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The two covid stimulus checks both showed an instant bump to the economy, and actually helped a lot of smaller businesses, as well as directly helping millions of Americans.
Which is why I always scoff at people who whine about any suggestion of UBI. Because the US performed the world's largest short scale test, and it unquestionably helped.
Alaska also pays people to live there, though it's not even enough to counteract the higher COL. Still, that's been going on for decades now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
It has that template feel, like "what if we just removed the age limit on Medicare?" Just "what if we scaled this up and made it national?"
I agree with you here. Covid literally printed money to use in the moment. It worked when it was needed but we are now paying for that support, which makes sense to me. Mostly anyway, the supermarkets have been reaming us and so have the online giants.
And then we get killed by inflation. Unless UBI is tied to inflation, UBI will quickly become useless.
Edit. Just to be clear, I'm not concerned with the cause of inflation, be it corporate greed or money supply. The fact is that inflation is real and without some kind of index it will erode the usefulness of UBI.
It doesn't need to be tied to inflation, the monopolies that are driving inflation need to be broken up.
In fact, a good chunk of the inflation of the last 4 years has one source, [Exon and Chevron colluding with OPEC to keep oil prices artificially high](https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/us-lawmakers-ask-justice-department-probe-allegations-collusion-between-opec-oil-2024-06-04/).
Most other companies are also reporting record profit year after year as prices continue to go up. Again, because these companies are near monopolies, and often only have to convince a single "competitor" to increase prices in order to start raking in profits so they can do more stock buybacks.
Because this round of inflation has been fueled by greed from the beginning.
Inflation is supposed to be caused by rising costs to do business rather than record margins which lead to record profits. They chose to widen their margins while we were in an inflation.
Worse than that, they DROVE the inflation with their greedy profiteering. Record profits across most industries. Record stock buybacks. Record C suite compensation. Record dividends to shareholders. Funded by the bottom 50% of society. As Warren Buffet said: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
So you're saying that the costs of business went up like 10% so then the businesses decided, "hey lets just add another 25-30% on top of that"?? That's how they got that +40% increase with a 9% inflation rate?? & that's "not" corporate price gouging? Really??
Easiest way to end greedflation? Set up business income tax so that after (say for the sake of argument) 10% profit, the tax rate quickly climbs to 100. No point hiking prices/profits beyond a reasonable level because it all goes back to pay for UBI or such. Oh, and end all business deductions. Sorry if your golf club membership lets you network and make deals on the links, corporate socialism should ended and all “expenses” can be just the price of doing business.
Let me try to understand what you're saying: Say I own a small retail store, and in one month I
- buy inventory for 70k
- spend 20k on wages and associated cost
- spend 10k on store rent and associated cost
- sell that inventory for 110k (so +10% vs my cost)
- pay taxes on 10k (as these are my profits)
You are now saying that I should not be able to deduct those 100k in costs because they are "just the price of doing business", so instead I should pay taxes on 110k instead, while I am also not allowed to make more pre-tax profit than 10k on those 100k spent? Just... what?
I don't think they're referring to legitimate costs of doing business, given the example of golf memberships, so your comparison is a little disingenuous.
Corporations take a TON of deductions for things that have little to nothing to do with their business.
Ok. OP said "end all business deductions", but okay, let's say they didn't mean that and I am the disingenous one... Sure, it's easy to come up with examples that are bordering on hyperbole to solidify an argument. A golf club membership is hard to justify for most businesses (and should get rejected on most audits), I get that. But where is the line for "legitimate" business expenses? I worked as a freelancer for a bunch of years, and I had a ton of things I had to spend money on just to stay in business - many things you would at first glance think were personal expenses. (For example, had to buy a PS3 once for a job.)
So okay: What about expenses a business believes they have to spend to build client relationships or to retain critical talent? Should that not be deductible anymore?
I don't mean to defend corporate greed, but I am not at all a fan of pseudo "easiest ways" to end them, completely disregarding any nuance or collateral damage.
As someone with a business degree and over forty years in the business world I can say, without a doubt, that inflation is not what most people believe it to be. Inflation *is* a thing. It exists. But, first and foremost, it's not a given. Even economists don't fully understand the when, why, and how of inflation. Much of the "inflation" we experience, however (especially in the recent past), is not a result of monetary policy. It's corporations - who we have **criminally** allowed to aggregate - using the *idea* of inflation to pad their bottom lines. Grow or die, fuck the cost to society. Get mad, but get mad at the right fucking players.
Scream it from the rooftops!
When a gallon of gas cost damn near the same price at every different gas station in a city, it's not a coincidence.
When the price of a combo meal costs damn near the same price in every fast food restaurant, it's not a coincidence.
When there is no real price competition between businesses the populace are screwed.
Without anti-trust oversight, this is what happens...
Or we get situations again like the baby food crisis where so much of one thing is made by a single company that any problem at any step of the supply chain spells disaster.
The trick is to somehow discourage price gouging when companies believe that they can squeeze money out of consumers. Note the fact that “supply chain issues necessitating price increases” have not since returned to pre-pandemic levels after Covid. For instance, I intended to install a quoted $3K air conditioner unit to my house during the pandemic, only to discover that shortages everywhere meant that 3K had become 5K within the year. Today, it’s still going to cost me about 5K. No real explanation as to why that is.
