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

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

#421

Post by tartoran » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:37 AM UTC

wowokay wrote: post #232

tartoran wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

Cheaper places have fewer work opportunities and one end up with slightly cheaper rents and even lower wages but thats okay if the wage is enough to pay rent. Minimum wage is not. The assertion I made is not for expensive places but not rural either. Anywhere urban is already hard to make a living on Applebee’s salaries.

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

#422

Post by giraffe_lady » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:37 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #206

giraffe_lady wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the restaurant industry so it's more on the level of like, the one that lets you take an unpaid day off every once in a while.

These are businesses that operate on single digit profit margins. And are easily replaced by eating meals at home. They either find a way to procure cheap labor, or shut down, because Applebees clientele do not really have the will or ability to spend more at Applebees.

Grew up in the restaurant business and worked it decades before switching to this, I know.

Believe me these people have an easy enough time justifying this shit to themselves they really don't need your help.

You're exactly right: if they can't find a way to run the business without depending on exploitative labor practices they need to shut it down.

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

#423

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:38 AM UTC

caddemon wrote: post #325

foolfoolz wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

living alone is a luxury all over the world. i don’t think it’s good to expect minimum wage will afford you a luxury style of living. we don’t have the infrastructure to support that for all. nor does any country

2 people sharing a 1 bedroom is a pretty low bar, I think minimum wage should afford someone their own bedroom. However I do often see people claiming no one should have to have any sort of roommates, even if they are a single minimum wage earner trying to support a spouse and children. I agree with you in that I don't understand why having to share a kitchen or living room is such an issue.

The problem is always finding good roommates who aren’t secretly murder hobos. Sharing can work, but it seems to be getting harder and harder as we have to rely more and more on close vetting via friends and family.

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

#424

Post by a4isms » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:40 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #317

a4isms wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you run a business, you choose a location. If the landlord does something that causes a noxious smell, it's on you to fix it. We don't say, "Well, that's the landlord's fault." Your business, your leasing arrangements. When you run a business, you choose employees. If an employee does something noxious, it's on you to fix it. We don't say, "Well, that's the employee's fault." Your business, your employee hiring,…

This is a stretch. The corporate office may or may not have the contractual ability to intervene; they can't just cancel franchisees because they feel like it. More importantly, it's up to journalists and even randos on HN to avoid trying to confuse the relationships involved. If some McD's manager said something stupid and offensive, we can't indict the whole chain. Individual humans have agency.

No, they may not have the contractual opportunity to intervene, just as if I leave a location on unfavourable terms, I may not be able to compel the landlord to solve a noxious odour smell. But that's the risk I willingly take when I negotiate that lease.

And where franchises are concerned, I have little empathy for the franchisor. They chose franchising as a business model for its advantages, such as making franchisees finance their growth, and having a captive market for products and services they compel the franchisees to resell.

I think when you choose to be a franchisor, you're willingly accepting the inherent tradeoff of growth in exchange for the risk that your reputation and brand will suffer if franchisees behave badly.

I'm sure Ford isn't happy that some of its independent dealers take a hot seller like the new Bronco and mark it up $10,000 or $20,000 above MSRP for customers who ordered one thinking they'd pay MSRP.

But the headlines in the newspapers rarely say "Reggie's Westchester Ford-Lincoln is ripping customers off," the headlines say "Ford Dealers are ripping customers off," and the public rarely gives a lot of thought as to whether Ford can do anything about it, they think, "Ford ought to do something about it."

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

#425

Post by metaphor » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:44 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

Apologies for the approximation nit and acknowledged that it was all back of the envelope, but $11.11/hr struck me as low at face value.

Upping the ante a bit, let's further assume single standard deduction earner with a $1911 net monthly income requirement (because you can't actually pay with money you don't have), which roughly implies 12% marginal tax bracket. Let's also account for fixed 6.2% social security withholding, and fixed 1.45% medicare withholding.

Squaring against this standard 2022 IRS Publication 15-T withholding method[1], we come to the following arithmetic expression to determine gross monthly income requirement:

(grossMonthly - fixed10pc - marginal12pc - ssWithholding - mcWithholding = netMonthly)

  x - 85.60 - 0.12(x - 1935) - 0.062x - 0.0145x = 1911

Crunching the numbers (~$2196 gross monthly income) while using your proposed 4.3 weeks per month scalar, it's more like $12.77/hr (or $11.11 being -13.0% in relative error).

To be sure, this assumes complete omission of common tax-advantaged benefits such as deferred 401(k) retirement savings and medical/dental insurance coverage.

> The minimum wage in Florida is currently $8.65 per hour.

Florida's prevailing minimum wage is in fact $10/hr[2], with scheduled increases at $1 every year towards a $15/hr target by 2026[3].

[1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15t.pdf ref PDF p. 59

[2] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/state#fl

[3] https://floridajobs.org/docs/default-source/business-growth-...

EDIT: Whoops, accidentally used table values for two-or-more jobs scaling; corrected.

