thebeave
Veteran Member
When you finish playing with your dolls, maybe you could respond to the living wage comments.
-
Features
Consequence of $20 minimum wage for fast food workers?
- Thread starter Derec
- Start date
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2002
- Messages
- 39,000
- Location
- Frozen in Michigan
- Gender
- Old Fart
- Basic Beliefs
- Don't be a dick.
Do you mean your strawman argument?When you finish playing with your dolls, maybe you could respond to the living wage comments.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
There are some things not being said which should be mentioned.
1. $20/hr in California is not a living wage. A living wage is closer to $40/hr. A person needs retirement money, savings for emergencies and career and social growth. If they make only $20/hr and some emergency happens, BAM! They just might get evicted. And we all know what that means: the same people who are against a living wage judge them as bad money managers in completely different threads. True story!
2. While it is true many fast food employees are younger, some are not. Even those who are young are not necessarily dependents. Think: young person trying to make it independently, working at a place like that, paying rent, paying for college on their own.
3. Here's the more complicated part. Why did this happen? Republicans: "socialism, socialism!" Democrats: "people deserve a living wage!" The truth: this was a so-called compromise. That part needs to be understood. Again, fast food employees are not exactly getting a living wage with this change. A living wage is considerably more.
So the workers are being bargained down or you could interpret it as a pay off to stand down on something. They originally wanted to hold the super mega global corporations accountable, to get better working conditions and standards. They were receiving pushback from powerful oligarchs in the form of legislative repeal or action.
The capacity to go after global is taken off the table. Workers get a few bucks more. But also some kind of watered down capacity to have input in standards.
Basically, the big winner is global corp. Workers' pay and standards go from F+ to a D. The big losers seem to be franchise owners who were pressured by the top and bottom, sandwiched into risking their profits. Remember royalties to global are consistent.
But you should not feel sorry for these guys. Remember all they have to do is raise prices single digit % and then lose nothing at all.
How will they survive doing that???!! Guess what? Places like McD's have already been raising prices 10% (which is more) year after year. Their claim was that it was needed due to commodity increases like eggs. BUT even when inflation has gone down, they kept raising prices like that.
Just like how we get screwed by gas prices.
They've already benefited from these tricks (a surplus) so certainly can absorb this change. They will increase price anyway.
You should not be surprised when you observe how much.
1. $20/hr in California is not a living wage. A living wage is closer to $40/hr. A person needs retirement money, savings for emergencies and career and social growth. If they make only $20/hr and some emergency happens, BAM! They just might get evicted. And we all know what that means: the same people who are against a living wage judge them as bad money managers in completely different threads. True story!
2. While it is true many fast food employees are younger, some are not. Even those who are young are not necessarily dependents. Think: young person trying to make it independently, working at a place like that, paying rent, paying for college on their own.
3. Here's the more complicated part. Why did this happen? Republicans: "socialism, socialism!" Democrats: "people deserve a living wage!" The truth: this was a so-called compromise. That part needs to be understood. Again, fast food employees are not exactly getting a living wage with this change. A living wage is considerably more.
So the workers are being bargained down or you could interpret it as a pay off to stand down on something. They originally wanted to hold the super mega global corporations accountable, to get better working conditions and standards. They were receiving pushback from powerful oligarchs in the form of legislative repeal or action.
The capacity to go after global is taken off the table. Workers get a few bucks more. But also some kind of watered down capacity to have input in standards.
Basically, the big winner is global corp. Workers' pay and standards go from F+ to a D. The big losers seem to be franchise owners who were pressured by the top and bottom, sandwiched into risking their profits. Remember royalties to global are consistent.
But you should not feel sorry for these guys. Remember all they have to do is raise prices single digit % and then lose nothing at all.
How will they survive doing that???!! Guess what? Places like McD's have already been raising prices 10% (which is more) year after year. Their claim was that it was needed due to commodity increases like eggs. BUT even when inflation has gone down, they kept raising prices like that.
Just like how we get screwed by gas prices.
They've already benefited from these tricks (a surplus) so certainly can absorb this change. They will increase price anyway.
You should not be surprised when you observe how much.
lpetrich
Contributor
It's the
Phillips curve - the theory that there is a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. It implies that one can reduce inflation by putting people out of work.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
From the conservative NY Post:
nypost.com
Note:
Why McDonald’s is charging $18 for a Big Mac meal — and why there’s no relief in sight
A Big Mac, fries and drink has risen to nearly $18 at a handful of locations while hash browns are up to $6.
nypost.com
Note:
Bomb#20
Contributor
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2004
- Messages
- 8,217
- Location
- California
- Gender
- It's a free country.
