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Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

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Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#231

Post by karaterobot »

endisneigh wrote: post #3

I wonder what the USA would look like if minimum wage was defined as; two people being able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment within a 1 hour drive without traffic. The static (both in the nominal and inflation adjusted sense) for minimum wage doesn't make sense imo. Minimum wage should be tied to some level of living (not necessarily a great living, but something ) This guy smh

Everybody is giving you theoretical answers, but I am literal minded.

According to some website, Miami, FL is the most expensive real estate market in the country, and Florida has a fairly low minimum wage currently. So, I'll work with that.

I assume that a 1 hour drive without traffic puts you at most around 55 miles (freeways are faster, city streets are slower, but this is an estimate).

That could put you in places like Belle Glade, Florida, where the 1 bedroom apartment listings are between $400 and $650 per month.

But, it could also put you in the much nicer West Palm Beach, Florida, where (according to Zillow Fair Market Rent for ZIP Code 33401) the average rental for a 1 bedroom apartment is $1274 per month.

Divided between two people, that's $637 per month. If we go with the rule that 1/3 of your wages should go to housing, that means you'd need to make $1911 per month to afford that apartment. If you worked 40 hours a week, and there are (on average) 4.3 weeks per month, that means you'd need to make $11.11 per hour to afford that apartment.

According to this other random website, the average hourly wage in Miami is $21 per hour. The minimum wage in Florida is currently $8.65 per hour.

In summary, if they took the least generous interpretation of your rule set (the Belle Glade case) they could safely lower the minimum wage. If they took the most generous (the West Palm Beach case) they would need to raise it by about $2.50 per hour.

The average wage across the U.S. is about $27, and 2/3rds of people make "at least" above $15/hour, so it may not affect most people at all, ceteris paribus, and making the assumption that the example region is a useful example.

This is all very hand-wavey and back of the envelop, of course.

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#232

Post by wowokay »

tartoran wrote: post #63
wccrawford wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not nearly enough detail for the setting of the wage. Companies would simply assume that they always eat the cheapest food, buy the cheapest transportation, never go on vacation, no luxuries at all, etc etc. If you don't factor all that in, they'll factor it out.

Even with all that factored in, and even with skipping meals, not traveling anywhere minimum wage does not afford one a roof over their head. Maybe with hours of commute it could start working out (if far away remote places are considered) but commute time is not included as wage and commute also costs money so it breaks the equation again. But CEOs are getting insane paychecks and bonuses.

I don’t think commute should factor into this discussion at all. People choose to live in expensive urban cities, why not move to a cheaper place? The point of opportunity is that everyone has it, but people that take advantage of it and succeed get chastised while other people who don’t wish to apply themselves get angry. Then add children on top of it and you have people with multiple kids living on minimum wage who feel entitled to earn more money because of their poor choices and family planning.

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#233

Post by xboxnolifes »

jpcfl wrote: post #174
quantum_magpie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>two people being able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment within a 1 hour drive without traffic. My immediate reaction to this statement was.. it's insane? In my opinion it should read 'a single person able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment within an hour of public transport commute.' Otherwise it sounds like you don't think anyone should be able to live anywhere reasonable without roommates?

>Otherwise it sounds like you don't think anyone should be able to live anywhere reasonable without roommates? I think your confusing "should be able to" with "shall be able to, enforceable by law". I don't expect that a 15 year old working his first job as a fry cook at an Arby's should be compensated enough that he can afford to live on his own. In fact, that could be dangerously disincentivizing his hard work towa…

This rationale is always based on the fact that a "teenager" doesn't need a livable wage. The problem with this, is that not every fry cook is a teenager that doesn't need to pay for food and shelter. Fast food is a $300bn industry in the US. It doesn't need to be subsidized by parents.

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#235

Post by vsareto »

deegles wrote: post #202
endisneigh wrote: post #3

I wonder what the USA would look like if minimum wage was defined as; two people being able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment within a 1 hour drive without traffic. The static (both in the nominal and inflation adjusted sense) for minimum wage doesn't make sense imo. Minimum wage should be tied to some level of living (not necessarily a great living, but something ) This guy smh

A better method is to give everyone a universal basic income enough to afford a place to live and to eliminate the minimum wage. That way jobs would have to pay what the job is worth to people, not amounts that create a poverty trap.

The real estate industry would need significant overhauls before tying it to UBI. A minimum wage increase based on inflation would be vastly easier to get done politically in the US and even that bare minimum still hasn't happened yet.

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#236

Post by brightball »

tssva wrote: post #210
brightball wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this won’t be popular but minimum wage shouldn’t exist. Basic income, sure but not minimum wage. Every discussion of minimum wage blames employers for something that is completely out of their control: inflation. When the price of gas, housing and food rises the business where you work doesn’t suddenly have more money to hand out. If anything their costs have gone up too reducing what they can afford to pay ou…

Hmmmm, how could a business possibly compensate for increased costs including labor costs?

By raising prices and further cementing inflation across the board, which will be passed on to other people and other business to persist the effect even further if they don’t lose customers because of the price increases.

It sounds so simple to just raise prices, but if it were that simple it would have happened long before. Especially on the lower end of the consumer goods and services market the price sensitivity of people is sky high. In grocery stores companies chose to shrink their products and hope people didn’t notice rather than increases prices for that exact reason.

It gets passed along somewhere and in the end the more people who decide to “just raise prices” the worse the problem gets.

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#237

Post by tacitusarc »

glitchc wrote: post #220
bo1024 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A universal basic income would have some advantages over a minimum wage. Minimum wage interferes with supply and demand in the labor market, which is why some economists dislike it. UBI moves the supply curve to a different place, but it allows those principles to function.

1) UBI is not UBI unless everyone gets it. 2) Any income surplus generated by UBI is rapidly consumed by middle people and rent-seekers. That’s how we get inflation.

I do not understand what you are trying to convey through either of these points. Would you mind clarifying?

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#238

Post by bloaf »

endisneigh wrote: post #3

I wonder what the USA would look like if minimum wage was defined as; two people being able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment within a 1 hour drive without traffic. The static (both in the nominal and inflation adjusted sense) for minimum wage doesn't make sense imo. Minimum wage should be tied to some level of living (not necessarily a great living, but something ) This guy smh

Employers would pay apartment owners to keep a below market apartment "available" but turn down all applicants, then use that below market price to justify arbitrarily low wages.

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#240

Post by IMTDb »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #153
quantum_magpie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>two people being able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment within a 1 hour drive without traffic. My immediate reaction to this statement was.. it's insane? In my opinion it should read 'a single person able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment within an hour of public transport commute.' Otherwise it sounds like you don't think anyone should be able to live anywhere reasonable without roommates?

An hour? Why is it acceptable or reasonable to spend 2 hours of your unpaid time wasted on commuting?

Because the only way to guarantee that people have less than an hour of commute to their job is to create extremely dense population center which means extremely small living spaces which are almost universally hated. And most jobs cannot be done remotely, so to guarantee that each individual has space, he must accept to be some distance ways from the hub where people concentrate to perform their daily tasks.

Think of how many people a big hospital employs, and how you'd need to organise living center if all of them had to have a reasonable living space within few minutes of commute. Now you need stores and restaurant there as well and the space to host the workers of these places too, etc. The only way is to build huge tower hosting tons of small appartements, kill all green areas to gain as much space as possible. People don't seem to like that idea that much.

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