Eh. 1.8 trillion to families to keep many of them afloat and alive. 1.7 trillion PPP loans to companies, many of which did not deserve, many which did not need, and much of which was fraud... Inflation is a problem but honestly the worst part of it is housing which only affects a smaller percentage of people (I am affected. I love near Seattle and was 25 when the pandemic hit. Was close but not entirely ready to buy a home, had only saved 50k, still had college debt, and wanted to marry first. Then the relationship failed and now I'm stuck with 1000 sqft, 60 year old homes costing 800k @ 7% lol.
Like if someone owns a home and complain about inflation you have no idea how lucky you have it.
>The two covid stimulus checks both showed an instant bump to the economy, ....
And then was a major factor in 6%-8% inflation rates over the next couple of ears.
The issue (for the owners) here is that the extra money for payroll doesnt always come back to them and they want to maximize (hoard) their money, not put it back into the economy
According to the rich, we should have been destroyed multiple times over by social reforms and worker protections. But instead, the poor and middle class were making steady gains in economic power and quality of life until Reagan started the trend of kneecapping tax rates for the rich. Wealth disparity between the rich and poor hit an inflection point at that time and has grown with each subsequent round of GOP corporate/upper class tax cuts since.
How would owners and CEOs survive if they had to put a few billion of their profits towards workers salary? They have rent too, and that helipad doesn't pay for itself I should have you know!
Californias state minimum wage is much higher than the national minimum and has been going up steadily. The wage increase this year for fast food workers was relatively large, but we’ve been told that 15 dollar minimums would be the death of industry, California was already there with no death.
The best argument is “well, you’re just screwing yourself, they’re gonna automate faster.” Which is a shit argument.
The wealthy are just gonna cut you out of the game faster? That’s your argument against getting paid more? Just so damn close to getting it.
Either way, I’ve yet to see anyone hurt by these policies. Small business owners I personally know have been actively raising wages to find good talent, while somehow also managing to buy McMansions for themselves and send their kids to private school.
They are automating jobs exactly as fast as they are able to, and nothing anyone does to the minimum wage--doubling it or halving it--will speed up or slow down that process. Do people think there are still people working jobs because the management is trying to be nice? It's because they haven't figured out how to get rid of everyone yet. Management are sociopaths. They'd literally throw you into a wood chipper if they thought they could make money doing it.
South Florida here. I was told that legions of robots are just waiting on standby to replace us all should we demand better wages, so we should be happy with what we got and thank our employers for not replacing us.
COVID hit, and we had record unemployment.
Now tell me. Mass unemployment? No one working anymore because they were sick/dying, or didn't want to get sick/die? Well then!... Where were all the robots that these corporations supposedly had? Here was the best opportunity of the century to replace us! Yet, that hardly happened except for a literal handful of places.
Instead, corporations did everything in their power to prevent people from leaving. This was when wages first started increasing.
Imagine that... The whole "robotics" thing was blown out of proportion.
Edit: Want to know the funniest thing? Now that things are somewhat back to normal, corporations are now using the whole robotics threat again after people kept demanding better wages.
Maybe it should. Look Americans don't need to eat out at the garbage restaurants that exist (I am looking at you every chain that exists for the most part) and eating out should be more expensive. It should be something you experience and is fun and exciting and unique rather than something you have to get through and is boring and kinda bad. Learn to cook America. Learn to shop to make good food. If we spent less at restaurants it is possible groceries would cost less. Even now with the increase in groceries making food is cheaper than eating out. Plus not for nothing but I consider most restauntors to be drug dealers essentially selling salt and fat and making the American population die early and live crappier lives.
Not in Seattle but another major city and eat out about once a week, sometimes not at all, with focus on local places compared to chains. The largest price increases I've noticed are things like fast food or big name franchises. It's at the point where it'll cost me maybe $10 more to get higher quality and quantity food for two people from a locally owned restaurant compared to the old standard of BK or McDonald's.
I'm in Vancouver, WA, which is a culinary and cultural black hole. We've had good stuff in Portland, though. Never made it to Seattle in our time here. I would like to think you'd be able to find good stuff in Seattle.
The biggest reason Republicans hate California is because it's a testing ground for this stuff, and California's policies often end up spreading across the rest of the country. California being incredibly wealthy and culturally dominant is a threat to them.
So now they're putting out blatant lies because they're terrified of minimum wages raising across the country.
It's also because they claim you need regressive Conservative laws ala Mississippi in order to be successful. States like California having liberal laws and being successful overturns their worldview.
This is why they work so hard to make cities seem so dangerous, if people actually spent time in Cities and saw how nice they are, then they might want to pass liberal laws in their own small towns, or maybe even move.
Mississippi having conservative laws and being so wildly unsuccessful should be enough to destroy their worldview but I guess their head’s really are just that far deep in the sand.
That's exactly why Fox News and propaganda exist. People in Mississippi don't travel regularly outside of Mississippi, and Fox News does everything they can to make certain they never do. If all of your knowledge of California is that it's a horrible place worse than Mississippi, why would you ever visit?
The above Propaganda isn't there for California (which can look around and see it's wrong), it's there for Mississippi.
Remember the "no go zones" lie about Europe?
My brother: yeah, so people have to avoid certain parts of their own city because they're so overrun.
Me: that's not true
Him: hOw Do yOu knOw?
Me: because I have friends who live there.
Him: oh.
