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My example comes from Greece where I reside for the past 9 months. People owning touristic buisnesses on the islands are moaning about how much they need more

My example comes from Greece where I reside for the past 9 months. People owning touristic buisnesses on the islands are moaning about how much they need more staff and can't find any, and they are arguing why younger people tend to not work and just receive benefits instead of going to work. The argument here that they won't understand though is that, 1st they are paying very low. They are all willing to pay the minimum salary available... which is somewhat 500 euros. It varies from 500 to 900 euros and 1200 in best cases. The unemployment benefit is 400+ euros per month. So tell me who in their right minds would go to work for 500 euros or even 800 euros, whilst they have to spend petrol to get from and to work, work prolly 10+ hours a day, in the sun most likely cause thats what means tourism industry, get told by 'BOSSES' on what to do, and get treated awfully. There is just no point. And then all I hear from those guys owning massive hotels making 1m+ revenue in their pockets per year saying : 'Cant find anyone good to work for you nowadays, its all youngsters fault'. Well ok I'll admit that prolly youngsters dont have the nerves that older people had in their age, but at the same time you are not helping the situation at all when you are offering money that someone will just pass by and you are making 1m+ euros in your pocket a year, and then the only way to keep profiting is to steal a bit on tax and of course not fully insure your employees. AWFUL system!

