It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage • Hacker News Board

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#421

Post by effingwewt » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 3:21 AM UTC

beervirus wrote: post #408

effingwewt wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the PPP loans every company took and used it to pay the owners while laying off/firing their workforce, was that not a handout?

Forgiven loans are surely also a handout, although… the whole point of how the forgiveness was structured was to prevent people from firing or laying off their workers. So I think your comment is based on a false premise.

Not even close when people were opening businesses just to get them, or fluffing theur payroll to get the max. They also just had to use X% for payroll, didn't say how much to whom, so you can just imagine how that panned out.

Incidentally you can look up what businesses have taken in loans.[1]

[1] https://www.federalpay.org/paycheck-protection-program/

edit to add- a lot of business owners including my own father took the max possible even though he didn't need it one bit, as not doing so was 'leaving money on the table'

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#422

Post by foxyv » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

I think a major source of the loss of wages and benefits despite a higher than ever per-capita GDP is an insane increase in rent seeking by government and land owners. When taxes, fees, fines, and rent all go up, small business owners are forced to cut into something to make the books balance. You can see spaces looking like Golem's cave renting for $15k a month.

It's tempting to say they should just raise prices, however they are competing with massive organizations that can run at a loss for decades and have capital to burn. There is just no way anyone will pay $30 a plate for hole in the wall Mexican food when they have to pay rent on their $2000 a month 1 BR apartment. Especially when Chipotle down the street is offering comparable food for $10 a plate.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#423

Post by curryst » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #286

gruez wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you also need to factor in the demand curve. Raising the price by 25% also means there will be less customers, which means your fixed costs (eg. rent, equipment) go up for each unit of good sold.

Every restaurant could raise every price on the menu by a dollar tomorrow and I wouldn't notice unless it was a soda or something. I'm highly skeptical a small increase in prices would drive people away. Like with minimum wage increases, every time it's allegedly going to be the end of small businesses in the area and then it never is.

I'm with you, but others do notice. I know several people who will off-handedly comment on small increases in produce prices.

Likewise with items moving on/off the dollar menu at fast food places.

If there are 4 people in your family, that's an extra $4 at least, which is ~30 minutes of minimum wage, or about 1.25% of a week's pay before taxes. I'm not going to try to guess what portion of that hypothetical family's income is expendable, but if it's 1.25% of their total weekly earnings then it's probably a much higher percentage of their weekly disposable income.

If you've got $40 a week left over as disposable income, an extra $4 starts to seem like a lot more. In an economy where most people can't cover a surprise $200 bill, $4 means something to a lot of people.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#424

Post by urthor » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 11:13 PM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #342

bsagdiyev wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christ, people here and their taller than standard horses. My girlfriends dad owns a pizza place and walked away with $5k last year, after paying rent, supply and wages. Where do they magically pull this money from? They aren’t evil banker types with bags marked “$$$” full of money like people here seem to think and it is disgusting they’re considered cheap instead of just “people will absolutely not pay the increase…

Small businesses have notoriously high rates of failure, restaurants seem like a huge risk with pretty modest possible reward. My guess is you'd be more likely to get rich being a pro athlete than as a restaurant owner. Yet they get treated like evil "fat cats" by a certain section of the intelligentsia. Many of whom simultaneously believe global mega corporations who profit from wars and dictatorships, avoid paying…

This pretty much.

Small business that doesn't make much money, doesn't pay its workers much, and requires a lot of exploitation to keep the doors open.

Now the workers are leaving and those businesses are going bust.

It's capitalism at work, but it hurts if you run a not so profitable pizza joint.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#425

Post by strix_varius » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 3:16 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #320

Ericson2314 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> capital owners that lend around money at extortionate rates and run to the nanny state to print money and save their skin whenever their bets go sour. Guess which strata gets most of the flak. Your heart is in the right place, but you are doing the devil's work by accident. "extortionate rates" and "printing money" do not happen at once! We have low interest rates, which are good for debtors . The banks now will ge…

It's actually quite interesting. Keynes figured out that government stimulus works but it only solves the money problem. When you solve the money problem people simply flee into a different asset that maintains its value. That asset is land. So the business cycle also results in a real estate cycle. "Solving" the dot com bubble encouraged land speculation and ultimately ended in 2008. The problem isn't the stimulus a…

> There simply isn't any good argument for why money earned off the land itself should go to a private individual. It should go to the government because it is protecting the land with its army and building infrastructure to maintain its value.

Is this not what happens, in a distributed way, via property taxes?

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#426

Post by hungryforcodes » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:46 AM UTC

effingwewt wrote: post #298

atrus wrote: post #12

Painfully obvious too. My little local Mexcian place will be closing down because of a lack of cooks. Talking to the owner, he was complaining about government benefits, and how they all want $20 an hour. I don't understand it, that you'd either a) be willing to drive your business into the ground serving a limited menu because you won't hire a couple cooks at $20 an hour, or b) have a business so close to the brink…

Amazing is the cognitive dissonance on display. The business owners one and all took the PPP loans which were essentially grants, and that was OK, but when it's for the workers it's destroying their predatory businesses. And they would rather close than make less profit to pay a living wage. We already get no healthcare and no retirement. How much further down can we be pushed?

Only in the US. In Canada and Europe of course you get retirement and healthcare.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#427

Post by missedthecue » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

totony wrote: post #312

missedthecue wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you saying? That someone would rather earn $0 to pay their rent than earn $15/hr to pay their rent?

It really does not matter if neither can afford the rent

So the millions of unemployed are living under bridges right now or what?