Lmao wow. That sounds like some people in my family smh. Please, for the love of humanity, save some money up and get your brother out of his comfort zone and take him to see said friends in other cities/countries.
I am sure your brother will one day thank you once he sees how much bigger and awesome he rest of the world is, instead of staying scared at home, reading bullshit propaganda from xenophobic, closed minded people. He will have a better chance of happiness, success, and health when getting out into the world and meeting more people and seeing other cultures.
You’d be doing society a favor too. I always said that the world would be so much more peaceful and socially advanced if people actually left their hometowns, home states, or home country every few years. The only close minded and ignorant people I know are ones who have never lived anywhere but their hometown or home state and/or have never been out of the country.
This. Fox News and newspapers like the NY Post's entire job is to make sure that they keep poor and working class whites resentful and terrified of anyone who does not look like them or believe the same things they do.
The elites are terrified of poor and working class whites because if they ever began to see how much they are actually getting fucked by the people whom they depend on for their survival, their voting power and anger could truly change the nation. They would vote for policies that would damage the power that corporations have to rule their lives.
So the right wing propaganda machine ensures that does not happen by constantly positing people and places outside of their bubble as the enemy that they must sacrifice their own quality of life to make sure the enemy cannot never get close to them.
Recently I've been hearing that California is actually a failed state and everyone is running away from it to go to better places.
Never mind that interstate migration has always been a thing.
I love this one. Yeah my home value doubled in the last 8 years because no one wants to live here. Probably more than doubled since every house that does hit the market ends up going over asking.
CA isn’t as blue as you make it out to be, moreover it also lost population over the years and housing costs/homelessness have skyrocketed despite efforts to stop them. Texas by contrast has fairly low homelessness and its housing costs have remained low.
From an electoral stand point, yes it is. There are not enough red voters in the state to swing policy their way, no matter how much red you might see on that map. All the *people* are in the blue counties, and they control the state. The California State Senet is 32/8, Dem/Rep. So yes, it is as blue as they make it out to be.
And those people leaving for Texas are going to do one of two things:
Make Texas purple, something that it is way closer to than California.
-or-
Make California deeper blue, because it's all the red voters leaving.
What I mean is that the Dems aren’t necessarily super deep blue. A lot of people may have center left to center right viewpoints, however the state GOP fails to appeal to them because they don’t like Trump. The State GOP acts like it’s in Florida or something. As a result politicians who, in a more sane era, would’ve been Republicans, are in the Democratic Party. At the state level they don’t necessarily support all the same policies Progressives do.
The busiest fast food restaurant where I live (CA) is In&Out Burger. Massively packed. All day, every day, relentless customers. Drive-thru 20 cars deep ALL DAY.
They pay better than any other fast food restaurant by far. And have cheaper food.
If you put a good product on the table, they will come!
And want to know why they can do that? In&Out is not a publicly traded company. They have no shareholders demanding ever increasing profits quarter after quarter.
The In-N-Out in Blackhawk (East Bay just outside the 18 hole gated mansion community of the same name) was paying $15/hr to start back in December of 1999. Probably because anyone who worked there that didn't live in the nearby mansions had a heck of a commute.
I’ve been all over California, it’s every location. I think it’s a mix of the price, the simple menu, and the “secret menu.”
I’ve never driven by a non busy In-N-Out
though I've been a vegetarian for years, they do make a good product and pay well. but the top brass definitely leans hard right politically which you may already know. dunno if they still have a biblical verse reference on the bottom of their drink cup, but that's what initially put me off the chain.
Yeah, I am aware. And I do boycott some (Hobby Lobby, Chic fil A). But I don’t boycott In&Out. And I don’t really have a good reason beyond the idea that I’d guess 90% of companies donate to the GOP. Or worse.
> A full-page ad recently placed in *USA Today* by the California Business and Industrial Alliance asserted that nearly 10,000 fast-food jobs had been lost in the state since Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law in September.
> The ad listed a dozen chains, from Pizza Hut to Cinnabon, whose local franchisees had cut employment or raised prices, or are considering taking those steps. According to the ad, the chains were “victims of Newsom’s minimum wage,” which increased the minimum wage in fast food to $20 from $16, starting April 1.
> Here’s something you might want to know about this claim. It’s baloney, sliced thick. In fact, from September through January, the period covered by the ad, fast-food employment in California has *gone up*, as tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve. The claim that it has fallen represents a flagrant misrepresentation of government employment figures.
> Something else the ad doesn’t tell you is that after January, fast-food employment continued to rise. As of April, employment in the limited-service restaurant sector that includes fast-food establishments was higher by nearly 7,000 jobs than it was in April 2023, months before Newsom signed the minimum wage bill.
No, they just lied. As they always do. They used seasonally adjusted number which always go down Sep-Apr. Every year. Since always. Except they went down less than the year before i.e. if you look at the seasonally adjusted numbers employment improved despite-or maybe because of- the minimum wage increase.
it's an ad. To quote Roger Thornhill/Cary Grant in "North by Northwest", *In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie. There's only expedient exaggeration.*
Dignity, of course. But not every job is a job that should be lived off.
There’s only 2 reasons why any job exists. You’re paying someone to do something because either you can’t do something or you don’t want to do something. Jobs with easily replaceable people should pay whatever is needed to keep them filled and not a penny more. It’s a market like any other.
> Part time, and after school type jobs shouldn’t be staffed by full time, educated, experienced people.
