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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

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason no one is building expensive apartments in these areas with socialist like governments is because of things like rent control and laws that disadvantage landlords, and which make the prospect of leasing to poor people completely undesirable. This is why a huge number of the apartments in California are sitting empty, because it is still better to have an empty apartment than having a poor person living the…

> This is why a huge number of the apartments in California are sitting empty, California has one of the lowest rates of unoccupied housing in the country: https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/vacancy-rates-stud... Not only is your explanation of the effect a fantasy born of ideology rather than fact, but even the effect you purport to explain is such a fantasy.

Huh, you are absolutely right. The internet is full of articles saying the exact opposite, but none of them compare California to other states. Turns out this is part of a push, by certain political groups, to introduce even more laws to disadvantage landlords into the California property market, and I fell for it. Thanks for setting me straight on that.

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

#502
post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any income surplus generated by UBI Typical UBI proposals are funded, e.g., by additional progressive taxes, and so no actual income surplus is generated (in a first-order analysis), income is redistributed, compressing distribution.

> funded, e.g., by additional progressive taxes At which point the proposal becomes a welfare system that pointlessly disburses and claws-back cash.

Not really. The fundamental problem of means-tested welfare programs that UBI addresses remain:

(1) Eliminates multiple sets of inefficient benefits/eligibility bureaucracy that duplicates functionality already performed as part of taxing authority.

(2) Eliminates a counterproductive incentives associated with typical means-tested benefit eligibility, which has clawbacks at low income levels and rapid marginal rate (sometimes exceeding 100% with marginal income when tallied across all means-tested programs; this effect creates a barrier to progress beyond a low income level. (While progressive income taxes may be raised from previous levels to fund it, when viewed as clawbacks these changes typically kick in at much higher income levels and lower marginal rates than typical means-tested benefit clawback.)

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

#503
post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> funded, e.g., by additional progressive taxes At which point the proposal becomes a welfare system that pointlessly disburses and claws-back cash.

Not really. The fundamental problem of means-tested welfare programs that UBI addresses remain: (1) Eliminates multiple sets of inefficient benefits/eligibility bureaucracy that duplicates functionality already performed as part of taxing authority. (2) Eliminates a counterproductive incentives associated with typical means-tested benefit eligibility, which has clawbacks at low income levels and rapid marginal rate (…

(3) Eliminates the psychological torment that being subjected to a means-tested welfare program can inflict.

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

#504
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory is just supply and demand, which is how prices are determined in a competitive market. If you give everyone $20k, would you expect grocery stores to raise the price of bananas to $20/lb? Probably not, since people can just go to the grocery store down the street. Now if everyone suddenly wanted to buy more bananas with their new cash that would have an effect, but that’s how markets are supposed to work. I…

Who would supply these bananas? After receiving $20,000, do you think the farmer's laborers will go to work the next day for the same wage as before? The trucker? The grocery store cashier? Will the "grocery store down the street" be immune to the higher labor costs?

The gocery worker and trucker will have a better bargaining position, yes. On the other hand, they can also affort to take a lower pay because their basic needs are already covered and any additional income can be spent on luxory. So yeah they will demand better working conditions and goods will increase somewhat in price - but there is no reason to expect that this will be proportionally to the UBI amount.

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

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a rising rates environment, house sale prices tend to fall (or rise much more slowly at best).

Really? Can you share more about this mechanism? I actually noticed someone opposite (are maybe it's the same mechanism) in the area I live in: House sale prices are rising like everywhere else, but rents stay mostly flat. I'd love to learn more about it.

Take a fixed monthly payment, with lower rates the principal can go up. Thus house prices can go up. On other hand renters have the same pretty much fixed monthly payment.

Rent's are not tied directly to value of property, but need to service the debt linked to property. Or equivalent one.

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

#506
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s a no-brainer! ...aside from how it's funded. >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. That sounds great in theory, if everyone is the type of person that can take care of himself for $15k (or whatever) a year. But what about people with special needs? eg. people with mental health p…

> But what about people with special needs? eg. people with mental health problems or medical conditions requiring expensive therapy? Unless you think we should let those people fend for themselves, you'll still need welfare programs to help those people Speaking from experience, such people already have to fend for themselves...so nothing really changes.

Something changes: Those people can spend the energy that they currently need to chase after means-tested benefits on getting better. Being poor is not just expensive, it can also be extremely mentally taxing.

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

#507

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…

My pet theory is cities are malthusian. Contrary to popular belief, Malthus didn't predict runaway population growth. What he actually predicted (and was right for most of human history), is that any gains in productivity would be eaten up by population growth until the average wealth per person diluted down to it's previous level. So back to cities. Here's my pet theory. You build more apartments, or faster trains o…

> So back to cities. Here's my pet theory. You build more apartments, or faster trains or whatever to expand the availability and affordability of 1 be apartments within a 1 hour commute, and it will work for a while, but within a few years people chasing opportunity will have moved to the city until the rents and costs of living eventually return to previous levels.

That's still okay, though, as during the process (and even at the end point in your scenario) much better lives and opportunity have been provided to much greater numbers of people.

If people like the QoL benefits of density, we should do what we can to provide it, even if it causes the same sort of CoL squeezing down the road with whatever optimizations we can put in place. It will still benefit more people, and maybe we can come up with yet more optimizations.

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

#508
post #177
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 won’t do anything I’m afraid, that experiment already failed during the pandemic and now we have massive inflation across all assets.

How much funds were paid out to individuals aka UBI and how much was spent to stimulate business? How much of those funds paid out to individuals were funded via additional progressive income/wealth taxes rather than just printed?

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

#509

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…

I agree that UBI would be better than minimum wages. Until we have UBI though (and it does not look like that it will be a reality anytime soon if only because those with wealth really don't like wealth redistribution schemes) minimum wage is the next best thing we have.

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

#510
post #343
post #10

This is the reason why communities like r/antiwork are so massive. The sad fact is that working class people who don't possess rarer skills are frequently mistreated this severely. In other words it's much easier for a sociopath to exploit unskilled labor than skilled labor. This in my opinion is part of the responsibility of the government which they've been largely failing at lately, it's supposed to balance busine…

More people need to learn some labor history. The oligarchs and people at the top aren't your friend. Granted, neither are most middle managers or small business owners, they just have a smaller pool of people to throw into the furnace so it's in their own best interest to show some restraint.

Also middle managers are out of job if they can't fulfil their goals. Slave masters have only so much use when they don't effectively extra enough out of the slaves under their control. Maybe someone else will do better job.
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