4 ms·

No, this is what a very small section of a service industry looks like. There are millions of people who can have a livable wage in a service industry. The ac

No, this is what a very small section of a service industry looks like. There are millions of people who can have a livable wage in a service industry. The actual problem that I never see addressed is that should EVERY job be a "living wage" job. To me that answer is and always has been no. There will always be a need for temp workers.

willcipriano 3y ago
> There are millions of people who can have a livable wage in a service industry. There are millions of illegal immigrants, living 5 to a bedroom proping up the resturant industry. The back of house doesn't do very well at all, its only the wait staff that makes a fair wage for the effort.
- Vvector 3y ago
  The solution is not to provide assistance to underpaid illegals. Better to penalize the company for hiring and underpaying them.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    Ok so having roughly doubled the cost of restaurant meals what's our next move?
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      Not eat out often. Only on special occasions.
      - forgetfreeman 3y ago
        K so having bankrupted the restaurant industry, what's next?
        willcipriano 3y ago
        Then we don't need so many immigrants.
        forgetfreeman 3y ago
        Apparently we do if having a restaurant industry is desirable. We've already established raising wages to something that might attract less desperate applicants is a non-starter. Now if you were to say pivot the conversation to the H1-B system that fills more desirable jobs...
        willcipriano 3y ago
        You aren't entitled to below cost dinners.
        forgetfreeman 3y ago
        You trying to make this about me? I'm just the messenger. Restaurant margins don't support increased wages without passthrough to customers. People already bitch about the overhead associated with tipping waitstaff, one can easily extrapolate how they'd react to the changes in restaurant prices associated with labor costs tripling. If that makes you sad take it up with your neighbors.
        Yeul 3y ago
        Isn't America supposed to be the richest country in the world? You can afford to pay people a decent wage you just don't want to. You could double the price of a beer in NYC or Miami and people would still come.
        c22 3y ago
        In fact they seem to have done this each time I've visited...
        forgetfreeman 3y ago
tomrod 3y ago
The meme of a living wage is a nice one. It hits most moral frameworks as fair. The concern I have with it is it isn't defined. What does living mean? When I belonged to a high demand religion that is known for "helping" its membership, financial assistance was dedicated to the preservation of life only. Not the preservation or growth of the quality of life. So if you had a medical life transition and a mortgage, they might pay for you to dump the mortgage and move to a tiny apartment while also receiving some food pantry items on a semi-regular frequency. Their goal was to keep you alive, not to give you a living. At the time, excess bills like cell phones, internet, cars, etc. were recommended to be removed and/or deducted from assistance given (in urban areas; rural areas cars were not really a focus, there was some autonomy in the people making the decisions). Only what was needed to remain alive. I bring this up not because I necessarily agree with the approach, but rather to ask what we mean by "living" wage. The typical idea is that it allows people to afford food, shelter, and basic necessities (cue tangent discussion regarding American healthcare). Under this definition, are people willing to bunk up six to a room and expand WIC/SNAP? Because that is what a "living" wage can be -- not a great existence but not dying while working full time. The usual excuse for this Spartan approach is that there aren't enough resources. For current program funding levels this is true. And in the US, we keep shooting ourselves in the foot for further resource growth -- regulations and policies are continually cherry picked, unprotected, and embattled to the point that the cost burden to maintain even the status quo is overwhelming, whether in implementation (NIMBYism) or in infrastructure (environmental impact studies taking years and decades) or in ideals (protecting water and air via the EPA). Ideally we could organize, right? Unionize, make our collective voices heard. While a wonderful thing to enable, and there are many great outcomes when it happens, unions are subject to corruption as well -- I am not sure there is a legal framework that helps overcome that particularly pernicious principal/agent problem. So, in this brief review, we arrive to your same conclusion, that we structurally probably can't support every job having a high enough wage to satisfy each to their wants. We can hope and want and organize for it, but until we have some significant structural changes in society and policy it seems unattainable to me :(
- Vvector 3y ago
  I think you are on the right path. I've seen the arguments that "minimum wage" should be able to afford a median priced 2BR apartment (30% of income). Then who rents the bottom third apartments? I'm all for a bottom tier safety net to keep people off the streets.

willcipriano 3y ago

> There are millions of people who can have a livable wage in a service industry. There are millions of illegal immigrants, living 5 to a bedroom proping up the resturant industry. The back of house doesn't do very well at all, its only the wait staff that makes a fair wage for the effort.