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

#426

Post by ALittleLight » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:44 AM UTC

ThatPlayer wrote: post #402

ALittleLight wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No? They have less experience and education on account of being young. Some teens may be geniuses who are better than anyone else, and business owners would be well advised to hire those genius teens at market rates, but some teens will not be as productive as their older counterparts and they shouldn't find themselves forbidden from working just because their labor cannot sell for more than minimum wage.

Age does not equal experience and education. There are jobs where you don't need any experience and education anyways. The ones that are typically considered minimum wage jobs, like cleaning or restocking shelves. Employers shouldn't be able to hire teenagers for cheap just because they're younger, especially since a teenager isn't going to be less productive than an adult with those types of jobs.

Age is an upper bound on experience and is related to experience and education if not equal. The average 19 year old, all else equal, will have less experience and education than the average 45 year old in the same field. There are exceptions of course - but they are only exceptions.

I'm curious given your view that employers shouldn't be able to hire teens to do low wage jobs what you think about immigration. Is it the same thing, that we shouldn't allow low skill immigrants because they will compete for minimum wage jobs, or do you have a different view there and if so, why?

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

#427

Post by grapeskin » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:45 AM UTC

crate_barre wrote: post #397

greiskul wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the Georgian explanation that rent seeking landlords will always increase rent to match any gains in production. Assuming that a landlord will always charge the maximum they can that market will sustain, any increase in production will mean an increase in what the market can pay for housing, and with time, what the landlord can extract from tenants. It neatly explains how cost of living correlates to jo…

Isn’t that where remote work kicks in but we’re too stupid to realize? If the tech people don’t need to concentrate in one area, good luck jacking up the prices to siphon off that wealth. Tech needs to create a box. Literally, a hurricane proof box that that plugs into plumbing. Drop it anywhere in the world and fucking live in it. It’s the same box for everyone, like the iPhone, iPhones are not more expensive in Bay…

I know people living in those famously cheap Midwest areas people online always propose as the obvious solution to avoid high rents. Rents even in nowhere areas have blown up recently.

And remote work really won’t change rents much for normal people. People want to live where their family and friends are, where some good restaurants are, where some good weekend activities are, where some nice nature is an hour or two away, where a good hospital isn’t too far, and where grocery stores stock good food. Any one of these and landlords decide it’s okay to raise prices 30% a year.

People theoretically have a choice, but every landlord everywhere is doing this. People leave one town with rapidly increasing rents and go to the next, and those landlords do the same while the people in the already expensive town never lower prices. There is no escape or alternative.

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

#428

Post by esprehn » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:51 AM UTC

IMTDb wrote: post #358

andrekandre wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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....

The vast majority of jobs cannot be done remotely. The HN crowd is heavily skewed toward programming / engineering jobs that can sometimes be done remotely. But overall, most jobs do require a physical presence. Think "people care" (and all the ramifications or that: babies, children, sick, elders + everything around that). All people working in stores (unless we exclusively want online shops). Transportation of good…

This is a discussion I've had with a number of folks.

To shift to a world of "mostly" remote work in reality means the smaller population of higher paid desk workers working from home, and everyone else having to commute to in person jobs.

Worse if companies don't adjust wages to match local rates (per the protests of many tech workers) we end up with deep income disparity between the remote workers and in person ones. Bringing many of the problems of a place like SF to all the other locations.

It feels like something has to give, or the society that results is awfully dystopian.

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

#429

Post by imgabe » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:53 AM UTC

gotaquestion wrote: post #418

imgabe wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the only job you can get doesn't even pay for that? Then the solution is to make yourself capable of getting other jobs.

I guess they should take on more college debt to get a programming degree, right? Or in your world, the minimum wage is just for kids, is that it? Or it is just their fault that you got lucky where something you like is high paying, and something they like and are good at pays shit?

You don’t need a degree to learn programming. There are many, many other jobs besides programming that pay more than minimum wage with varying levels of requirements. People hanging drywall and digging ditches make more than minimum wage.

You think everybody with a job paying more than minimum wage is doing something they love?

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

#430

Post by ThatPlayer » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:54 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #426

ThatPlayer wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age does not equal experience and education. There are jobs where you don't need any experience and education anyways. The ones that are typically considered minimum wage jobs, like cleaning or restocking shelves. Employers shouldn't be able to hire teenagers for cheap just because they're younger, especially since a teenager isn't going to be less productive than an adult with those types of jobs.

Age is an upper bound on experience and is related to experience and education if not equal. The average 19 year old, all else equal, will have less experience and education than the average 45 year old in the same field. There are exceptions of course - but they are only exceptions. I'm curious given your view that employers shouldn't be able to hire teens to do low wage jobs what you think about immigration. Is it…

If you believe someone should be paid lower because of lower experience and education, then pay them based on their experience and education. Not on their age.

Otherwise, what experience and education do you expect that a brand new adult entering the job market to have that a teenager will not? An adult who needs (at least) minimum wage to be able to survive, and a week ago was a teenager. Who is going to hire such an adult when they could hire the teenager, with identical experience and education, for cheaper?

Low skill immigrants are still getting minimum wage aren't they? You're arguing that teenagers shouldn't even get that much. Or are you suggesting that low skill immigrants shouldn't get minimum wage either?