- Basic Beliefs
- Rationalism
FIFY.
You appear to be taking for granted that those at the top of the heap must be the recipients of either moral outrage or hero worship. Why would you imagine something so ridiculous? Is it projection -- is everyone either in your loved ingroup or your hated outgroup, and you assume everyone else shares your weakness? My attitude toward Zuckerberg and his hundred-odd billion is I don't give a rat's ass about either of them. Why would a rational person either hero-worship or be morally outraged by his billions?
Ricardian, actually -- Marx cribbed from him; but yes, it's a fallacy. Marxism is an object lesson in Garbage In, Garbage Out.
That's a popular misunderstanding of Adam Smith. Not that it matters -- LToV is nonsense regardless of whom you name-drop. Adam Smith wrote about a hundred years before economists figured out you can't model economics correctly without calculus, so some of what he said was wrong, and if he'd advocated LToV he'd have been wrong, just like Copernicus was wrong when he said planets have circular orbits. Being famous and being one of the giants later thinkers stood on the shoulders of doesn't make your book holy scripture whose every word must be considered inerrant. Let us leave treating economics as religion to the Marxists.
What is the antecedent of "this" in "that this is plausibly true"? That the LToV works for such people? It doesn't. It doesn't work for anyone, regardless of what he's paid for his labor or what he's paid for his nonlabor. It can't, because LToV takes for granted that a thing's "value" is objective. It isn't. So LToV dies the same death as Rand's Gold Theory of Value.
And that's a reason for moral outrage, is it? Show your work.
Given that you stipulate that having large amounts of capital on hand is a necessity for building factories and warehouses and mines and ships and server farms and other such big things, either we must allow people to have large amounts of capital on hand, or we must do without building factories and warehouses and mines and ships and server farms and other such big things. I presume you are not advocating for a return to Neolithic subsistence agriculture, and are in favor of our continuing to build factories and warehouses and mines and ships and server farms and other such big things, yes? So if you regard it as a moral outrage for the owners and managers of assets to have large amounts of capital on hand, presumably all you are proposing we do about it is a change of personnel, yes? You have no objection to allowing somebody to have large amounts of capital on hand; it's just that you think it's currently the wrong somebody, yes? You want the large amounts of capital to be in the hands of somebody else, yes? Whose, the people's democratically elected representatives'?
That would be a monopoly. So why on earth would any sane person imagine for two seconds that the nonmembers of the Arrogant Ruling Class -- the people like you and me and minimum wage workers who don't have large amounts of capital on hand so we have to make deals with asset owner/managers if we're going to build factories and warehouses and mines and ships and server farms and other such big things -- would get a better deal from a monopoly than we can get from a thousand billionaires and a million millionaires who compete with one another for our services?
DBT
Contributor
The moral issue is gross inequality in society, where a relatively small percentage of the population acquire or inherit great wealth, while many others work full time yet struggle to pay for the basics of life, housing, food, transport....
TV and credit cards
Contributor
As far as implementation goes, the hard work is already done. HUD breaks down the cost of living across the country. This is in greater detail than just zip code. From this, the various pay grades of federal positions are adjusted on a percentage basis called "locality pay". So it's base pay plus locality percentage to come up with an actual wage earned. For the military "basis housing allowance" is calculated. I'm sure a living wage can be calculated too.
The pace of implementation? Slowly, just like we are seeing here with CA's $20 for fast food workers of restaurants with over 60 locations. Derec originally asked "why just fast food workers"? As I alluded to in post #128, perhaps, and particularly in a robust economy, fast food workers getting $20 an hour will put pressure on other low wage employers to raise their wage. Many of these fast food joints are clustered in shopping areas with other low paying workers many or which may only be receiving the CA $15.50 ($16?) minimum wage. We'll just have to wait and see.
As far as the lady working at Jack In The Box with six kids and keeping my crude humor at bay, there are as many unique situations as there are people. One person. One job. A living wage. Dependents are a whole other can of worms.
And Don is right regarding a living wage. When I worked at Yosemite, the utility workers I worked with by and large made about $30 an hour. I know from close conversations and observations, these guys were just getting by. I know from being a budget counselor in the navy they were not just getting by due to poor money management. At least these federal employees had the FERS retirement system, healthcare, and the 401k like TSP.
