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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

#371

Post by eesmith »

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…

> - host -> seat yourself sign

> - server -> pager, bus your table, ordering tablet

> .... They just haven't been widely deployed enough to become a norm.

Attempts to revive the Automat (a century-old concept along those lines) haven't gone so well in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat

FEBO does this in the Netherland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBO , though also with in-person ordering.

> observed successfully in action

And failed in action.

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

#372

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

imtringued wrote: post #319
zthrowaway wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice framing. Or it’s to get paid for bearing all of the risk of starting and running the business, and being financially on the hook for when it fails and gets to deal with years of being sued.

The problem is that they do not want to be financially on the hook. They keep the good years and spread the costs of the bad years onto their employees.

This is true. I consider that bad practice, but many others see it differently.

I am a big believer in having a "rainy day fund," but that doesn't happen, when Louis Vuitton comes out with a new $20K handbag...

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

#373

Post by throwawaysea »

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…

What makes it obvious that this is a worker’s rights or wage gap? Aren’t people able to demand higher than normal wages or simply not work because they are propped up by a host of COVID measures like stimulus payments and eviction moratoriums? That is skewing the market and being used to push for higher compensation. It’s not much different from cheap money supply at low interest rates increasing the price of assets.

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

#374

Post by fuzzfactor »

imtringued wrote: post #317
zozbot234 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Healthy food was generally prepared at home from fresh raw ingredients. Perhaps there was a small veggie garden in the back yard. Yup, that's called a subsistence economy. It's a very good thing that we can spend our time doing something better than back-breaking agricultural work and general housekeeping. That's what progress is all about.

I cannot feed myself off a probability that a veggie garden exists. It clearly is not a "subsistence economy" whatever that even means.

I know what you mean, most Americans can't afford enough real property for a garden of any kind themselves. Fewer and fewer every generation.

Depending on how you do the math that's an even less-than-subsistence level.

Especially when it was such a prosperous nation merely 60 years ago, in spite of productivity being statistically much lower then.

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

#375

Post by jimmaswell »

prepend wrote: post #370
jimmaswell wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 incrementa…

Small price changes don't necessarily always impact purchases, as in the example of the diner the other poster gave. You also wouldn't pass up a gum stick if it was 57 cents instead of 56, and you wouldn't buy more if they were 10 cents. There was a term for this in my economics class but I don't remember, essentially elasticity of demand is not always a perfectly continuous function in reality. Somewhere like Wal Mart might have the price figured out perfectly by their team of researchers but probably not most non-chain restaurants.

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

#376

Post by thatfrenchguy »

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…

When you’re used to pay little amounts of money for things, it takes time to rewire your mind. I remember being upset at chocolate or cheese prices when I moved to California for at least one or two years.

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

#377

Post by nomaxx117 »

notanzaiiswear wrote: post #315
nomaxx117 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of small business owners who do nothing but whine about this in my hometown. However, I think that their issue really is not offering wages as high as the competition. An old friend of mine is doing pretty well with his recently established restaurant, as he has one of the only dinners at full staff in the area. He is paying about $25 per hour, and it seems to be working quite well, as he not only has a…

It will work for some businesses, but not for others. I'd wager a guess that your friend's restaurant is also not a cheap option for dinner. Which is fine, but if only more expensive restaurants survive, it also means poorer people will have to cook at home more.

Depends, cheap restaurants see more traffic, especially fast food. They should be able to spread the cost of increased wages across the additional customers.

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

#378

Post by verall »

shinjitsu wrote: post #355
France_is_bacon wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. wow, this site really does skew toward coastal cities in the US doesn't it? $50k a year is a high end white collar salary enough to buy a (often significantly) better than median home on a single salary and enough to be considered in the upper 25% income for most of the places I have lived. I thin…

It's not a coastal thing, its just "any major city" thing. 50k is not enough salary to buy a better-than-median home in any of the major Texas cities (Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio). It might have been enough in El Paso, but probably not since the recent housing bubble.

Sure, not everyone lives in a major city. It doesn't make a lot of sense for a line cook to make $50k in Victoria or Amarillo. But in these places, they are not being paid the ~25-30k which could be equivalent to about $50k in the city (which still isn't enough to buy a house). They are being paid $7.25 an hour and the tips aren't so good.

You totally miss the parents point, which is that most restaurant workers are barely paid enough to rent and eat, to make the point that the US has a diversity of CoL.

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

#379

Post by jimmaswell »

missedthecue wrote: post #210
jimmaswell wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McDonald's pays about 20% in labor costs, and from what I can see other restaurants also average 20-30%. Where are you getting that labor is the highest cost?

Pretty sure he means highest of all fixed costs, not variable costs (COGS).

I think anyone who's not deep in accounting would assume we're just talking about the simple sum of all expenses, not specifically fixed or variable. Like if over a month I paid $100 in rent, $100 in payroll, and $100 in new equipment, labor was 33%.

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

#380

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kodah wrote: post #306
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're then using evidence from the not-UBI to claim that a UBI doesn't do something (benefit businesses), when the difference between the UBI and the not-UBI is that the not-UBI wouldn't be expected to do that thing.

Right, because that's the only evidence I have to draw from when UBI in the form you're referencing doesn't exist yet . I also didn't say it can't, but I think the choice to make it optimal for SMB's, middle class, and upper middle class is an intentional one. I don't think that'll happen just by doing UBI. Hence I said, if you think it will then citation needed.

This is the same form of argument people use against building newer nuclear power plant designs.

A: "Newer designs are safer."

B: "There is no evidence of that because they haven't been built yet."

A: "We're talking about the design here. You can see that it has these passive safety features which..."

B: "But there is no evidence of that because they haven't been built yet."

A: "Okay, then let's build them so that we can see the evidence."

B: "No, we can't build them because there is no evidence that it works."

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