates fall and prices increase, the volume of mortgages increases.

Because housing prices go up in response to lower rates, I am not sure that is the case. You can almost think of the total payment being the same, and adjusting the principle/interest ratio.

I think large exurban tracks are how they try to boost volume.

> As long as rates fall, banks win.

Doesn't follow from the rest. Homeowners---whoever can afford it, typically do well relative non-homeowners who really get screwed over here. Homeownership in general is bad, in that other ways of doing housing would result in better land use and growth, but this is because low density is loose-loose, not because banks make more money that way.

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

#362

Post by danaris »

smsm42 wrote: post #313
karmajunkie wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s not magic. there are inputs and outputs. raise prices by a buck a pizza. people will absolutely pay it. problem solved.

If it worked this way, why not have a $1000 pizza? Raise it a thousand times and... Obviously, it doesn't - at some point, raising it a dollar will start losing customers, it's obvious. Now, where is that point? Do you know? Does business owner know? Who would be the better expert in determining this point - they guy who runs a pizza place or a random guy on the internet whose experience is more like ordering pizza o…

Yes, thank you for demonstrating that reductio ad absurdam is still absurd.

"You could do better if you raised prices a dollar" and "you would do worse if you raised prices a thousand dollars" can absolutely both be true. In fact, in many, many circumstances, they will be.

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

#363

Post by Ericson2314 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #305
boolemancer wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say it costs more to eat out, are you factoring in the cost of your time? If I spend an hour and a half prepping and cooking dinner, but I managed to buy that ingredients for $10 less than what I would spend at a restaurant, it's still cheaper to eat at the restaurant if I factor in the time I spent.

You should get multiple meals from cooking and cleaning for 1.5 hours, either as leftovers or for other people.

You should, but I eat a lot and the prep work adds up.

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

#364

Post by Ericson2314 »

Dudeman112 wrote: post #354
boolemancer wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say it costs more to eat out, are you factoring in the cost of your time? If I spend an hour and a half prepping and cooking dinner, but I managed to buy that ingredients for $10 less than what I would spend at a restaurant, it's still cheaper to eat at the restaurant if I factor in the time I spent.

>When you say it costs more to eat out, are you factoring in the cost of your time? Just an addendum: if that time would have been spent, say, watching TV (and you are a healthy adult that doesn't have any psychological or physiological benefit from watching TV) then the time cost is possibly negligible. Full time salaried workers can't easily convert additional time into money.

I mean there are many ways to overwork oneself, and I suppose the fact that I often am just too mentally drained after work to do all the cooking anyways speaks to a similar malady.

I think we do see PP's point with poorer people with horrendous commutes, part time inconsistent jobs, etc. Lot's of anguish about "food deserts" of course, but I think there is a larger reckoning that we simply need to reduce work and commutes before dual income people at all levels can afford to cook real food.

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

#365

Post by Ericson2314 »

boolemancer wrote: post #250
Ericson2314 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that is good. Bums me out that we force them to use gas generators and not have running water mainly to avoid extractive rents, but that can be fixed. Mandating you bring your own container as I swear take-out contributes a huge portion of urban trash would also be a doable improvement.

Making it less convenient (e.g. by requiring customers to have a container on hand) is a great way to have fewer customers. Why not instead mandate compostable containers?

Because reuse is far better than composting.

I think the issue is less intractable that it might sound. Food delivery could pick up last meal's dishes. Or offices could have dishwashers.

That trash is so cheap, and sources of trash so unregulated (because just raising the cost of trash leads to litter --- need to impose cost on the producer not consumer) got us in this rut. The inconvenience you speak of is more effect than cause.

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

#366

Post by Ericson2314 »

pengaru wrote: post #234
Ericson2314 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There will always be a demand for grooming by experienced third-party groomers. Sure, just as is their demand for horses. > All we're seeing is a population struggling to accept their dollar is rather suddenly worth much less, there's a significant latency to such things sinking in. It can even be generational, some people never learn. https://twitter.com/JWMason1/status/1426245765437952010 it's far from universal…

> I don't own a car, I don't pay for gas. I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary, even with haircuts. If my haircut price did go up, and the barber's wage did too. I do not resent it. I've definitely noticed prices going up, but have been mostly dismissive of it as either being pathologically pandemic-caused and likely temporary (lumber prices for instance, I happened to be building a new roof throughout the…

> My assumption is cost of services rendered by small businesses will be more variable and laggy in responding to the reality.

