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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

#391

Post by France_is_bacon »

Hdbdbdhu wrote: post #349
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…

10 restaurants would be 100 employees. $50,000 for 100 employees is sustainable according to you? The owner would be in the red by over $4 million every year

Then all owners need to raise their prices while protecting their profit margins.

Or alternatively, fine, do it that way, but look at the owners' financials and wealth (not just income). If they are making $1.5 million per year, then lower that to $100,000 per year and get gold health insurance for employees, have employees work 40 hours per week instead of jaded sh-tty owners only scheduling less than 30 hours so they don't have to pay benefits and employees have to work 2 jobs, have them not treat employees like sh-t. That also works for me.

In 1965, CEOs made 20 times (2,00% more) the lowest paid worker. Now it is 300 times (30,000% more) than the lowest paid worker.

For most of the 20th century, the tax rate for the wealthiest was 70% to 90%. And this was NOT only during the war years. It was around there from 1918 to 1985, when the top rate was lowered to around 35% and stayed there since. That is about the exact time that the rich got richer, and everyone else stayed about the same, or went down, due to inflation.

And if you say that the owner took all the risk to start the business, fine, cool. Let them do all of the work without employees. I'm good with that.

What you say is yet one more specious argument to pay employees less so that owners can buy more yachts and bigger houses. But fine. Do all the work in 10 locations, all by yourself. Good. And good bye.

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

#392

Post by holler »

Ballas wrote: post #314
tssva wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of barbershops in my area which charge $50 for a haircut but there are many more that charge $18. Having been to a selection of both the difference is mostly the level of interior decoration and not the quality of the haircut. The choice being between a $50 haircut and having your girlfriend do it at home is a false one.

I'd easily pay $50 for the convenience of having it done at home - easily worth it just for the time saved. If your girlfriend can do it for you, that's worth a lot more than the money saved. So in my view once you have established that your girlfriend can do it, that is the better choice regardless of price.

this brings up something I've wondered about, why not start a gig barber app? you sign up and someone shows up at your house/work/wherever and cuts your hair

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

#393

Post by detaro »

holler wrote: post #392
Ballas wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd easily pay $50 for the convenience of having it done at home - easily worth it just for the time saved. If your girlfriend can do it for you, that's worth a lot more than the money saved. So in my view once you have established that your girlfriend can do it, that is the better choice regardless of price.

this brings up something I've wondered about, why not start a gig barber app? you sign up and someone shows up at your house/work/wherever and cuts your hair

This kind of app has the problem that people would use it 1-3 times and then just directly call whoever they liked to make the next appointment, cutting the app out of the deal.

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

#394

Post by Sylamore »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #385
kozd wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well presumably all restaurants would have similar issues hiring cooks so prices should rise everywhere. I would wager that demand for restaurant food as a category is less elastic than demand for any one particular Mexican restaurant's food.

At the margin consumers are sensitive to price. A family of 4 might skip out on getting drinks with their order if the price goes from 36->40$. Drinks are where the entire profit for many restaurants comes from. In terms of total market, the effects are well studied in the field of labor economics. Big producers can easily absorb the added labor costs. They outsource some elements of their labor (prep work). They sim…

This is one of the reasons why companies like Sysco and US Foods have been pushing more and more pre-prepped packaged menu items that restaurants can just heat up and serve. USF calls these Scoop items: https://www.usfoods.com/great-food/scoop-.html You may have noticed how lots of places, including mom and pop shops seem to suddenly have nearly identical menu items and it's partially because of this trend in the foodservice industry.

They are basically taking the economy of scale that a large chain previously exclusively had and bringing it to the market to street sales (e.g. mom & pop joints). They simply took what they were doing for institutional food service and expanded it because it's substantially more profitable for them than selling the raw ingredients.

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

#395

Post by France_is_bacon »

fredestine wrote: post #323
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…

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

That does not work for me. The owner can just pay himself a $1.5 million salary that erases any profits, just like the movie industry is so adept at doing. They can also start other companies, and buy stuff from the other corporations in order to suck out any profits. Or maybe suck out enough so that have the smallest profit to share, and then take the money out from the other paper corporation and give themselves that money through that corporation instead. This is pretty basic business stuff. Apple Corporation, for instance, takes all of their profits and puts it into Braeburn Capital in Reno, Nevada, in order to avoid California franchise taxes, and other states as well, which has over the years, been billions and billions that would have gone to those states. California has 8 or 10% business taxes for example. Nevada has no business taxes. I think Braeburn has $150+ billion in it, or something like that. Then, of course, it can take that money and shove it out to countries with no taxes at all, so they pay no federal taxes at all, though techniques like the "double-Irish with the Dutch sandwich", which is an actual name of a scheme that corporations use. IP tax avoidance is another example - you sell all you IP (intellectual property) rights to a coporation set up in the Cayman Islands. The corporation in the USA or other countries then have to pay for the IP rights to sell those products, so they pay out to a legitimate company in the Caymans all their profits.