Vvector 3y ago
The solution is not to provide assistance to underpaid illegals. Better to penalize the company for hiring and underpaying them.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  Ok so having roughly doubled the cost of restaurant meals what's our next move?
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    Not eat out often. Only on special occasions.
    - forgetfreeman 3y ago
      K so having bankrupted the restaurant industry, what's next?
      - willcipriano 3y ago
        Then we don't need so many immigrants.
        forgetfreeman 3y ago
        Apparently we do if having a restaurant industry is desirable. We've already established raising wages to something that might attract less desperate applicants is a non-starter. Now if you were to say pivot the conversation to the H1-B system that fills more desirable jobs...
        willcipriano 3y ago
        You aren't entitled to below cost dinners.
        forgetfreeman 3y ago
        You trying to make this about me? I'm just the messenger. Restaurant margins don't support increased wages without passthrough to customers. People already bitch about the overhead associated with tipping waitstaff, one can easily extrapolate how they'd react to the changes in restaurant prices associated with labor costs tripling. If that makes you sad take it up with your neighbors.
      - Yeul 3y ago
        Isn't America supposed to be the richest country in the world? You can afford to pay people a decent wage you just don't want to. You could double the price of a beer in NYC or Miami and people would still come.
        c22 3y ago
        In fact they seem to have done this each time I've visited...
        forgetfreeman 3y ago

tomrod 3y ago

The meme of a living wage is a nice one. It hits most moral frameworks as fair. The concern I have with it is it isn't defined. What does living mean? When I belonged to a high demand religion that is known for "helping" its membership, financial assistance was dedicated to the preservation of life only. Not the preservation or growth of the quality of life. So if you had a medical life transition and a mortgage, they might pay for you to dump the mortgage and move to a tiny apartment while also receiving some food pantry items on a semi-regular frequency. Their goal was to keep you alive, not to give you a living. At the time, excess bills like cell phones, internet, cars, etc. were recommended to be removed and/or deducted from assistance given (in urban areas; rural areas cars were not really a focus, there was some autonomy in the people making the decisions). Only what was needed to remain alive. I bring this up not because I necessarily agree with the approach, but rather to ask what we mean by "living" wage. The typical idea is that it allows people to afford food, shelter, and basic necessities (cue tangent discussion regarding American healthcare). Under this definition, are people willing to bunk up six to a room and expand WIC/SNAP? Because that is what a "living" wage can be -- not a great existence but not dying while working full time. The usual excuse for this Spartan approach is that there aren't enough resources. For current program funding levels this is true. And in the US, we keep shooting ourselves in the foot for further resource growth -- regulations and policies are continually cherry picked, unprotected, and embattled to the point that the cost burden to maintain even the status quo is overwhelming, whether in implementation (NIMBYism) or in infrastructure (environmental impact studies taking years and decades) or in ideals (protecting water and air via the EPA). Ideally we could organize, right? Unionize, make our collective voices heard. While a wonderful thing to enable, and there are many great outcomes when it happens, unions are subject to corruption as well -- I am not sure there is a legal framework that helps overcome that particularly pernicious principal/agent problem. So, in this brief review, we arrive to your same conclusion, that we structurally probably can't support every job having a high enough wage to satisfy each to their wants. We can hope and want and organize for it, but until we have some significant structural changes in society and policy it seems unattainable to me :(

Vvector 3y ago
I think you are on the right path. I've seen the arguments that "minimum wage" should be able to afford a median priced 2BR apartment (30% of income). Then who rents the bottom third apartments? I'm all for a bottom tier safety net to keep people off the streets.