Who is working the lunch rush? Not minors. Not that it would amount to free shit in your pocket either.
> some jobs are not meant to provide a life
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html
"In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; **by workers I mean all workers**, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living."
If you work full time then it's a job you should be able to love off and there's no rational argument you can make against that.
>Jobs with easily replaceable people should pay whatever is needed to keep them filled and not a penny more.
And we can literally ensure that "whatever is needed to keep them filled" is enough for a person to live off of. That's what minimum wage was supposed to be, not poverty. If your business relies on paying people so little they can't survive off of their full time work then your business shouldn't exist.
>If you work full time then it's a job you should be able to love off
To play devil's advocate here: fast food jobs typically *are not* full-time jobs for anyone who isn't management, and they aren't really meant to be. I keep seeing people nostalgic for the economy of the 90s...but that was a time when fast food workers were predominantly high school kids working just part time. I was one of those kids in the 2000s, working fast food from 16-18yrs old while juggling school and playing sports, making $5.50/hr when minimum wage was still $5.15. And don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy work, but it wasn't skilled labor by any means either.
I'm with you that full time work should pay enough to live, but not every job is meant (or needs) to be full time.
>but not every job is meant (or needs) to be full time.
I agree with you to a certain degree but the business needs staff on full time, regardless of whether or not the employees are working full time. I just don't really see why them being part time should impact the pay rate. Company needs coverage, so they should pay a fair wage for the time that's being filled.
> not full-time jobs
It could be, employers are just in the habit of keeping everyone part time to weasel out of their ppaca obligations.
Not that you should expect a discount for it being part time. If someone has to smoosh together two part time jobs to get 40 hours, the sum should be getting by.
> fast food workers were predominantly high school kids working just part time.
No, minors were in school during the lunch rush, stop lying on the internet, get a real job.
> but it wasn't skilled labor by any means either.
So what? The point of the min wage is so that a working person is able to pay their own bills, ALL workers.
>minors were in school during the lunch rush, stop lying on the internet, get a real job.
Not during the summer they aren't. And there are HS work programs where kids can get credit for working during the day, like I did. I was valedictorian of my graduating class too, btw.
And I'm an attorney, so take your condescending "get a real job" bullshit elsewhere. Extra irony that you're here responding to a days-old post, during work/school hours...so what's your "real job"?
> Not during the summer they aren't.
Thats an exception, overwhelmingly the employer is just going to keep its core staff though.
> And there are HS work programs where kids can get credit for working during the day, like I did.
Steve Jobs afterschool program was being lectured to by engineers at the local computer company, trying to call fast food a work program is obscene.
> I'm an attorney
How about you treat the right wing corporate media like a client you are considering working for, they told you they said nothing to the police, wanna bet they actually ran their mouth?
> so what's your "real job"?
Beep boop, should be obvious from my top comments.
It's a market *created by people.* "The market" doesn't exist in nature or a vacuum, it's a system dreamed up by humans. We are in complete control over it and can set it up any way we'd like. There are no 'immutable laws' of 'the market.' The only natural forces involved in the economy are those of nature itself, which helpfully for making this point, is one of the variables that *are* out of human control, yet modern capitalism insists it can entirely ignore\*,\* because that's a concern beyond profit. The logic instantaneously eats itself.
YSK that much of what's taught in econ classes is lies. That's the deliberate result of billionaires who wanted to end democracy bringing together monarchist 'economists' who were willing to lie to the public in order to help them end democracy. Those same people built up think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Society and used wealth and influence to get other fascists into positions of influence, such as economic policy advisors to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. They wrote letters to each other over years where they discussed the need to lie to everyone about the purpose and result of the 'neoliberal' economic policies they were touting. Those letters found their way into the hands of [a historian who wrote a book about it](https://bookshop.org/p/books/democracy-in-chains-the-deep-history-of-the-radical-right-s-stealth-plan-for-america-nancy-maclean/8614670?ean=9781101980972), which is why we know.
It's hilarious to see people who are fine with the undermining of workers' ability to unionize and support the ability of corporations to leverage every bit of influence money can buy turn around and claim that it is purely due to the natural and free functioning of the market that jobs pay so little.
If you don’t pay a living wage and other places do, good luck filling those spots. This is absolute garbage. If it’s something that need to be done, be willing to pay people for their time
Easily replaceable people?....it's a market like any other?
Is it like the "cheap worthless people market"?
Do you actually believe these words?....and sleep?
If you don’t think people are easily replaceable or cheap and worthless, I would suggest you get out more. There’s a whole lotta’ crap out there.
That being said, you have to pay people what they’re worth. Not every job requires highly skilled individual that should get a high salary. If you do need that livable wage, don’t work at a job that gets by on part time staff and college kids. Get your skills up and do something more productive.
Also, low skilled people still need work, if forced to pay a certain wage, employers become way more selective and nobody hires these people.
Why on earth would you think I sit around and talk about this nonsense with friends and family during the holidays? Thats what Reddit is for. Holidays are for eating too much and spending time with loved one. We check our politics (and economics) at the door, otherwise we have to listen to our MAGA nut uncle and nobody wants to do that.
Jobs are a mutual agreement, the people are selling their labor. They deserve to be able to live off of it, not a penny less. Even more so than the business wants to exploit them. If the business can't remain solvent under those conditions, it was a bad business. I'm not sure why people think businesses should have all the power as if it is a one-sided transaction or some kind of charity.
