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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

#261

Post by astrange »

bogwog wrote: post #182
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.

UBI could allow the elimination of minimum wage entirely, along with a ton of other scattered welfare programs that have lots of administrative overhead and the typical middleman industries that leech off of government programs. It’s a no-brainer!

Minimum wage has other effects. It eliminates extremely unproductive jobs, which I'm sorry if you don't like the freedom reduction, but it's a form of industrial policy that's useful when you're competing with other economies. Also protects workers from accidentally ending up in such a job, which is bad for them even if UBI would let them quit it easier.

And of course, economists don't find it has the negative effects it used to theoretically have, because throughout the 90s they switched from just making things up to actually doing real-world empirical studies. (That is, it doesn't seem to have them up to "60% of local median income" IIRC.)

I prefer sector-specific minimum wages though. Somewhere in the neighborhood of Denmark or Australia.

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

#262

Post by google234123 »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #222
xwdv wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI won’t do anything I’m afraid, that experiment already failed during the pandemic and now we have massive inflation across all assets.

It is very tempting to draw a straight line between something you don't like and some other event that is negative and declare causation. Do you really think this is what is causing inflation? Perhaps there are other facts, such as trillions of dollars of almost zero interest money injected since 2008, massive tax cuts for highly profitable companies (eg AAPL) that result in great payouts to people who are already pa…

The 6 trillion in government spending, subsidizing labor non-participation with federal money, and canceling federal leases and pipelines and saking banks not to lend for fracking didnt help any of that.

I'm not sure how I see how spending a ton more money (UBI) will help with inflation at this point. 100% debt-to-gdb is already a lot.

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

#263

Post by andrekandre »

IMTDb wrote: post #240
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

  > 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
the other alternative is work from home no?

EDIT: in the context of applebees, i suppose there isnt an alternative hmmmm....

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

#264

Post by nostrademons »

glenstein wrote: post #247
nostrademons wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation, probably followed by corruption. Minimum wage would rise to the point where a person could afford a 1BR apartment within a 1 hour drive without traffic. Then the rents of those 1BR apartments would rise to capture that new minimum wage. Then minimum wage would rise to afford the new rent, and so on. Eventually someone's going to say "Hey, I own an apartment block downtown, I'm supposed to rent it out to th…

>Then the rents of those 1BR apartments would rise to capture that new minimum wage. This is commonly expressed as a consequence of raising the minimum wage, but in the most nuanced discussions of inflation that I've been exposed to, people are mindful of the fact that inflation ripples out into different segments of the economy in different ways. I think the most plausible outcome is that certain segments of the eco…

That's a real phenomena, of inflation rippling outwards and occasionally hitting buffers that cannot pass the price increase on and hence take the hit of inflation disproportionately.

Unfortunately it rarely works the way any progressive would want it to. The "buffers" are firms in competitive markets - basically anyone who can't raise prices because there are dozens of other competitors doing the same thing and one of them is going to undercut you if you try. This includes most unskilled labor, many small businesses, small farmers, etc. It most definitely does not include the S&P 500, who got to be one of the top 500 biggest companies by having high margins, economies of scale, and pricing power. This is why the S&P 500 index is roughly double what it was two years ago, while median real wages have fallen about 5%.

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

#265

Post by [deleted] »

brightball wrote: post #184
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

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…

[deleted]

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

#266

Post by syshum »

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

I commend you for actually defining a "living wage"...

using your standard, against the current average 1 bedroom apt rent in my area, factoring housing as 1/3 of the budget. I come at $11.00-11.75 as minimum wage for my area...

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

#267

Post by cbozeman »

nostrademons wrote: post #208
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

Inflation, probably followed by corruption. Minimum wage would rise to the point where a person could afford a 1BR apartment within a 1 hour drive without traffic. Then the rents of those 1BR apartments would rise to capture that new minimum wage. Then minimum wage would rise to afford the new rent, and so on. Eventually someone's going to say "Hey, I own an apartment block downtown, I'm supposed to rent it out to th…

That's a very long way of saying, "We don't have enough housing in America."

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

#268

Post by warent »

gruez wrote: post #161
wahnfrieden wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overestimate the mobility of a lot of these people. For many it will push them out of work if the wages stop covering the costs

Shouldn't it be easier to look for new jobs if you have a financial buffer? If anything being more pinched => more time being stressed out and/or more time at work (trying to rack up OT) => less time/energy to spend looking for new jobs.

For one reason or another (all of which we must be empathetic to) many people resist change even to their own benefit. I think all humans are guilty of this in some form or another to varying degrees. For some people, change in job / career is met with severe resistance. It takes a catastrophe for people to get going into finding something better.

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

#269

Post by astrange »

tacitusarc wrote: post #259
bogwog wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI could allow the elimination of minimum wage entirely, along with a ton of other scattered welfare programs that have lots of administrative overhead and the typical middleman industries that leech off of government programs. It’s a no-brainer!

It recently occurred to me that the complex Byzantine structure of the existing welfare state does have one major advantage over UBI: it’s significantly harder to make the entire thing agenda driven. As soon as you have a UBI, there will be massive political pressure to use it for some agenda. Of course everyone gets UBI… …except the polluters …and CO2 emitters …and meat eaters …and porn watchers …and weed smokers …a…

Cash welfare is extremely good, but an advantage of directly giving out non-cash welfare like food stamps is that they can't be stolen from the recipient. ie if everything was UBI and you ended up in debt or someone stole your bank account contents, you still can't pay for groceries. But with a guaranteed free groceries program then you can always get something.

Unfortunately, non-cash welfare has tons of the manipulation you describe. You can get kicked out of public housing for using drugs and food stamps have all kinds of arbitrary limitations on them based on what the state legislature thinks you should be eating.

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

#270

Post by dxbydt »

karaterobot wrote: post #231
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 place…

Hey stranger, thanks for doing the math! This is very helpful. I didn't know where to begin, but you've done all the work for me. Thank you again.
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