mkohlmyr 8y ago
I wonder if it's quite as simple as being reducible to salary as a single (or majority) variable. I tend to think people are willing to work a poorly paid job if there was some kind of light at the end of the tunnel (career advancement, primarily). (As a casual outside observer, and with all due respect) My bet would be that a pervasive sense of pointlessness or helplessness in society is an equal partner along with low entry level salaries in the case of Greece and many countries that face similar struggles.
- scarface74 8y ago
  And it doesn’t help that large companies use to hire jobs that are low skilled directly and at least there was an opportunity for advancement. But now with most of those jobs being contracted out, there is no chance for advancement. I’m even seeing that in IT. Back in the day you could start out as tech support, or an operator (as I did - long story) and be given a chance to program and move up. Now even those jobs are outsourced. It’s just as easy to hire someone from a foreign country to admin your AWS hosted instances as it is to hire someone locally.
- pdimitar 8y ago
  There are only so many dollars you can shave off of your employment budget before people decide they do not have to bother. It's an escalating problem in Eastern Europe in general. Our politicians are way too greedy. They lost all perspective. They try being a bit more insolent since the last year, they sit and wait -- no revolts, no fires, no pitchforks. So hey, these people don't mind! Let's get EVEN MORE money from them! Sadly it's how it has been going ever since the fall of the Soviet Union. Many elderly people say: "It was not all sunshine and rainbows back then either but at least the people had everything necessary to live respectful lives". They do have a point. Thank the gods for internet and for me being a programmer ever since teenager. Otherwise I would probably live off social benefits as well. It's very easy to demean people for being lazy or unmotivated or non-ambitious. But the reality is, the best career advancement ~85% of the people around here can hope for is an awful job with 2-3 hours of commuting in total for the day, for an income that exceeds the bare minimum needs with 5-10%. So it's pretty normal many decide not to bother, or to turn to petty crime.
  - biztos 8y ago
    The version of that currently operating in Hungary is that even though living on benefits is impossible, you can just go to Austria/Germany/UK and make way more money. Interestingly this is less true of programmers than it is of waiters and cooks, but then it's extremely true of doctors and plumbers. Nobody in Budapest expects to make even a Berlin salary, but the difference is big enough now that lots of people say screw it, better to live abroad at least long enough to buy an apartment and so on at home. But I doubt many of those people will be coming back. Ironically enough you could make a killing as a plumber anywhere in Germany right now, or in Vienna, or in Budapest, as per your choice. But a ton of Hungarian plumbers left when it wasn't like that, and now they have lives in Dinkelacker or wherever.
- ppeetteerr 8y ago
  If people are willing to drive a truck carrying garbage and feces all day, it is about money. Maybe also about shorter work days, but that is also related to money.
- atlantic 8y ago
  It really is reducible to the differential between salary and unemployment benefit, which is the opportunity cost of not taking a job. This is a well-known phenomenon in economics since the stagflation of the 70's, called the "poverty trap".
bbeonx 8y ago
Yeah, it's not like people suddenly changed thirty years ago... It just doesn't make sense to work those jobs.
koolba 8y ago
> The unemployment benefit is 400+ euros per month. So tell me who in their right minds would go to work for 500 euros or even 800 euros, whilst they have to spend petrol to get from and to work, work prolly 10+ hours a day, in the sun most likely cause thats what means tourism industry, There are always people who don't just want to live off the dole. Also a lot of the people who complain about crappy entry level wages (that they're unwilling to accept) also complain that they are rejected from higher jobs because they don't have any work experience. > ... get told by 'BOSSES' on what to do, That's kind of the norm at any job. I'm curious what alternative you propose, a commune where workers decide on their own what they'll be working on? > ... and get treated awfully. That's not acceptable period though specifics matter.
- Ygg2 8y ago
  > a commune where workers decide on their own what they'll be working on? Even a commune where workers "decide on their own", has bosses. They are just not called bosses. See any of the '70 and '80 communes.
- EthanHeilman 8y ago
  >That's kind of the norm at any job. I'm curious what alternative you propose, a commune where workers decide on their own what they'll be working on? Pretty much all the software engineering jobs have worked at have given me quite a bit of autonomy. At least within software engineering organizations the purpose of a manager should be to make sure workers have the necessary resources and coordination, but they shouldn't be telling workers what to do. I know someone that got hired at a company to answer the phone for technical questions from users. When she started they didn't have a phone hooked up yet so she asked for github access and started writing software. They never bothered hooking up a phone at her desk and she just wrote software for the next 2 years. The software she wrote was valuable to the company and was mostly self-directed. I don't think stories like this are that uncommon in the software engineering world. Edit1: Fixed typo, thanks PaulRobinson Edit2: Added Anecdote
  - PaulRobinson 8y ago
    I think you mean "autonomy", and at larger firms, you're going to have to work with others. The ideal is collaboration, but you don't normally get to choose what you work on, your management does.
dddw 8y ago
'undocumented stack du jour' love it!
dmichulke 8y ago
The thing you describe is the narrative of the evil capitalist owner exploiting poor workers. Here's a thought experiment - those (tourism businesses) owners are making lots of money, so why not create such a business yourself (maybe with help of some external capital) and pay better wages and treat your staff better and pay taxes? Your clients will be much happier with you while having to pay the same. Other capitalists are probably happy to get a piece of the cake. Of course, you cannot blame workers to not work in this industry right now, but obviously there are still enough people accepting that type of employment, otherwise salaries would have improved already.
- Applejinx 8y ago
  Small business guy here. When abusive employment practices give you a competitive advantage and nothing stops you from doing them, you can indeed go and be virtuous and make less money for yourself and your business and lose all day long. At the scale of publically held companies, your bossy evilness is virtue signalling that tells the market that you are viable in the era of Uber and Amazon. Right now, as things stand, wrecking things and your own employees is expected and you will get no support and no investment from breaking ranks. That's just how it is. In my field, I ended up just flipping the table and switching to Patreon so I could dump free competitive product and better serve my own userbase. My income got literally decimated by this decision but has rebounded to about a third or half of what it would have been, but I'm totally exempt from having to behave like a vulture: it suits my market positioning quite well, though if I was a really serious threat to the market leaders in my sector, I'm pretty sure they would come up with a way to sabotage me. That's also why I MIT license: I can funnel good stuff to poor musicians if I also let already-rich people steal it in exchange for only publicity. The alternate is they steal it anyway but with no publicity, or simply try to wreck my operation so there's less competition. The narrative of the evil capitalist overlord persists for good reason: in the absence of a working society it's down to power and power alone, and only winning and getting the most capital allows you to continue to win and get more capital. It's a feedback loop and there's no reason 'salaries would improve' barring outside interference, which is less likely by the year. Go ahead and do your thought experiment, but it doesn't map to the real world of 2018. To survive you've got to think more disruptively: your axioms here are pretty naive. For instance, what is actually important: your clients being happy, or your clients paying more money?
