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So weird. So now a non-fast food entry level job needs to compete with a $20/hr fast food job? It’d be interesting to hear what economists think about how this

So weird. So now a non-fast food entry level job needs to compete with a $20/hr fast food job? It’d be interesting to hear what economists think about how this arbitrary incentive will influence workers.

edgyquant 3y ago
The biggest losers will be teenagers trying to get their first job. Why would anyone hire that person when there will be adults with job experience applying for the same pay. People get triggered when you say these are jobs for kids, but some jobs do need to be for them so they can earn money in high school/college and have something on a resume to prove they showed up everyday.
- digging 3y ago
  What? We really don't actually need high school kids working. Most don't.
  - paulpauper 3y ago
    agree. that seems like an outdated concept by 50 years. i would rather have employees with experience take those jobs than teens who do their job poorly
    - _yb2s 3y ago
      How are they supposed to become adults with experience, if they can't get jobs as teens? I worked a ton of jobs as a teenager, and started a few small businesses. I was highly motivated to prove myself against adults with the attitude you have, so I was working twice as hard and was making half the mistakes of my adult co-workers. I learned so much working as a teenager, and it was a really enjoyable experience to feel useful, and to have my own disposable income. Without it, my mental health would have been much worse.
      - fzeroracer 3y ago
        All of these comments saying that you worked a ton of jobs as a teenager and started small businesses: How many of you even realize how out of date your concept of being a teenager is like? If a teenager is working it's in order to support their parents nowadays. They're not building any sort of higher experience flipping burgers or stocking shelves, they're tanking their education in order to survive. It certainly as hell wasn't aligned with my teenage experience growing up poor. And more importantly think about how far a minimum wage part time job as a teenager is going to get you today vs 30 years ago relative to inflation.
        andelink 3y ago
        > If a teenager is working it's in order to support their parents nowadays. I went to high school 2008-2012. I got my first job at 15, and then two more jobs later on before graduating. I also had a small thing cleaning this retired couples house once a week and getting paid cash. I did not support my parents at all. The money was mine to keep or spend irresponsibly as I’d like. > they're tanking their education in order to survive. That’s not necessarily true. I worked in the summers only. I did have a bakery business with a friend selling our home made baked goods to our fellow classmates during the school year, but that did not take much of our time
    - VancouverMan 3y ago
      I find it's the opposite, at least here in Canada. In the past, fast food jobs were often done by young adults from the local area. They always spoke excellent English and/or French. They also tended to know at least some of the customers from outside of the job, too, from sports and other activities. In some cases, they'd be serving relatives and their own friends. With them having also often gone to the establishment they were working at as customers while growing up, they were familiar with how customers were expected to be treated and what level of service was to be provided. I didn't realize it at the time, but the service they offered was actually pretty good. They could take an order correctly, the ones in the back did a decent job of preparing the food, the restaurants were kept clean, and overall it wasn't a bad experience. Two decades of rather awful immigration policies and other government-imposed economic distortions have changed all of that. Now it's common to see foreign adults working such jobs. They often have a limited grasp of the local language(s), no ties to the community, and limited understanding of the level of service they should be providing. Something as fundamental as placing an order in person is often far more difficult than it should be due to communication challenges, and mistakes are too common. The quality of the food preparation has gone down. The cleanliness of the establishments has gone down. The prices, however, keep rising. Overall, getting fast food is just not a good experience any longer. The automated kiosks and phone apps at least help avoid some of the ordering challenges that never existed before, but the rest of the experience can be quite bad. I used to enjoy going to fast food restaurants and did it quite often, back when it was Canadian young adults doing the work at such establishments. Now, though, it's such an abysmal experience that I rarely go. Whenever I do happen to, usually as a last resort, I'm typically left very disappointed.
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    We don’t? I started working when I was 15 so I could buy a car when I turned 16. With a car, all kinds of opportunities open up. Like taking girls on dates, which, what do you, costs money. Luckily for me I had a source of income. Lord knows my parents couldn’t afford to just give me cash. I think about all the fun life experiences I would have missed out on along with the character building that comes along with doing a job well and earning a paycheck.