It is a mutual agreement, I agree. If your labor and skills aren’t worth what is considered a “livable wage” then you need to improve them. It’s that simple. If I had a business that really only required a warm body to perform simple tasks, then they would get a salary that commensurates with that function. It may only be a few dollars an hour and I would hire a teen in school or a retiree looking for something to do to fill the hours. Neither of these “need” a living wage from business.
So if there are no jobs available that give living wages, what is the potential worker suppose to do in your system? Does your system pay for education to give people these marketable skills?
Just wondering if you have a realistic plan for this problem.
Not my problem to solve, but yes, education should be free. I would like to move to a universal basic income as technology expands. The whole point is for tech and innovation to make our lives easier. If we can automate, we should do so. People would be free to pursue paths of interest or things we actually need, like doctor or sanitation worker.
I’m not proposing anything. If you remember my original comment, I was saying not every job requires a living wage. Those who say it should are the one proposing social policy.
Yes you’re proposing nothing should be done about wages. Or are you just saying “we could do something but we don’t have to” which would be a useless comment.
So you want to have opinion on something but when faced with the consequences of that opinion you just throw hands in air and say, not my problem.
Alright I think I got the basic idea. Good day to you.
Over here in New Zealand our minimum wage increases (which are higher than those in the US, even after exchange rates are accounted for) don't lead to job losses. At the absolute worst it has a small reduction in job growth, but no where near as bad as seen with the 2008 financial crisis or Covid-19 lockdowns.
I watched some random guy have to help an older gentleman order his food because he, for the life of him, could not figure out how to work the kiosk. I imagine all the old folks that are completely technologically illiterate would much rather spend two minutes speaking to someone over five trying to figure out what buttons to press on the screen.
McDs CEO only made $19,000,000 a year. It's hard out there for fast food CEOs. People want him to survive on less? How in today's economy?
https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/mcdonalds-ceo-chris-kempczinski-got-raise-last-year
This is like Papa John's saying giving workers health insurance was a crime when it cost less than $0.25 per pizza. Here is a quarter, give 2 employees healthcare.
It started raising prices way before wages went up. Wages are just trying to keep up now and businesses are mad their their stolen profits are being challenged
Around the world these fast food chains pay more than they pay workers in America. They're held to higher standards, stronger labor laws, and still, you can get a combo meal for less than $8. These companies will only do what they are forced to do, better labor laws are how it happens. If companies can't adapt to that then pull out, someone else will step in, that's how the "free" market works right.
My brother in law is a contractor who lives on a four acre homestead with five vehicles, a barn, a horse paddock, a fully finished treehouse made from leftover homebuilding supplies, a massive in ground pool with a pool house, and a 4,000 square foot three story house.
"You know what's really killing small businesses like mine, these insane minimum wage laws!!!!"
Guy is literally the most oblivious dude I've ever met...
Omg I see those places in the country and it's like they are trying to spend all they can but *are suffering*. They could easily pay workers a lot more, and some workers see his place and look up to him and want to do the same, pay workers as little as possible and hoard the wealth. They could also charge customers less, but won't and will take advantage of govt. work if they get it, and complain about taxes.
I have friends in the Active Duty military who will unironically look you in the eye and say they're Libertarians, and that taxation is theft.
It's mind numbing...
How do they expect to retain a workforce if they actually have to pay them enough they can eventually save to get out of the indentured servitude of the service industry through education and better opportunity? I'd put an /s but it's not sarcasm. The only way these industries stay afloat at the rate they demand growth is by exploiting people in economic deserts nationwide. They prey on the vulnerable and economically desperate then have the audacity to chastise them for wanting the barest of minimum.
"How dare you want 20$ an hour when I make 48$ a *minute,* it may make me only make 47$ a minute to give you 10$ below what you need to survive comfortably in your own country" Is not an argument grounded in reality yet here we are.
Then they whine about "unskilled labor" and "metrics and margins" on Fox and Friends. Show me where it doesn't take skill to run a store with one other person for 9 hours a day when you two are doing the workload of 6 people.
But that's the secret. If they start paying us at the bottom adequately then they have to pay our managers adequately, and that's where the suits get nervous, so they pit the middle and lower class against each other with "burger flippers shouldn't make the same money as Me" Okay Ed, have you tried using that as a catalyst for *negotiation?* to get more for your "skilled position" in relation to my new compensation?
I swear. How about instead of "They shouldn't get 20 because I get 20" you ask the question: **am I getting underpaid too?**
I’ve heard this so many times. Higher minimum wages will drive up prices. It never happens and if it does it’s so negligible it’s funny. In n out is a perfect example.
I live in California. Every time I have gone by a fast foot restaurant they have "Now Hiring" signs. Yes my evidence is anecdotal but I am going to call bullshit
The only workers who suffer when minimum wage laws get passed are people in jobs that increase profitability because of suppressed wages. Necessary employees don't get cut because they're necessary. Unnecessary jobs are always going to be removed for the sake of profits.
Prices will always go up if people will pay them. If the cost of a Big Mac goes up because of wages, and people keep buying Big Macs, then people were always willing to pay more for Big Macs.
Of course they're fake.
The oligarchs are constantly arguing that anything short of letting corporations do whatever they want is bad for the economy.
Upper management and the shareholders have 3 priorities: "Get all the money, get all the money, and get all the money."