inertiatic 8y ago
Just a few notes: After a few years of full time employment I received a bit over 300 euro a month I believe, for a full year, when I was fired myself. And I believe the maximum amount of time where you can be eligible for unemployment benefits over here in Greece is a year or so. I believe a large cause for the apathy in people who you'd expect to work these jobs is the fact that working a job like that doesn't move you forward in any way. Back in the day, you could work for a few years and survive on your salary and hope to open your own business. Now what's the dream for these workers? They can never afford to save up on their 500 euro a month. They can never get a loan to open their own business. The best they can hope is that they won't be discarded and their job given to a more young-looking person down the line.
- pc86 8y ago
  > Now what's the dream for these workers? They can never afford to save up on their 500 euro a month. They can never get a loan to open their own business. Work harder. Make more money if you want to do your own thing. Surely there are professionals in Greece making good money working as employees for others. What are they doing that the lazy uneducated worker is not? Do more of that and less complaining that you're making 500 euro a month.
  - felix_nagaand 8y ago
    You're suggesting they pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Put on some boots and try to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Let me know your vertical.
    - logfromblammo 8y ago
      What boots? I can only afford flip-flops. Try pulling on those straps, and see what happens. Not only are you still not upright, but you just ruined your shoes, and have to pay yet another $3 to replace them.
    - pc86 8y ago
      I suggesting that maybe, just maybe hard work might play a role in things. If someone doesn't want to work hard for 800 euro because they can get 400 euro for nothing, do they have the mindset and drive necessary to become wealthy in today's economy?
swebs 8y ago
>The unemployment benefit is 400+ euros per month. So tell me who in their right minds would go to work for 500 euros Is there a limit to how long you can collect unemployment? In Finland if you still haven't found a job in about a year, you stop getting payments altogether. And while getting payments, you still have to prove that you're actually searching for a job and not just trying to scam taxpayers.
- swarnie_ 8y ago
  Similar system in the UK, you have to demonstrate you're applying for jobs. If you're offered something and you refuse to take it your cut off. I think they may even force you in to unpaid/extremely low paid work if you cant get something yourself.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- fintelligence 8y ago
  The above is incorrect. Basic unemployment benefits are paid for 400 days, but after that you can go on labor market subsidy indefinitely. The subsidy is ~32€ per day, which is the same as the minimum basic unemployment benefit.
misja111 8y ago
Interesting, would this be a case that shows that basic income wouldn't work?
- athenot 8y ago
  It's not the same model. Presumably the €400 are forfeited when earing €500 as a salary. One of the premises of basic income is that working more doesn't cancel out any benefits.
- NegatioN 8y ago
  That sounds like a stretch, and you probably need to define what you mean by "basic income not working". For who? Society? Employers? The worker? Parts of these "youngsters" are probably off doing something related to self-development and fulfilling which might provide benefits for society later on. In this case they (seemingly) aren't getting any more money from working extra, compared to not working either, since their social benefits are stripped away if they start working. If this was basic income, they would be left with something extra at the end. In this case there's no incentive to work?
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Not at all. It is a signal that with the instinct for survival removed, people will push back on hard work for low pay, as they should. I think society would be a better place if people were paid based on the value they delivered, and not coerced into work based on the need to subsist. When employers/owners have to absorb long-term costs, they make changes. People who work on pipes or other buried things used to often get killed or injured by collapses of mud or stone. Worker's compensation costs forced employers to put reinforced steel safety devices in the holes to mitigate.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  Really frustrating to hear that argument. It's the same the right is making across Europe: "Just remove the social security net, then people will be forced to accept any wage.".
FidelCashflow 8y ago
Do you think that the owner(s) of the hotels shouldn't be compensated for the risk that they're taking by building and operating the property? There's a ton of risk associated with investing like that.
- gonvaled 8y ago
  Risk implies footing the salaries.
- gregcrv 8y ago
  Could you explain what the risks are?
  - tomhoward 8y ago
    I think the GP's comment was unhelpful, but there is always risk in starting a business, particularly in hospitality, and especially as an independent operator. There's risk in the construction (that budgets/timelines will blow out, contractors will be unable to complete the work to specifications), in whether the hotel will be appealing to customers, in the possibility of a recession or natural disaster or civic crisis that will keep tourists away. There's a few of the more obvious ones.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    Many risks. A disaster (war, bad weather) could keep customers away. A competitor could build next door, and resulting in your hotel being half full instead of full. A competitor could start a price war. Tastes in vacations could change resulting in less customers than expected coming. The laws could change in many different ways, each of which can change either your income or expenses. That is just off the top of my head. Of course as has been pointed out, your suppliers could demand more money than you have left in your budget (employees are a form of suppler - the human aspect has been intentionally ignored)
- pdimitar 8y ago
  You mean the properties they now own for a decade? Those that are fully developed and barely require maintenance? The same properties that are fully insured even against natural disasters that obliterate them to their foundations? Yeah, let's compensate them for being insured and at the worst case scenario lose 500 euros a month every now and then when a shadier employee comes around and leaves quickly. Poor them. Whatever will they do, 1 million euros a year can barely get your ends meet!
ajcodez 8y ago
Interesting. When I was in Mykonos last year my server was a registered accountant but made more bartending / serving than he would make in industry.
jimbokun 8y ago
"The unemployment benefit is 400+ euros per month. So tell me who in their right minds would go to work for 500 euros or even 800 euros, whilst they have to spend petrol to get from and to work, work prolly 10+ hours a day, in the sun most likely cause thats what means tourism industry, get told by 'BOSSES' on what to do, and get treated awfully." This is the argument for Universal Basic Income. Give everyone something less that 400s euro, whether they work or not. Let's say its 300 euros. Then the decision is don't work and take home 300 euros, or work and take home 800 or 1100 euros. There is a much greater incentive to work.