    - timeon 3y ago
      People drive car at 16? Is that legal?
      - BenjiWiebe 3y ago
        Depending where you are in the world, yes. You can get your full driver's license at 16.5 and various more restrictive ones before that here in Kansas (USA).
      - jkubicek 3y ago
        I got my school permit at 14, which allowed me to legally drive back and forth to school.
    - digging 3y ago
      Fine, but it's not at all a typical or necessary part of life in most of the US. We do not need to be basing policy off of the "need" for teenagers to work when it affects tens of thousands of family's dinner tables. Besides, what decade were you 15 in? Finally, I don't think child labor is the answer to the forced isolation of car-dependent infrastructure.
      - nickthegreek 3y ago
        The late 90s. How old were you when you got your first job?
- paulpauper 3y ago
  Given how much tuition has surged, the era of paying for college with a crappy summer job is long over. Teens can make more money anyway doing social media, video game reviews, livestreams, and such. There are many more opportunities today to make money that didn't exist 30 year ago.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    lol you think the average twitch streamer makes a few hundreds bucks a week
- pawelmurias 3y ago
  > have something on a resume to prove they showed up everyday. Society shouldn't promote teenagers doing shit jobs. They shouldn't be done by people with potential.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    > Society shouldn't promote teenagers doing shit jobs. Beg to differ. There is an epidemic of delayed adulthood brought on by lack of actual responsibility.
  - jacamera 3y ago
    This is the exact kind of sociopathic elitism that we should seek to minimize by promoting a diverse array of experiences for young developing adults, including working jobs that are “beneath” them.
  - HEmanZ 3y ago
    Why shouldn’t they be done by people with potential? It seems to me the opposite. The world runs on a lot of shit jobs. Young people on some path to important leadership positions in society should with have real experience in these positions. E.g: I learned a lot about efficiency and working with diverse and problematic people when I worked fast food as a teenager. I learned a lot about automation and prison when I worked in a factory in college. Both shaped a lot of my mental model for the world, and I think both contributed a lot to long term leadership skills. The only shit high school job I don’t think I learned anything from was fruit picking. Other than maybe just how miserable it is.
    - sixstringtheory 3y ago
      I think GP meant “They shouldn't be done as a career by people with potential” I definitely fall prey to the line of thought but when I think again I realize that if they actually have potential, they will strive to meet it.
- jacamera 3y ago
  Not to sound too grandiose, but I think that the tradition of teenagers working in low-skilled retail and service jobs is also important for societal cohesion. Nothing is going to give you more empathy for the people working in those jobs than having done it yourself for at least a couple years. For teenagers in the middle class and above I’d say it’s actually the most important reason to work those types of jobs.
  - krapp 3y ago
    >Nothing is going to give you more empathy for the people working in those jobs than having done it yourself for at least a couple years. Have you worked in a restaurant or retail? No one gets more abuse than those workers. The real reason we want teenagers in low-skilled jobs is to keep wages low. That's it. Not tradition, not social cohesion, not to teach anyone "responsibility" or "empathy" but simply to undercut the labor market, because if more adults worked those jobs, they would be paid more.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - jacamera 3y ago
      > Have you worked in a restaurant or retail? Yes, both. > The real reason we want teenagers in low-skilled jobs is to keep wages low. Who are you speaking for? Do you own a business that employs low-skilled labor?
      - krapp 3y ago
        No, but That's just the way capitalism works. Wages are a cost that, like all costs, businesses are constantly driven to reduce in order to stay competitive and maximize profits. Hiring classes of people to whom society affords fewer rights and less social value (such as teenagers and immigrants) as a means of cutting costs through lower wages has been a mainstay of business since it was legal to send ten year olds to work in factories and mines a century ago. Tech does the same thing through free internships and visas, cutting costs by means of an exploitable legal underclass. The fast food industry wouldn't exist if it was treated as serious work for adults. But it's considered pretend work for teenagers to learn to build character on or whatever, so it's fine that it barely pays a subsistence wage.