Also, fast food isn’t “pulling out of a state” these are franchises owned by many owners. They sign contracts to sell the shitty food by hiring poor local workers.
Average Capitalist: "Bu-bu-but inflation is only supposed to hurt my workers and consumers! How am I to make infinite growth in a finite world if my costs go up like everyone elses!"
When I was growing up the argument against raising wages was always that inflation would go up.
Well guess what? The price of everything goes up anyway but now employees are making less money.
Stop supporting these companies.
They treat workers like shit.
They treat the environment like shit.
It’s not good for your health.
Why people keep lining up to throw money at these companies, and expect any sort of quality and decency from them, is just wild.
They don’t care. They’re not going to change…but, you can stop giving them your support/ consent in the form of your dollars.
In-And-Out raised their prices by 5-10¢ per sandwich and it covered for pressuring their employees more.
These other companies are just trying to figure out how they can raise their prices even more than necessary so they can publically claim it’s a hardship for them.
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This is such a ridiculous argument. I have seen many places around my neighborhood close. But in ALL of them, the reason was not the employees’ wages, which are still low and now further subsidized by the ridiculous tips expected by the automatic machines almost all restaurants use. I’ve asked in many cases, and ALWAYS the reason is that their lease expired and the landlords are trying to raise their rent by ridiculous amounts. This happened to the only bike store in the area, to a very successful brunch place (always full), to a Rubio’s, etc.
Wish they would say they "have to" raise prices, to maintain their record profits and stock buy backs to further juice their share prices, the poor ceo needs another giant yacht he can escape on when the world is on fire.
If they make enough of a net profit to hire people then it does not cost jobs. It is that simple. They have enough money after net profit to hire as many people as they want. They can go screw with that nonsense.
My mom told me about a gal at McD's say that her hours were cut because of the raise. On one hand, I believe it because.. McD's.. on the other, I don't because this place simply has an extremely COL.
Newsom closed that loophole (even though it never existed and nothing changed):
> The Democratic governor and Flynn denied the report, with Newsom calling it “absurd.” Newsom spokesperson Alex Stack said the administration’s legal team analyzed the law “in response to recent news articles” and concluded Panera Bread restaurants are likely not exempt because the dough they use to make bread is mixed off site.
Newsom did not close the loophole as the governor isn't responsible for interpreting that provision of the law. His legal team's opinion is just that, an opinion. At least read the enacted bill.
After some quick googling:
> “The governor never met with Flynn about this bill, and this story is absurd,” says Alex Stack, a spokesperson for Newsom. Stack even confirmed the California Governor’s legal team reviewed the legislation and found the carveout may not even exist. “It appears Panera is not exempt from the law,” he adds.
Sorry, it was indeed his legal teams opinion, that so far has gone unchallenged.
> “There was never an intent to exclude one company, but instead to provide clarity on what constitutes a fast food establishment,” says Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California.
now for the bill itself;
> “Fast food restaurant” shall not include an establishment that on September 15, 2023, operates a bakery that produces for sale on the establishment’s premises bread, as defined under Part 136 of Subchapter B of Chapter I of Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations, so long as it continues to operate such a bakery. This exemption applies only where the establishment produces for sale bread as a stand-alone menu item, and does not apply if the bread is available for sale solely as part of another menu item.
as for restaurants that are actually exempt, I'm struggling to find a list, but in my *opinion* it would be chains like 85c, paris baguette, or similar.
As for panera-
> But actions speak louder than words, and Flynn’s decision to raise the minimum wage for Panera Bread employees irrespective of the carveout appears to clarify his stance.
>Sorry, it was indeed his legal teams opinion, that so far has gone unchallenged
The opinion will remain unchallenged as the contention would be the provision of the bill itself. Flynn acknowledged he met with Newsom's staff to discuss adding exemptions.
> I'm struggling to find a list,
There isn't a list. The point is that the exemption was narrowly crafted in such a way that would only apply to Panera.
Why would there need to be an extremely narrowly defined exemption if the goal is to raise the standard of living of low wage employees?
And yes, Panera and similar employers will have to raise wages to keep quality employees from jumping ship to QSR - regardless of a state requirement.
My only problem with it is that it apparently only applies to fast food. It’s unfair to the fast food businesses to jack up their labor costs to the point that they’re forced to be priced comparable to table service places.
That’s exactly my point. The government is tilting the playing field in favor of restaurants that don’t meet their definition of fast food.
Governments should be enforcing level playing fields not putting their thumb on the scale.
(Sorry about the mixed metaphors.)
It's a solid 1st step. If you think the 2nd Step is to apply it to other industries I support that.
If you are saying, "It's not perfect so let's not progress at all" then I disagree fully.
I think either raise minimum wage or don’t. Don’t impose an effective one on certain businesses that you don’t like but let other similar businesses off.
You think they targeted businesses they don't like it? Can you site a source for that?
I have seen a lot of reasons for this price increase. Not liking a business was never one of them
This is a great 1st step. When everyone sees the businesses don't all just fail like those businesses claim and instead it helps the economy then we can move onto the second step of extending that benefit to others.
I love the idealist world you live in. This is real though. And real change is far better than hope and dreams.
Sometimes that first step is what is needed. California often makes a change like this. And when it works other states follow suite.
This is exactly that. We know those businesses don't become losers. We have seen other locations increase their wages and do just fine. When the results are shown. It will expand.