mkohlmyr 8y ago

I wonder if it's quite as simple as being reducible to salary as a single (or majority) variable. I tend to think people are willing to work a poorly paid job if there was some kind of light at the end of the tunnel (career advancement, primarily). (As a casual outside observer, and with all due respect) My bet would be that a pervasive sense of pointlessness or helplessness in society is an equal partner along with low entry level salaries in the case of Greece and many countries that face similar struggles.

scarface74 8y ago
And it doesn’t help that large companies use to hire jobs that are low skilled directly and at least there was an opportunity for advancement. But now with most of those jobs being contracted out, there is no chance for advancement. I’m even seeing that in IT. Back in the day you could start out as tech support, or an operator (as I did - long story) and be given a chance to program and move up. Now even those jobs are outsourced. It’s just as easy to hire someone from a foreign country to admin your AWS hosted instances as it is to hire someone locally.
pdimitar 8y ago
There are only so many dollars you can shave off of your employment budget before people decide they do not have to bother. It's an escalating problem in Eastern Europe in general. Our politicians are way too greedy. They lost all perspective. They try being a bit more insolent since the last year, they sit and wait -- no revolts, no fires, no pitchforks. So hey, these people don't mind! Let's get EVEN MORE money from them! Sadly it's how it has been going ever since the fall of the Soviet Union. Many elderly people say: "It was not all sunshine and rainbows back then either but at least the people had everything necessary to live respectful lives". They do have a point. Thank the gods for internet and for me being a programmer ever since teenager. Otherwise I would probably live off social benefits as well. It's very easy to demean people for being lazy or unmotivated or non-ambitious. But the reality is, the best career advancement ~85% of the people around here can hope for is an awful job with 2-3 hours of commuting in total for the day, for an income that exceeds the bare minimum needs with 5-10%. So it's pretty normal many decide not to bother, or to turn to petty crime.
- biztos 8y ago
  The version of that currently operating in Hungary is that even though living on benefits is impossible, you can just go to Austria/Germany/UK and make way more money. Interestingly this is less true of programmers than it is of waiters and cooks, but then it's extremely true of doctors and plumbers. Nobody in Budapest expects to make even a Berlin salary, but the difference is big enough now that lots of people say screw it, better to live abroad at least long enough to buy an apartment and so on at home. But I doubt many of those people will be coming back. Ironically enough you could make a killing as a plumber anywhere in Germany right now, or in Vienna, or in Budapest, as per your choice. But a ton of Hungarian plumbers left when it wasn't like that, and now they have lives in Dinkelacker or wherever.
ppeetteerr 8y ago
If people are willing to drive a truck carrying garbage and feces all day, it is about money. Maybe also about shorter work days, but that is also related to money.
atlantic 8y ago
It really is reducible to the differential between salary and unemployment benefit, which is the opportunity cost of not taking a job. This is a well-known phenomenon in economics since the stagflation of the 70's, called the "poverty trap".

bbeonx 8y ago

Yeah, it's not like people suddenly changed thirty years ago... It just doesn't make sense to work those jobs.

koolba 8y ago

> The unemployment benefit is 400+ euros per month. So tell me who in their right minds would go to work for 500 euros or even 800 euros, whilst they have to spend petrol to get from and to work, work prolly 10+ hours a day, in the sun most likely cause thats what means tourism industry, There are always people who don't just want to live off the dole. Also a lot of the people who complain about crappy entry level wages (that they're unwilling to accept) also complain that they are rejected from higher jobs because they don't have any work experience. > ... get told by 'BOSSES' on what to do, That's kind of the norm at any job. I'm curious what alternative you propose, a commune where workers decide on their own what they'll be working on? > ... and get treated awfully. That's not acceptable period though specifics matter.

