6 ms·

Well, there's a straightforward (I don't say easy) way to fix this: you require a high enough minimum wage (and healthcare, and sick leave, and etc.). It's not

Well, there's a straightforward (I don't say easy) way to fix this: you require a high enough minimum wage (and healthcare, and sick leave, and etc.). It's not like the restaurant owner has the option of just deciding to pay twice or three times the labor costs, and trust that their customers will be happy to cover the difference, if their competitors don't have to do the same. Because, those restaurant (and retail and etc.) business owners are mostly not the ones making big money. Restaurants, in particular, are horribly low margin. The end result of getting rid of "terrible" jobs, is that everything at the restaurant costs 2-3x as much, and so on at the many other businesses (agriculture?) which rely on cheap labor. Which means all those people in professional class jobs (e.g. programmers) will find that their salary doesn't go nearly as far as it used to. Personally, I'm ok with that, I think it's the right thing to do. But it's not like it's the small business owners that are standing in the way of it; they cannot pay higher wages if their competition is not, so it has to be mandated. What's standing in the way of it is that this would be, at least temporarily, quite inflationary, and we have a professional class that is accustomed to not having to pay much for anything except houses.

Clubber 6y ago
"According to "Papa" John Schnatter, the cost of providing health insurance for all of his pizza chain's uninsured, full-time employees comes out to about 14 cents on a large pizza." And this is the reason he gave for not supporting ACA. $0.14 a pizza. To this day, I struggle to understand the psychology behind it.
- paulpauper 6y ago
  but that is not a fixed cost though, although it is small relative to the price of a pizza
jolux 6y ago
>It's not like the restaurant owner has the option of just deciding to pay twice or three times the labor costs, and trust that their customers will be happy to cover the difference, if their competitors don't have to do the same. This feels a bit backwards. We don’t know that their competitors aren’t already paying more, we only know that some people can’t seem to get labor at the price they were paying before. I think the numbers here are currently inconclusive, but I conjecture that what we’re seeing is small business owners losing labor monopsonies that they had come to rely on, and consequently a more competitive labor market. Of course competition causes upward pressure on prices, that’s the whole point. This is tangential but I think America has been too scared of inflation for too long. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of inflation, especially if it means we can get closer to full employment. We haven’t even been meeting the fed’s (very low) target for quite a while.
- cratermoon 6y ago
  > I think America has been too scared of inflation for too long This is true! The Federal Reserve, since the Carter administration, has acted like even the slightest bit of inflation is impending doom.
  - jolux 6y ago
    Blame the Phillips curve ;)
  - specialist 6y ago
    I've concluded that over steer (over correction) is the norm. My hunch is one big cause is the mismatch of time scales between tenure (employment) and policy outcomes. Meaning that most policy and decision makers have moved on to new roles and jobs before the consequences of their decisions become clear. So very little learning can happen.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - vl 6y ago
    Feds tried to induce inflation for the last 20 years, it’s good for them since they can just print more money. They largely failed to do so since dollar is so well propped by international demand.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      >it’s good for them since they can just print more money. That's not good because it means they failed to keep up their mandate. >They largely failed to do so since dollar is so well propped by international demand. Actually, the international demand is forcing deficit spending. If money leaves the US and then comes back in the form of treasury bonds then pretty much the only way to tap into the money is to let the government get into debt. If driving yields to near zero was good enough to cause inflation we wouldn't be in this mess.
  - 6y ago
indigochill 6y ago
Maybe I'm naive, but this seems to have some significant problems: 1. Yes, everything costs 2x more for professional-class people, but also for working-class people. The numbers might get bigger, but the impact for those in the position to consider these terrible jobs is net nil. 2. For anything that doesn't require physical presence, the more you raise minimum domestic labor cost, the more attractive foreign labor looks, so you're also driving outsourcing.