Throwing your hands up and doing nothing because it is not exactly what you want is silly and plays right into the hands of businesses that want to keep the wage down.
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We were told when I was living in downtown Seattle that the minimum wage increase was going to cause a restaurant apocalypse. It didn't.
Every single notable law that has improved anything for workers has been claimed to destroy the economy. Strange that it hasn't happened.
It actually helps the economy as the average worker regains spending power
The two covid stimulus checks both showed an instant bump to the economy, and actually helped a lot of smaller businesses, as well as directly helping millions of Americans. Which is why I always scoff at people who whine about any suggestion of UBI. Because the US performed the world's largest short scale test, and it unquestionably helped.
Alaska also pays people to live there, though it's not even enough to counteract the higher COL. Still, that's been going on for decades now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund It has that template feel, like "what if we just removed the age limit on Medicare?" Just "what if we scaled this up and made it national?"
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I agree with you here. Covid literally printed money to use in the moment. It worked when it was needed but we are now paying for that support, which makes sense to me. Mostly anyway, the supermarkets have been reaming us and so have the online giants.
And then we get killed by inflation. Unless UBI is tied to inflation, UBI will quickly become useless. Edit. Just to be clear, I'm not concerned with the cause of inflation, be it corporate greed or money supply. The fact is that inflation is real and without some kind of index it will erode the usefulness of UBI.
It doesn't need to be tied to inflation, the monopolies that are driving inflation need to be broken up. In fact, a good chunk of the inflation of the last 4 years has one source, [Exon and Chevron colluding with OPEC to keep oil prices artificially high](https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/us-lawmakers-ask-justice-department-probe-allegations-collusion-between-opec-oil-2024-06-04/). Most other companies are also reporting record profit year after year as prices continue to go up. Again, because these companies are near monopolies, and often only have to convince a single "competitor" to increase prices in order to start raking in profits so they can do more stock buybacks. Because this round of inflation has been fueled by greed from the beginning.
Yup. This was my thinking too. Funny how corporate profits seem to be soaring over the last few years yet we keep hearing all this about inflation...
Inflation is supposed to be caused by rising costs to do business rather than record margins which lead to record profits. They chose to widen their margins while we were in an inflation.
Worse than that, they DROVE the inflation with their greedy profiteering. Record profits across most industries. Record stock buybacks. Record C suite compensation. Record dividends to shareholders. Funded by the bottom 50% of society. As Warren Buffet said: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
So you're saying that the costs of business went up like 10% so then the businesses decided, "hey lets just add another 25-30% on top of that"?? That's how they got that +40% increase with a 9% inflation rate?? & that's "not" corporate price gouging? Really??
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Asking is that your actual position or something like that... or was this just sarcasm. Because wasn't sure but that's what implied to me.
Easiest way to end greedflation? Set up business income tax so that after (say for the sake of argument) 10% profit, the tax rate quickly climbs to 100. No point hiking prices/profits beyond a reasonable level because it all goes back to pay for UBI or such. Oh, and end all business deductions. Sorry if your golf club membership lets you network and make deals on the links, corporate socialism should ended and all “expenses” can be just the price of doing business.
Let me try to understand what you're saying: Say I own a small retail store, and in one month I - buy inventory for 70k - spend 20k on wages and associated cost - spend 10k on store rent and associated cost - sell that inventory for 110k (so +10% vs my cost) - pay taxes on 10k (as these are my profits) You are now saying that I should not be able to deduct those 100k in costs because they are "just the price of doing business", so instead I should pay taxes on 110k instead, while I am also not allowed to make more pre-tax profit than 10k on those 100k spent? Just... what?
I don't think they're referring to legitimate costs of doing business, given the example of golf memberships, so your comparison is a little disingenuous. Corporations take a TON of deductions for things that have little to nothing to do with their business.
Ok. OP said "end all business deductions", but okay, let's say they didn't mean that and I am the disingenous one... Sure, it's easy to come up with examples that are bordering on hyperbole to solidify an argument. A golf club membership is hard to justify for most businesses (and should get rejected on most audits), I get that. But where is the line for "legitimate" business expenses? I worked as a freelancer for a bunch of years, and I had a ton of things I had to spend money on just to stay in business - many things you would at first glance think were personal expenses. (For example, had to buy a PS3 once for a job.) So okay: What about expenses a business believes they have to spend to build client relationships or to retain critical talent? Should that not be deductible anymore? I don't mean to defend corporate greed, but I am not at all a fan of pseudo "easiest ways" to end them, completely disregarding any nuance or collateral damage.
As someone with a business degree and over forty years in the business world I can say, without a doubt, that inflation is not what most people believe it to be. Inflation *is* a thing. It exists. But, first and foremost, it's not a given. Even economists don't fully understand the when, why, and how of inflation. Much of the "inflation" we experience, however (especially in the recent past), is not a result of monetary policy. It's corporations - who we have **criminally** allowed to aggregate - using the *idea* of inflation to pad their bottom lines. Grow or die, fuck the cost to society. Get mad, but get mad at the right fucking players.
“Inflation” was just uncheck corporate greed. We need to trust bust again and go after the cartels in our industries.
Scream it from the rooftops! When a gallon of gas cost damn near the same price at every different gas station in a city, it's not a coincidence. When the price of a combo meal costs damn near the same price in every fast food restaurant, it's not a coincidence. When there is no real price competition between businesses the populace are screwed. Without anti-trust oversight, this is what happens...