Are you saying that you see the lack of correlation of the prices in the chart not as evidence inflation is over hyped, but as evidence of an inflation that is still working it's way through the supply chains?

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

#367

Post by dagw »

karmajunkie wrote: post #227
bsagdiyev wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christ, people here and their taller than standard horses. My girlfriends dad owns a pizza place and walked away with $5k last year, after paying rent, supply and wages. Where do they magically pull this money from? They aren’t evil banker types with bags marked “$$$” full of money like people here seem to think and it is disgusting they’re considered cheap instead of just “people will absolutely not pay the increase…

it’s not magic. there are inputs and outputs. raise prices by a buck a pizza. people will absolutely pay it. problem solved.

raise prices by a buck a pizza. people will absolutely pay it.

Perhaps in some cases, but far from always. Down the street from there are 3 'cheap' pizza places within a ~5 minute walk from each other, that all server basically identical quality pizza at essentially the same price. If any one of those where to raise their prices people would almost certainly not pay and just go to one of the other places instead.

There is also a 4th place that serves much higher quality pizza and charges 50-100% more than any of the other places as it is. If they where to raise their price by a buck then people would no doubt still pay since the people who go to that place have already proven themselves less price sensitive.

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

#368

Post by mchusma »

That magically coincided with the a huge government program to pay people only if they decline to work? That other countries without similar programs are not seeing?

The examples they give are insane. People were paid $15/hr to not work, so of course they were demanding $20/hr to work.

This program was the most bipartisan predictably bad program ever created, and almost certainly created more economic damage than the disease.

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

#369

Post by fleddr »

rland wrote: post #290
warkdarrior wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are people who dine out 3, 4, 5 times a week, who don't really know how to cook anything beyond microwaved meals... that's completely insane! I am not sure we have to be judgemental about other people's cooking skills to decide that restaurant workers deserve better pay. Everyone has some expertise, and some people choose to not learn how to cook, and that is ok.

My point is that the state of not even knowing how to cook and expecting to eat cheaply at a restaurant every night -- at every point in history besides the last 20 years or so that notion would be absurd. I do feel that I can judge people for that, because other people work like dogs to cook their meals for them at below poverty wages. I'm judging, and I'm also raising the point that the current state of affairs is…

Reminds me of that Google employee that was complaining how during the pandemic, Starbucks was too far away from his apartment he was now forced to work from.

This guy, in his thirties and likely a brilliant engineer, just had no idea how to make himself anything, nor would he have the equipment or supplies for it. A total man-child, spoiled through and through.

I'm from Europe, and once visited Texas. I was shocked by how absurdly cheap it is to eat out. And not just the low prices, also the abundance of restaurants. We were on a highway and saw a sign "next 3 exits: food exits".

What!?

We tried a low tier option, a pizza joint. Upon entering, you pay 3$. Then it's all you can eat, as you walk past pizza slices having any topping you'd like, and you can just keep loading up. At the end, there's a soda machine with unlimited refills. And the pizza was actually pretty good.

I still just can't believe it. Does not compute. I'm not talking "thin margins", I'm talking...how the hell is this even remotely possible at all? In property, actual food cost, staff, taxes, the like? This would be 5-10 times more expensive where I live. A single glass of soda would cost more, and you'd get no refills.

At such absurd prices, I can totally imagine the culture developing where nobody cooks anymore.

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

#370

Post by prepend »

jimmaswell wrote: post #286
gruez wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you also need to factor in the demand curve. Raising the price by 25% also means there will be less customers, which means your fixed costs (eg. rent, equipment) go up for each unit of good sold.

Every restaurant could raise every price on the menu by a dollar tomorrow and I wouldn't notice unless it was a soda or something. I'm highly skeptical a small increase in prices would drive people away. Like with minimum wage increases, every time it's allegedly going to be the end of small businesses in the area and then it never is.

You wouldn’t notice, but many millions of people would. This is pretty established economic theory of supply and demand curves. Are you arguing that increasing prices doesn’t decrease demand?

Why do you think companies don’t just raise prices by $1, since jimmaswell won’t even notice it or care?

I’ve never heard that increasing minimum wage will be the end of small business, I’ve just heard that it will be incrementally harder to put those wages and number of jobs at the low end of the wage increase will go down. (And that’s what happens) Again, that’s a supply and demand thing.

Are you arguing that prices don’t have an impact on purchases? Again, how do you explain companies just increasing prices arbitrarily? What do you think stops them from doing this?

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