Ygg2 8y ago
> a commune where workers decide on their own what they'll be working on? Even a commune where workers "decide on their own", has bosses. They are just not called bosses. See any of the '70 and '80 communes.
EthanHeilman 8y ago
>That's kind of the norm at any job. I'm curious what alternative you propose, a commune where workers decide on their own what they'll be working on? Pretty much all the software engineering jobs have worked at have given me quite a bit of autonomy. At least within software engineering organizations the purpose of a manager should be to make sure workers have the necessary resources and coordination, but they shouldn't be telling workers what to do. I know someone that got hired at a company to answer the phone for technical questions from users. When she started they didn't have a phone hooked up yet so she asked for github access and started writing software. They never bothered hooking up a phone at her desk and she just wrote software for the next 2 years. The software she wrote was valuable to the company and was mostly self-directed. I don't think stories like this are that uncommon in the software engineering world. Edit1: Fixed typo, thanks PaulRobinson Edit2: Added Anecdote
- PaulRobinson 8y ago
  I think you mean "autonomy", and at larger firms, you're going to have to work with others. The ideal is collaboration, but you don't normally get to choose what you work on, your management does.

dddw 8y ago

'undocumented stack du jour' love it!

dmichulke 8y ago

The thing you describe is the narrative of the evil capitalist owner exploiting poor workers. Here's a thought experiment - those (tourism businesses) owners are making lots of money, so why not create such a business yourself (maybe with help of some external capital) and pay better wages and treat your staff better and pay taxes? Your clients will be much happier with you while having to pay the same. Other capitalists are probably happy to get a piece of the cake. Of course, you cannot blame workers to not work in this industry right now, but obviously there are still enough people accepting that type of employment, otherwise salaries would have improved already.

Applejinx 8y ago
Small business guy here. When abusive employment practices give you a competitive advantage and nothing stops you from doing them, you can indeed go and be virtuous and make less money for yourself and your business and lose all day long. At the scale of publically held companies, your bossy evilness is virtue signalling that tells the market that you are viable in the era of Uber and Amazon. Right now, as things stand, wrecking things and your own employees is expected and you will get no support and no investment from breaking ranks. That's just how it is. In my field, I ended up just flipping the table and switching to Patreon so I could dump free competitive product and better serve my own userbase. My income got literally decimated by this decision but has rebounded to about a third or half of what it would have been, but I'm totally exempt from having to behave like a vulture: it suits my market positioning quite well, though if I was a really serious threat to the market leaders in my sector, I'm pretty sure they would come up with a way to sabotage me. That's also why I MIT license: I can funnel good stuff to poor musicians if I also let already-rich people steal it in exchange for only publicity. The alternate is they steal it anyway but with no publicity, or simply try to wreck my operation so there's less competition. The narrative of the evil capitalist overlord persists for good reason: in the absence of a working society it's down to power and power alone, and only winning and getting the most capital allows you to continue to win and get more capital. It's a feedback loop and there's no reason 'salaries would improve' barring outside interference, which is less likely by the year. Go ahead and do your thought experiment, but it doesn't map to the real world of 2018. To survive you've got to think more disruptively: your axioms here are pretty naive. For instance, what is actually important: your clients being happy, or your clients paying more money?

inertiatic 8y ago

Just a few notes: After a few years of full time employment I received a bit over 300 euro a month I believe, for a full year, when I was fired myself. And I believe the maximum amount of time where you can be eligible for unemployment benefits over here in Greece is a year or so. I believe a large cause for the apathy in people who you'd expect to work these jobs is the fact that working a job like that doesn't move you forward in any way. Back in the day, you could work for a few years and survive on your salary and hope to open your own business. Now what's the dream for these workers? They can never afford to save up on their 500 euro a month. They can never get a loan to open their own business. The best they can hope is that they won't be discarded and their job given to a more young-looking person down the line.

pc86 8y ago
> Now what's the dream for these workers? They can never afford to save up on their 500 euro a month. They can never get a loan to open their own business. Work harder. Make more money if you want to do your own thing. Surely there are professionals in Greece making good money working as employees for others. What are they doing that the lazy uneducated worker is not? Do more of that and less complaining that you're making 500 euro a month.
- felix_nagaand 8y ago
  You're suggesting they pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Put on some boots and try to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Let me know your vertical.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    What boots? I can only afford flip-flops. Try pulling on those straps, and see what happens. Not only are you still not upright, but you just ruined your shoes, and have to pay yet another $3 to replace them.
  - pc86 8y ago
    I suggesting that maybe, just maybe hard work might play a role in things. If someone doesn't want to work hard for 800 euro because they can get 400 euro for nothing, do they have the mindset and drive necessary to become wealthy in today's economy?