edgyquant 3y ago

The biggest losers will be teenagers trying to get their first job. Why would anyone hire that person when there will be adults with job experience applying for the same pay. People get triggered when you say these are jobs for kids, but some jobs do need to be for them so they can earn money in high school/college and have something on a resume to prove they showed up everyday.

digging 3y ago
What? We really don't actually need high school kids working. Most don't.
- paulpauper 3y ago
  agree. that seems like an outdated concept by 50 years. i would rather have employees with experience take those jobs than teens who do their job poorly
  - _yb2s 3y ago
    How are they supposed to become adults with experience, if they can't get jobs as teens? I worked a ton of jobs as a teenager, and started a few small businesses. I was highly motivated to prove myself against adults with the attitude you have, so I was working twice as hard and was making half the mistakes of my adult co-workers. I learned so much working as a teenager, and it was a really enjoyable experience to feel useful, and to have my own disposable income. Without it, my mental health would have been much worse.
    - fzeroracer 3y ago
      All of these comments saying that you worked a ton of jobs as a teenager and started small businesses: How many of you even realize how out of date your concept of being a teenager is like? If a teenager is working it's in order to support their parents nowadays. They're not building any sort of higher experience flipping burgers or stocking shelves, they're tanking their education in order to survive. It certainly as hell wasn't aligned with my teenage experience growing up poor. And more importantly think about how far a minimum wage part time job as a teenager is going to get you today vs 30 years ago relative to inflation.
      - andelink 3y ago
        > If a teenager is working it's in order to support their parents nowadays. I went to high school 2008-2012. I got my first job at 15, and then two more jobs later on before graduating. I also had a small thing cleaning this retired couples house once a week and getting paid cash. I did not support my parents at all. The money was mine to keep or spend irresponsibly as I’d like. > they're tanking their education in order to survive. That’s not necessarily true. I worked in the summers only. I did have a bakery business with a friend selling our home made baked goods to our fellow classmates during the school year, but that did not take much of our time
  - VancouverMan 3y ago
    I find it's the opposite, at least here in Canada. In the past, fast food jobs were often done by young adults from the local area. They always spoke excellent English and/or French. They also tended to know at least some of the customers from outside of the job, too, from sports and other activities. In some cases, they'd be serving relatives and their own friends. With them having also often gone to the establishment they were working at as customers while growing up, they were familiar with how customers were expected to be treated and what level of service was to be provided. I didn't realize it at the time, but the service they offered was actually pretty good. They could take an order correctly, the ones in the back did a decent job of preparing the food, the restaurants were kept clean, and overall it wasn't a bad experience. Two decades of rather awful immigration policies and other government-imposed economic distortions have changed all of that. Now it's common to see foreign adults working such jobs. They often have a limited grasp of the local language(s), no ties to the community, and limited understanding of the level of service they should be providing. Something as fundamental as placing an order in person is often far more difficult than it should be due to communication challenges, and mistakes are too common. The quality of the food preparation has gone down. The cleanliness of the establishments has gone down. The prices, however, keep rising. Overall, getting fast food is just not a good experience any longer. The automated kiosks and phone apps at least help avoid some of the ordering challenges that never existed before, but the rest of the experience can be quite bad. I used to enjoy going to fast food restaurants and did it quite often, back when it was Canadian young adults doing the work at such establishments. Now, though, it's such an abysmal experience that I rarely go. Whenever I do happen to, usually as a last resort, I'm typically left very disappointed.
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  We don’t? I started working when I was 15 so I could buy a car when I turned 16. With a car, all kinds of opportunities open up. Like taking girls on dates, which, what do you, costs money. Luckily for me I had a source of income. Lord knows my parents couldn’t afford to just give me cash. I think about all the fun life experiences I would have missed out on along with the character building that comes along with doing a job well and earning a paycheck.
