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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

#361

Post by gruez »

Mezzie wrote: post #338
gruez wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>would reward companies based on the degree to which they enrich their rank and file employees. How would this work? How is this different than a payroll subsidy or the EITC?

Off the top of my head: - Tie tax rates/benefits/penalties to the discrepancy between CEO/C-suite pay and average/lowest-paid employee pay - Tax benefits to companies who provide enriching programs for employees (like some universities that offer tuition benefits and programs to help you get mortgages, etc) - Tax penalties for not giving COL raises each year Etc.

>- Tie tax rates/benefits/penalties to the discrepancy between CEO/C-suite pay and average/lowest-paid employee pay

All that's going to do is cause companies to jettison their lowest paying employees. For instance, Apple would outsource janitors to another company (i'm pretty sure they already do that) and spin out apple stores/genius to another company. That way, the only people you have left are tim cook and other highly paid engineers/designers making 6 figures. Yay we fixed the pay gap!

>- Tax benefits to companies who provide enriching programs for employees (like some universities that offer tuition benefits and programs to help you get mortgages, etc)

1. this just sounds like a roundabout way for governments to fund said "enriching programs", except you're now at the whim of the company rather than the government.

2. this worked great for healthcare insurance, right?

>- Tax penalties for not giving COL raises each year

Sound like that would push employers into moving more of their compensation to year-end bonuses, which can be arbitrarily raised/lowered without being subject to "COL raises". In other words, "good news, you have received a COL raise of 5% this year! bad news, your year end bonus has dropped by 5%"

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

#362

Post by nvahalik »

mym1990 wrote: post #118
nvahalik wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come at this from probably a different perspective. A close family member has been having problems hiring people recently. People want to make a minimum of $15/hr. For some small businesses this is a hard ask. But it's complicated further by the fact that many of the people they have hired have walked out when they got busy. Basically, they want to be paid to sit around and do the minimum amount of work possible. A…

I am not suggesting that the owners try to make the economics work in an impossible way that makes them go out of business, I know the uncertainty in this environment is making things very difficult. But while owners can look at aggregate data, a single worker is looking at this as a way to survive until tomorrow. They don't want to be made into a statistic, so the owners should keep that to themselves.

One would think that but given how quickly some people give up and go without a job leads me to think that something else is at play. That is—if they truly needed the job I don’t think people would give up and leave so easily.

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

#363

Post by Spooky23 »

sokoloff wrote: post #123
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

The word “afford” is doing a lot of work there. Is paying 40% of gross income for rent “too much”? 35%? 30%? What if utilities were included vs not? 10th percentile rent? 25th percentile?

Usually 36-40% is the standard. Around $1000 assuming $15 minimum wage and full time employment.

There’s already a standard for this with things like Section 8 vouchers. It’s hilarious how many HN commenters think these are intractable, impossible problems.

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

#364

Post by xeromal »

warent wrote: post #268
gruez wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, there's probably a few aspects to that.

* Fear of change has to drive a bit of it

* Satisfaction: This is a personal reason of mine. I make a solid technology wage that probably rests somewhere in the middle or maybe low-middle. I could definitely find myself a 15-20% bump if I tried, but I am so damn happy with my employer that I really don't feel the need. As long as my current wage tracks inflation, I honestly would be ok with not making any more money.

* Convenience

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

#365

Post by daniel-cussen »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #339
daniel-cussen wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because their work has so much value and they get paid none of it. EDIT: That's what Henry George said. The reason San Francisco land has so much value and the land in an undeveloped part of California has nearly none is the development, meaning the work of developing it, what human hands do to the land to transform it, the construction. You can sprinkle gold on it and nothing, put a bulldozer there (capital)…

Most of the price is due to the shortage of land, near the employment market, where the government has permitted any housing to exist. Someone paid over a million for a half-burned shell in Walnut Creek, which is a lot more than a very nice house in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah exactly. Couldn't have put it better myself.

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

#366

Post by pvarangot »

archhn wrote: post #126

These chain restaurants have always freaked me out. I know most of the people working there are at the bottom of the barrel, but their job forces them to feign a cheery demeanor. It's like underclass hell--imo.

I've got friends that work those jobs and they are usually in a cheery demeanor all the time, even when they are angry. I couldn't do it because my default demeanor is like "depressed" but I understand that they get easy money out of it.

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

#367

Post by chaostheory »

colechristensen wrote: post #299
thghtihadanacct wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds all well and good but I live in a desirable central coast city and thanks to SB9 I can now build 4 extra res units on my property. You are mistaken if you think anyone is going to spend that effort and charge anything less than current market ... maybe more, new houses are expensive. What we need is subsidized housing close to mass transit, single payer medicine, progressive tax reform and subsidized chil…

We do not need subsidized housing further driving up prices. We need fewer people in the market and that means less availability of large loans and taxes on commercial real estate loans. You can't have so many people competing to buy real estate to rent to you and pushing out people who want to buy. And people need to be comfortable when a region doesn't want to grow, force them to curtail their commercial zoning, an…

More companies need to embrace remote work full time in order for this to happen.

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

#368

Post by [deleted] »

ramones13 wrote: post #192
jpcfl wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

But should a 27 year-old fry cook make enough money to live alone? Labor is labor. Pay shouldn’t be less because it’s going to an acceptable to abuse class of person.

[deleted]

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

#369

Post by wnevets »

gruez wrote: post #105
wnevets wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Slightly smaller yachts for the executives.

>Slightly smaller yachts for the executives. Yeah, it will result in lower real income for executives ...along with anyone that make more than 3x the poverty threshold, per CBO's report: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_Sta...

Is that using the same logic that predicted the Ford Motor Company would go bankrupt in a few years after they raised their minimum wage over a 100 years ago?

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

#370

Post by metaphor »

dlbucci wrote: post #132
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

Or, you know, have a Cost of Living/Inflation adjustment every year. That's such a simple idea to me and it's sort of insane to me that not only is that not something that happens, but no one seems to be even suggesting it (or at least, no politicians are campaigning on it). Hell, adjusting the 70's minimum wage to today's dollars puts it at like $24, so just hearing that, I don't know how it shouldn't be around ther…

> Hell, adjusting the 70's minimum wage to today's dollars puts it at like $24...

Bullshit...the unqualified assertion doesn't even pass a ballpark sniff test using Department of Labor's historical federal minimum wage rates[1] and Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI inflation calculator[2] against Feb 2022 buying power.

  | Eff Date | Rate | Today |
  |----------|------|-------|
  | Jan 1970 | 1.60 | 12.01 |
  | May 1974 | 2.00 | 11.68 |
  | Jan 1975 | 2.10 | 11.44 |
  | Jan 1976 | 2.30 | 11.74 |
  | Jan 1978 | 2.65 | 12.03 |
  | Jan 1979 | 2.90 | 12.05 |
[1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart

[2] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

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