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  You would absolutely have to back away from free-trade with low-wage countries for this, but in the restaurant/retail side of things it's not as big of a consideration, because not many people cross borders to do that in a country as big as the U.S. But for many industries it is absolutely a consideration (e.g. agriculture).
cosmodisk 6y ago
I think we should be going that direction,where a meal in a simple place is expensive enough to support normal wages with benefits and whatnot. Because right now, whenever someone brings up an argument that people don't get paid adequately, there's always the same 'but but the customer won't pay'. We all seem to love to have cheap meals, cheap uber drivers and cheap cleaners, while at the same time expensive office workers, expensive lawyers and doctors. It doesn't need to be so extreme on either side.
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  I agree.
toast0 6y ago
Tying healthcare insurance to employment isn't really the direction we want to be going. When the individual market was terrible, it made sense to push employers to buy it for their workers, because you got better coverage for less money that way. Now the state marketplaces are at least mediocre; coverage and costs are similar to what you might get as a small or mid sized employer. We should be pushing people towards marketplace plans, and not trying to continue the employer plan model.
- danaris 6y ago
  That seems to be making quite a lot of assumptions—first, that even in the better states, costs to the employee are similar if they choose to get insurance individually rather than through their employer. Even assuming that the cost to the employer is similar to the cost I would have to pay out-of-pocket to get insurance on the state marketplace, which is not a safe assumption, just because I choose to do that doesn't mean my employer suddenly decides to give me all the extra money they would have paid for my health insurance in my paycheck. Even if all that were true, it would only be in the better states. There is massive variation between the states on this, and some have (last I knew) truly abominable plans as the only real options. No; what we need to be pushing towards is single-payer health care, the way nearly every other civilized nation on earth does it. The market-based system we have is a travesty that literally kills people in order to further enrich the richest among us.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > Now the state marketplaces are at least mediocre; coverage and costs are similar to what you might get as a small or mid sized employer. We should be pushing people towards marketplace plans, and not trying to continue the employer plan model. I've priced out what a similar plan that I got from an employer would be when I went first bought insurance on the individual market. They are not even comparable. For example, a similar family plan on the individual market would cost over $30k in premiums, with an $8k deductible and a $17k out of pocket maximum each year with co-pays. For a similar plan for myself, I'm looking at nearly $10k in premiums, $3k deductible, and an $8k yearly out of pocket maximum, along with co-pays etc.
heavyset_go 6y ago
> The end result of getting rid of "terrible" jobs, is that everything at the restaurant costs 2-3x as much, and so on at the many other businesses (agriculture?) which rely on cheap labor. Which means all those people in professional class jobs (e.g. programmers) will find that their salary doesn't go nearly as far as it used to. Not 2-3x, more like 0.36% for every 10% increase[1]: > Many business leaders fear that any increase in the minimum wage will be passed on to consumers through price increases thereby slowing spending and economic growth, but that may not be the case. New research shows that the pass-through effect on prices is fleeting and much smaller than previously thought. > By looking at changes in restaurant food pricing during the period of 1978–2015, MacDonald and Nilsson find that prices rose by just 0.36 percent for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, which is only about half the size reported in previous studies. They also observe that small minimum wage increases do not lead to higher prices and may actually reduce prices. Furthermore, it is also possible that small minimum wage increases could lead to increased employment in low-wage labor market. [1] https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/does-increasing-minimum-wage-lead-higher-prices https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/does-increasing-m...