  - timeon 3y ago
    People drive car at 16? Is that legal?
    - BenjiWiebe 3y ago
      Depending where you are in the world, yes. You can get your full driver's license at 16.5 and various more restrictive ones before that here in Kansas (USA).
    - jkubicek 3y ago
      I got my school permit at 14, which allowed me to legally drive back and forth to school.
  - digging 3y ago
    Fine, but it's not at all a typical or necessary part of life in most of the US. We do not need to be basing policy off of the "need" for teenagers to work when it affects tens of thousands of family's dinner tables. Besides, what decade were you 15 in? Finally, I don't think child labor is the answer to the forced isolation of car-dependent infrastructure.
    - nickthegreek 3y ago
      The late 90s. How old were you when you got your first job?
paulpauper 3y ago
Given how much tuition has surged, the era of paying for college with a crappy summer job is long over. Teens can make more money anyway doing social media, video game reviews, livestreams, and such. There are many more opportunities today to make money that didn't exist 30 year ago.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  lol you think the average twitch streamer makes a few hundreds bucks a week
pawelmurias 3y ago
> have something on a resume to prove they showed up everyday. Society shouldn't promote teenagers doing shit jobs. They shouldn't be done by people with potential.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  > Society shouldn't promote teenagers doing shit jobs. Beg to differ. There is an epidemic of delayed adulthood brought on by lack of actual responsibility.
- jacamera 3y ago
  This is the exact kind of sociopathic elitism that we should seek to minimize by promoting a diverse array of experiences for young developing adults, including working jobs that are “beneath” them.
- HEmanZ 3y ago
  Why shouldn’t they be done by people with potential? It seems to me the opposite. The world runs on a lot of shit jobs. Young people on some path to important leadership positions in society should with have real experience in these positions. E.g: I learned a lot about efficiency and working with diverse and problematic people when I worked fast food as a teenager. I learned a lot about automation and prison when I worked in a factory in college. Both shaped a lot of my mental model for the world, and I think both contributed a lot to long term leadership skills. The only shit high school job I don’t think I learned anything from was fruit picking. Other than maybe just how miserable it is.
  - sixstringtheory 3y ago
    I think GP meant “They shouldn't be done as a career by people with potential” I definitely fall prey to the line of thought but when I think again I realize that if they actually have potential, they will strive to meet it.
jacamera 3y ago
Not to sound too grandiose, but I think that the tradition of teenagers working in low-skilled retail and service jobs is also important for societal cohesion. Nothing is going to give you more empathy for the people working in those jobs than having done it yourself for at least a couple years. For teenagers in the middle class and above I’d say it’s actually the most important reason to work those types of jobs.
- krapp 3y ago
  >Nothing is going to give you more empathy for the people working in those jobs than having done it yourself for at least a couple years. Have you worked in a restaurant or retail? No one gets more abuse than those workers. The real reason we want teenagers in low-skilled jobs is to keep wages low. That's it. Not tradition, not social cohesion, not to teach anyone "responsibility" or "empathy" but simply to undercut the labor market, because if more adults worked those jobs, they would be paid more.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jacamera 3y ago
    > Have you worked in a restaurant or retail? Yes, both. > The real reason we want teenagers in low-skilled jobs is to keep wages low. Who are you speaking for? Do you own a business that employs low-skilled labor?
    - krapp 3y ago
      No, but That's just the way capitalism works. Wages are a cost that, like all costs, businesses are constantly driven to reduce in order to stay competitive and maximize profits. Hiring classes of people to whom society affords fewer rights and less social value (such as teenagers and immigrants) as a means of cutting costs through lower wages has been a mainstay of business since it was legal to send ten year olds to work in factories and mines a century ago. Tech does the same thing through free internships and visas, cutting costs by means of an exploitable legal underclass. The fast food industry wouldn't exist if it was treated as serious work for adults. But it's considered pretend work for teenagers to learn to build character on or whatever, so it's fine that it barely pays a subsistence wage.