971–980 of 1001 posts
They have fast food and other restaurants here, but there’s a shortage of good bagels. They seem crowded at the times one would expect. I think things come down to what people expect and how they set things up.
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> today’s America, where everyone has more than enough to eat What are you talking about? Nearly 1 in 4 households experienced food insecurity during the pandemic. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-...
“Food insecurity” has nothing to do with not having enough food to eat. It’s a term designed to confuse.
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>I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 * 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.
First off, you need transportation to work. In most of America, this means, you need a car, gas, insurance, and maintenance. Secondly, you need uniforms. These are often paid for out of your check and come from companies that have pretty comfortable markup. Then you have the "expensive to be poor items" Such as getting your paycheck on what amounts to a Visa gift card, because cheap employers are transitioning to pay…
Split shifts is a horror story. I've seen my younger sister working at a restaurant, the main hours are 12am-2pm then 7pm-11pm.
What are you supposed to do during the massive break in the middle? It's royally screwing up your day.
To make things worse, a trip in the tube and back will cost you £3 to £5, a sizable chunk of your first hour (£8/hour pretax).
As if the night hours and pay were not terrible enough, the hours are set daily on a short notice. You constantly must adjust your schedule and if there's less hours to do you simply don't get paid.
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A lot of people I know who stop being software engineers do it because they found something more profitable. (Management, executive track, founding their own company, etc.) Part of the reason is that salary progression after the first 10 years is generally flat for IC level. Yet, it continues almost indefinitely for other tracks or roles related to software.
That's a different issue though, isn't it? The money in software development is still much better than in most industries. I don't think millions of people are thinking "well, I could make lots of money in software ... but management pays much better if I get one of those jobs ... so I better go into [unrelated, lower paying field]". What I'm trying to say is that software is very attractive compared to other jobs, b…
No, it is not.
It's only FAANG and a few companies that pay well, and they are only located in the most expensive cities in the world (Silicon Valley, New York). Guess what, there's plenty of other high paying jobs in these locations.
If anything, the highest paid job is management, across all industries, because it's always better paid than the people underneath.
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That would only be true if, when I went to the supermarket, there was a display of strawberries that said over it "Low Low Prices Enabled By Virtual Slavery And Other Worker Abuses!", and another display of strawberries next to it that said "Slightly Higher Prices, But Their Workers Live Well!" You can't claim the market will resolve things when there is no meaningful opportunity for customers to "vote with their wal…
> Slightly Higher Prices I think it's more than slightly higher. Cherries and peaches are both stone fruit. They're grown in similar regions, and the trees are so closely related you see hybrids commonly marketed. Cherries are regularly 2x-3x the price by weight because the smaller fruit means they're more labor intensive. Raspberries are also noticeably more expensive than strawberries, and I assume it's because the…
That said, even 2x the price for strawberries (at least around here) would only be another $3-5, depending on what size container you bought. That would still fall in the range of "slightly higher" in my book, at least in an absolute sense.
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> there are a variety of options between the extremes. There are a variety of options completely outside of that continuum. Like, how about a democratically planned economy where we intentionally work on things that actually help society instead of just whatever happens to make the most profit for the current owners? I think a big part of burnout is that the work we're doing is clearly pointless. I'm stuck writing de…
> I'm stuck writing debugging shitty Android apps all day. Can I please go plant some forests or something? If this was the status quo, there'd be just as many people thinking "I'm stuck outside doing manual labor planting trees. Can I please spent time doing something mindless sitting at a desk in a climate controlled workspace instead?" Someone out there is deriving value from the android app you're debugging or el…
Where does this sort of axiomatic economic thinking come from?
Tons of software projects really are completely pointless and will never turn a profit or generate value. And not even in a "the bet was worth making way" -- walk into any Fortune 500 and you'll find whole armies of people doing pointless busy work. Not confined to enterprises, though -- "special projects" are a thing in startups too. I've seen 10% layoffs -- literally workforce decimation -- without a single meaningful change to the economic output of the business. And that's the private sector. Anything defense-related is at least 100x worse in terms of pointless busy-work.
I don't quite understand how these sorts of neo-classical micro-econ axioms have such huge mindshare. Business managers are not omnipotent, and many aren't even competent.
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A 10% profit can be a lot, if like many restaurants you're pulling $5-10k in revenue in a day. Many owners own multiple restaurants, too.
It's a hugely risky business, especially if you're not a national chain. Most mom-and-pop restaurants don't last long. 10% isn't that big a return for that kind of risk.
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$1400/mo for rent seems exorbitant, especially if you're working a minimum wage job.
Exorbitant rent is a fact of life in major cities
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> 2 tanks a week? When I lived in Spring and commuted to the office at 610 North and I-45, it was 2 tanks a week for the 35 minute drive. That was 7 years ago. > 200 bucks a month for shit tier food? Ever heard of cooking? One week of food for one person: 2lb white rice, $1.5 1lb beans, $1.25 2lb ground meat, $10 1gal milk, $4 1lb sharp cheddar, $5 1 loaf bread, $3.5 total... $25. Times four weeks, you get $100. I ne…
$1400/mo for rent seems exorbitant, especially if you're working a minimum wage job.
I think what is happening is young professionals who make decent money and come from middle class backgrounds and have never lived outside of the uptown exclusive areas see their rent and say "I can't imagine how hard it would be for minimum wage workers" thinking they live with the same expenses.
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All those regional chains you mentioned pay significantly better than McDonalds, YUM, etc. as well.
Yes, the point of most franchised chains is to extract wealth from communities rather than invest in a stable, skilled workforce delivering a good product. McDonalds, YUM Brands, et all charge large franchise fees and force use of particular vendors and business practices to ensure they extract as much income as possible from their franchisees.