swebs 8y ago

>The unemployment benefit is 400+ euros per month. So tell me who in their right minds would go to work for 500 euros Is there a limit to how long you can collect unemployment? In Finland if you still haven't found a job in about a year, you stop getting payments altogether. And while getting payments, you still have to prove that you're actually searching for a job and not just trying to scam taxpayers.

swarnie_ 8y ago
Similar system in the UK, you have to demonstrate you're applying for jobs. If you're offered something and you refuse to take it your cut off. I think they may even force you in to unpaid/extremely low paid work if you cant get something yourself.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
fintelligence 8y ago
The above is incorrect. Basic unemployment benefits are paid for 400 days, but after that you can go on labor market subsidy indefinitely. The subsidy is ~32€ per day, which is the same as the minimum basic unemployment benefit.

misja111 8y ago

Interesting, would this be a case that shows that basic income wouldn't work?

athenot 8y ago
It's not the same model. Presumably the €400 are forfeited when earing €500 as a salary. One of the premises of basic income is that working more doesn't cancel out any benefits.
NegatioN 8y ago
That sounds like a stretch, and you probably need to define what you mean by "basic income not working". For who? Society? Employers? The worker? Parts of these "youngsters" are probably off doing something related to self-development and fulfilling which might provide benefits for society later on. In this case they (seemingly) aren't getting any more money from working extra, compared to not working either, since their social benefits are stripped away if they start working. If this was basic income, they would be left with something extra at the end. In this case there's no incentive to work?
Spooky23 8y ago
Not at all. It is a signal that with the instinct for survival removed, people will push back on hard work for low pay, as they should. I think society would be a better place if people were paid based on the value they delivered, and not coerced into work based on the need to subsist. When employers/owners have to absorb long-term costs, they make changes. People who work on pipes or other buried things used to often get killed or injured by collapses of mud or stone. Worker's compensation costs forced employers to put reinforced steel safety devices in the holes to mitigate.
johnchristopher 8y ago
Really frustrating to hear that argument. It's the same the right is making across Europe: "Just remove the social security net, then people will be forced to accept any wage.".

FidelCashflow 8y ago

Do you think that the owner(s) of the hotels shouldn't be compensated for the risk that they're taking by building and operating the property? There's a ton of risk associated with investing like that.

gonvaled 8y ago
Risk implies footing the salaries.
gregcrv 8y ago
Could you explain what the risks are?
- tomhoward 8y ago
  I think the GP's comment was unhelpful, but there is always risk in starting a business, particularly in hospitality, and especially as an independent operator. There's risk in the construction (that budgets/timelines will blow out, contractors will be unable to complete the work to specifications), in whether the hotel will be appealing to customers, in the possibility of a recession or natural disaster or civic crisis that will keep tourists away. There's a few of the more obvious ones.
- bluGill 8y ago
  Many risks. A disaster (war, bad weather) could keep customers away. A competitor could build next door, and resulting in your hotel being half full instead of full. A competitor could start a price war. Tastes in vacations could change resulting in less customers than expected coming. The laws could change in many different ways, each of which can change either your income or expenses. That is just off the top of my head. Of course as has been pointed out, your suppliers could demand more money than you have left in your budget (employees are a form of suppler - the human aspect has been intentionally ignored)
pdimitar 8y ago
You mean the properties they now own for a decade? Those that are fully developed and barely require maintenance? The same properties that are fully insured even against natural disasters that obliterate them to their foundations? Yeah, let's compensate them for being insured and at the worst case scenario lose 500 euros a month every now and then when a shadier employee comes around and leaves quickly. Poor them. Whatever will they do, 1 million euros a year can barely get your ends meet!

ajcodez 8y ago

Interesting. When I was in Mykonos last year my server was a registered accountant but made more bartending / serving than he would make in industry.

jimbokun 8y ago

"The unemployment benefit is 400+ euros per month. So tell me who in their right minds would go to work for 500 euros or even 800 euros, whilst they have to spend petrol to get from and to work, work prolly 10+ hours a day, in the sun most likely cause thats what means tourism industry, get told by 'BOSSES' on what to do, and get treated awfully." This is the argument for Universal Basic Income. Give everyone something less that 400s euro, whether they work or not. Let's say its 300 euros. Then the decision is don't work and take home 300 euros, or work and take home 800 or 1100 euros. There is a much greater incentive to work.