Clubber 6y ago

"According to "Papa" John Schnatter, the cost of providing health insurance for all of his pizza chain's uninsured, full-time employees comes out to about 14 cents on a large pizza." And this is the reason he gave for not supporting ACA. $0.14 a pizza. To this day, I struggle to understand the psychology behind it.

paulpauper 6y ago
but that is not a fixed cost though, although it is small relative to the price of a pizza

jolux 6y ago

>It's not like the restaurant owner has the option of just deciding to pay twice or three times the labor costs, and trust that their customers will be happy to cover the difference, if their competitors don't have to do the same. This feels a bit backwards. We don’t know that their competitors aren’t already paying more, we only know that some people can’t seem to get labor at the price they were paying before. I think the numbers here are currently inconclusive, but I conjecture that what we’re seeing is small business owners losing labor monopsonies that they had come to rely on, and consequently a more competitive labor market. Of course competition causes upward pressure on prices, that’s the whole point. This is tangential but I think America has been too scared of inflation for too long. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of inflation, especially if it means we can get closer to full employment. We haven’t even been meeting the fed’s (very low) target for quite a while.

cratermoon 6y ago
> I think America has been too scared of inflation for too long This is true! The Federal Reserve, since the Carter administration, has acted like even the slightest bit of inflation is impending doom.
- jolux 6y ago
  Blame the Phillips curve ;)
- specialist 6y ago
  I've concluded that over steer (over correction) is the norm. My hunch is one big cause is the mismatch of time scales between tenure (employment) and policy outcomes. Meaning that most policy and decision makers have moved on to new roles and jobs before the consequences of their decisions become clear. So very little learning can happen.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- vl 6y ago
  Feds tried to induce inflation for the last 20 years, it’s good for them since they can just print more money. They largely failed to do so since dollar is so well propped by international demand.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    >it’s good for them since they can just print more money. That's not good because it means they failed to keep up their mandate. >They largely failed to do so since dollar is so well propped by international demand. Actually, the international demand is forcing deficit spending. If money leaves the US and then comes back in the form of treasury bonds then pretty much the only way to tap into the money is to let the government get into debt. If driving yields to near zero was good enough to cause inflation we wouldn't be in this mess.
- 6y ago

indigochill 6y ago

Maybe I'm naive, but this seems to have some significant problems: 1. Yes, everything costs 2x more for professional-class people, but also for working-class people. The numbers might get bigger, but the impact for those in the position to consider these terrible jobs is net nil. 2. For anything that doesn't require physical presence, the more you raise minimum domestic labor cost, the more attractive foreign labor looks, so you're also driving outsourcing.

rossdavidh 6y ago
You would absolutely have to back away from free-trade with low-wage countries for this, but in the restaurant/retail side of things it's not as big of a consideration, because not many people cross borders to do that in a country as big as the U.S. But for many industries it is absolutely a consideration (e.g. agriculture).

cosmodisk 6y ago

I think we should be going that direction,where a meal in a simple place is expensive enough to support normal wages with benefits and whatnot. Because right now, whenever someone brings up an argument that people don't get paid adequately, there's always the same 'but but the customer won't pay'. We all seem to love to have cheap meals, cheap uber drivers and cheap cleaners, while at the same time expensive office workers, expensive lawyers and doctors. It doesn't need to be so extreme on either side.

rossdavidh 6y ago
I agree.

toast0 6y ago

Tying healthcare insurance to employment isn't really the direction we want to be going. When the individual market was terrible, it made sense to push employers to buy it for their workers, because you got better coverage for less money that way. Now the state marketplaces are at least mediocre; coverage and costs are similar to what you might get as a small or mid sized employer. We should be pushing people towards marketplace plans, and not trying to continue the employer plan model.

danaris 6y ago
That seems to be making quite a lot of assumptions—first, that even in the better states, costs to the employee are similar if they choose to get insurance individually rather than through their employer. Even assuming that the cost to the employer is similar to the cost I would have to pay out-of-pocket to get insurance on the state marketplace, which is not a safe assumption, just because I choose to do that doesn't mean my employer suddenly decides to give me all the extra money they would have paid for my health insurance in my paycheck. Even if all that were true, it would only be in the better states. There is massive variation between the states on this, and some have (last I knew) truly abominable plans as the only real options. No; what we need to be pushing towards is single-payer health care, the way nearly every other civilized nation on earth does it. The market-based system we have is a travesty that literally kills people in order to further enrich the richest among us.
heavyset_go 6y ago
> Now the state marketplaces are at least mediocre; coverage and costs are similar to what you might get as a small or mid sized employer. We should be pushing people towards marketplace plans, and not trying to continue the employer plan model. I've priced out what a similar plan that I got from an employer would be when I went first bought insurance on the individual market. They are not even comparable. For example, a similar family plan on the individual market would cost over $30k in premiums, with an $8k deductible and a $17k out of pocket maximum each year with co-pays. For a similar plan for myself, I'm looking at nearly $10k in premiums, $3k deductible, and an $8k yearly out of pocket maximum, along with co-pays etc.

heavyset_go 6y ago

> The end result of getting rid of "terrible" jobs, is that everything at the restaurant costs 2-3x as much, and so on at the many other businesses (agriculture?) which rely on cheap labor. Which means all those people in professional class jobs (e.g. programmers) will find that their salary doesn't go nearly as far as it used to. Not 2-3x, more like 0.36% for every 10% increase[1]: > Many business leaders fear that any increase in the minimum wage will be passed on to consumers through price increases thereby slowing spending and economic growth, but that may not be the case. New research shows that the pass-through effect on prices is fleeting and much smaller than previously thought. > By looking at changes in restaurant food pricing during the period of 1978–2015, MacDonald and Nilsson find that prices rose by just 0.36 percent for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, which is only about half the size reported in previous studies. They also observe that small minimum wage increases do not lead to higher prices and may actually reduce prices. Furthermore, it is also possible that small minimum wage increases could lead to increased employment in low-wage labor market. [1] https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/does-increasing-minimum-wage-lead-higher-prices https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/does-increasing-m...