Playball40
Veteran Member
You are applying motive that doesn't exist.
thebeave
Veteran Member
Yes, there already are tables available showing how much income it takes to support a family of a given size in a particular area. For a family of six with a dog living in California, it is rather substantial. Well beyond any reasonable income being made by an employee working in fast food. And family size does have to enter into it, if you talking about people deserving a livable wage. You can't ignore it. Kids need to live too, so the lady with six kids is not a strawman or something to be waved off. What is the answer? I don't know, but the idea of everyone deserving a living wage, while a noble gesture, is problematic in the real world.
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2002
- Messages
- 39,000
- Location
- Frozen in Michigan
- Gender
- Old Fart
- Basic Beliefs
- Don't be a dick.
Problematic to who?
Jimmy Higgins
Contributor
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2001
- Messages
- 44,261
- Basic Beliefs
- Calvinistic Atheist
Moral outrage? Can someone consider the needs of the many overweighing the needs of the few to acquire apparently limitless sums of money need to extrapolate immediately to "moral outrage"?
People on the right believe that people should have the right to do something generally because they can do it. If a person can make $15 billion, "Why shouldn't they be allowed to?"
For people on the left, however, the question is "What benefit is it to the populace to allow it?"
Ultimately, it comes downs to priorities. Access for Anyone vs Access to Everyone. I don't think this wall will be broken through. Especially when some make ridiculous arguments asking, "But how is it even possible to do this differently?!" when we were doing it a certain way for several decades until the Reaganites came into office and then we just stopped caring about revenue.
Jimmy Higgins
Contributor
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2001
- Messages
- 44,261
- Basic Beliefs
- Calvinistic Atheist
Goodness, how fucked we are.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
That's easy. Carol just has to hope her husband Mike gets a big bonus from that new architectural project. As long as he doesn't lose the blueprint somehow, like an accident with the kids, they should be okay. Backup plan is that they can all enter a singing contest.
thebeave
Veteran Member
Sure, Jan.thebeave
Veteran Member
I like how you managed to combine plots from three different episodes into one. Bad memory or genius?
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
I like how you managed to combine plots from three different episodes into one. Bad memory or genius?
What about if we change the hypothetical to a woman on her own so we don't obfuscate the issue with a question of how many children should a person have who might or might not have had children knowing she can't afford them? Next, let's say she makes $25 /hr less than a livable wage and we're talking raising her wage only $5 more, still $20 shy of livable. Then, let's say the people paying just hoodwinked society by pretending to justifiably raise prices for goods that amounts to more than that $5 / hr increase. And lastly, let's say she had some kind of claim against the big bosses that had undetermined value that happened to scare the crap out of them. And she was willing to put that aside for the $5 / hr increase and they were also willing to do the increase under all these stipulations in this modified hypothetical. Would you still be against it?
Last edited:
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
Here's a particularly biased article:
www.foxbusiness.com
Note this section:
My back of napkin calculation I said was an overestimate was 6%. Experts say it is 4.4%. They are probably right.
What this biased piece leaves out is that:
1. Fast food industry was raising prices 7.6% per year already. They've already lost low income customers in many cases.
2. McDonald's is even worse raising prices by 10% in 2023.
3. As stated before they tried to justify it with commodity increased prices but they had slowed, then dropped. So they made out like bandits.
Of course Fox Business isn't going to tell anyone that!
4 reasons Gavin Newsom's new fast food law is a recipe for disaster
California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed a bill that raises the minimum wage for fast food workers.
Note this section:
My back of napkin calculation I said was an overestimate was 6%. Experts say it is 4.4%. They are probably right.
What this biased piece leaves out is that:
1. Fast food industry was raising prices 7.6% per year already. They've already lost low income customers in many cases.
2. McDonald's is even worse raising prices by 10% in 2023.
3. As stated before they tried to justify it with commodity increased prices but they had slowed, then dropped. So they made out like bandits.
Of course Fox Business isn't going to tell anyone that!
lpetrich
Contributor
‘Greedflation’ study finds many companies were lying to you about inflation | Fortune Europe
Where does the money go? Into stock buybacks and the like.
Where does the money go? Into stock buybacks and the like.
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2002
- Messages
- 39,000
- Location
- Frozen in Michigan
- Gender
- Old Fart
- Basic Beliefs
- Don't be a dick.
Paywalled.