This is why there is a push for a global tax.

Anyways, the point is that there are a ton of ways to reduce or eliminate profits. If I was a business owner making $4 million profits, I'd reduce the profits so that each employee made an extra $1,000 to 50 employees for $50,000, they won't be squawking and bitching and are happy, or a little bit better, about the piddling amount.

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

#396

Post by kodah »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #380
kodah wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's not what I'm doing and I don't appreciate you misrepresenting what I said like that, intentional or not.

UBI is purely theoretical. It does not exist anywhere on the planet in the form you're describing.

The US has engaged in UBI-like systems for quite a while, as have other countries.

UBI ascribes that everyone must get the benefit in order for the effects to be felt.

COVID incurred UBI-like payments, how these were used is worth studying, but they don't prove or disprove UBI. They certainly didn't improve the situation for small businesses, which is my point - if it takes a holistic UBI system to prove UBI and you're unwilling to figure out how to decompose it, then we'll never get it, and we're all doomed. That to me seems rather silly.

It is not a given that UBI will be a boon for businesses (big or small). Personally, I do think it will benefit large corporations, but it remains to be seen how small and medium businesses will fare -- and I think that largely depends on implementation details that need to be discovered. That much needs to be proven.

In order to prove some of the claims of UBI, countries are doing experiments and looking at specific effects that their implementations have in order to gauge UBI. Nobody is going to look a the monumental cost of UBI and fire a hope-driven-missile in terms of policy and economic risk, which is absolutely understandable. Finland and Ontario are putting out some tests, the inference they draw will largely depend on the questions they set out to answer. This is probably also informing them on how they could roll out UBI progressively.

What I was contesting was the absoluteness of this statement:

> This is why a UBI is good for businesses -- customers have more money in their pockets.

Nothing says that because people have money that they will spend it, much less where you want them to spend it. That has to be incentivized and we have to experiment with how to incentivize it.

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

#397

Post by Sylamore »

holler wrote: post #392
Ballas wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd easily pay $50 for the convenience of having it done at home - easily worth it just for the time saved. If your girlfriend can do it for you, that's worth a lot more than the money saved. So in my view once you have established that your girlfriend can do it, that is the better choice regardless of price.

this brings up something I've wondered about, why not start a gig barber app? you sign up and someone shows up at your house/work/wherever and cuts your hair

In the US, State occupational licensing laws for one. You can't cut someone else's hair without a license in most states. In my state you can't even dog/cat sit for someone for money unless you are going to their house because you need a kennel license to have them stay at your house if they aren't your pet.

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

#398

Post by Sylamore »

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…

We used to go to Red Robin at least once a month. It would cost us about $30-35 to feed all 3 of us before tip. We stopped going regularly and recently went back on a whim. Our bill was for $60 for 3 burgers and (non-alcoholic) drinks, still before tip. Nevermind that they were obviously running on a skeleton crew. I can go to a fancier place like cowfish/bad daddies for a better burger and better experience that actually costs less, or go "cheap" to five guys or culvers or freddies.

I'm not sure what their reasons are for raising their prices so much compared to 5-6 years ago, but it will probably be a long time before we go back, the prices are just too high compared to other options.

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

#399

Post by filoeleven »

bsagdiyev wrote: post #341
tluyben2 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of factors we do not know here: I was an investor in a small restaurant as I wanted to keep it open after the owners quit. Upping anything on the menu $1 would've killed the business dead because all surrounding restaurants where already cheaper, but we had better cooks, however people are frugal or poor or both and they were not that much better to make the difference that much bigger. We still ran a…

Before we left San Diego I offered quite a few times to go in, unpaid, to help out. This man works 6 days a week, open to close. I don’t know what sort of upbringing people on this site seem to have but it doesn’t feel “working class” to me most of the time.

How is he living in San Diego on $416 / mo?

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

#400

Post by beervirus »

imtringued wrote: post #328
beervirus wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Absolutely I do.
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