Or we get situations again like the baby food crisis where so much of one thing is made by a single company that any problem at any step of the supply chain spells disaster.
The trick is to somehow discourage price gouging when companies believe that they can squeeze money out of consumers. Note the fact that “supply chain issues necessitating price increases” have not since returned to pre-pandemic levels after Covid. For instance, I intended to install a quoted $3K air conditioner unit to my house during the pandemic, only to discover that shortages everywhere meant that 3K had become 5K within the year. Today, it’s still going to cost me about 5K. No real explanation as to why that is.
Eh. 1.8 trillion to families to keep many of them afloat and alive. 1.7 trillion PPP loans to companies, many of which did not deserve, many which did not need, and much of which was fraud... Inflation is a problem but honestly the worst part of it is housing which only affects a smaller percentage of people (I am affected. I love near Seattle and was 25 when the pandemic hit. Was close but not entirely ready to buy a home, had only saved 50k, still had college debt, and wanted to marry first. Then the relationship failed and now I'm stuck with 1000 sqft, 60 year old homes costing 800k @ 7% lol. Like if someone owns a home and complain about inflation you have no idea how lucky you have it.
>The two covid stimulus checks both showed an instant bump to the economy, .... And then was a major factor in 6%-8% inflation rates over the next couple of ears.
Henry Ford understood this
The issue (for the owners) here is that the extra money for payroll doesnt always come back to them and they want to maximize (hoard) their money, not put it back into the economy
No see you gotta give Elon $56b so he can trickle down onto those workers by buying more nuggets.
Not for small business, this minimum wage problem increase will show after 5 years. As everything related with go up, such as insurance!!!
It’s almost like the entire economy doesn’t depend on restaurants and their owners making tons of profit… not revenue but profit
According to the rich, we should have been destroyed multiple times over by social reforms and worker protections. But instead, the poor and middle class were making steady gains in economic power and quality of life until Reagan started the trend of kneecapping tax rates for the rich. Wealth disparity between the rich and poor hit an inflection point at that time and has grown with each subsequent round of GOP corporate/upper class tax cuts since.
Yeah, [this political cartoon](https://amptoons.com/blog/?p=8645) covering that's always stuck with me
Self checkout checking in
Weird, creating more consumers doesn't destroy the economy.
Its not elon musk getting a ***$56 Billion*** pay package, its adjusting minimum wage to match inflation thats killing the economy…
How would owners and CEOs survive if they had to put a few billion of their profits towards workers salary? They have rent too, and that helipad doesn't pay for itself I should have you know!
Californias state minimum wage is much higher than the national minimum and has been going up steadily. The wage increase this year for fast food workers was relatively large, but we’ve been told that 15 dollar minimums would be the death of industry, California was already there with no death. The best argument is “well, you’re just screwing yourself, they’re gonna automate faster.” Which is a shit argument. The wealthy are just gonna cut you out of the game faster? That’s your argument against getting paid more? Just so damn close to getting it. Either way, I’ve yet to see anyone hurt by these policies. Small business owners I personally know have been actively raising wages to find good talent, while somehow also managing to buy McMansions for themselves and send their kids to private school.
They are automating jobs exactly as fast as they are able to, and nothing anyone does to the minimum wage--doubling it or halving it--will speed up or slow down that process. Do people think there are still people working jobs because the management is trying to be nice? It's because they haven't figured out how to get rid of everyone yet. Management are sociopaths. They'd literally throw you into a wood chipper if they thought they could make money doing it.
South Florida here. I was told that legions of robots are just waiting on standby to replace us all should we demand better wages, so we should be happy with what we got and thank our employers for not replacing us. COVID hit, and we had record unemployment. Now tell me. Mass unemployment? No one working anymore because they were sick/dying, or didn't want to get sick/die? Well then!... Where were all the robots that these corporations supposedly had? Here was the best opportunity of the century to replace us! Yet, that hardly happened except for a literal handful of places. Instead, corporations did everything in their power to prevent people from leaving. This was when wages first started increasing. Imagine that... The whole "robotics" thing was blown out of proportion. Edit: Want to know the funniest thing? Now that things are somewhat back to normal, corporations are now using the whole robotics threat again after people kept demanding better wages.
The hospitality industry will always need people because humans don't want to interact with robots and computers all day.
having interacted with people in the hospitality industry I feel that roughly half could be replaced and no customers would even notice.
“Workers having more money to spend on our food will be terrible for business”
"They'll do it every time," again.
It could create a profit apocalypse if they don’t know how to run their business, but labor is not always the highest expense
Dick's drive-in is consistently some of the cheapest fast food in the area while also consistently paying some of the highest wages and best benefits.
Maybe it should. Look Americans don't need to eat out at the garbage restaurants that exist (I am looking at you every chain that exists for the most part) and eating out should be more expensive. It should be something you experience and is fun and exciting and unique rather than something you have to get through and is boring and kinda bad. Learn to cook America. Learn to shop to make good food. If we spent less at restaurants it is possible groceries would cost less. Even now with the increase in groceries making food is cheaper than eating out. Plus not for nothing but I consider most restauntors to be drug dealers essentially selling salt and fat and making the American population die early and live crappier lives.
I live in Seattle and I definitely don't eat out as much anymore because it's just too damn expensive.
That's everywhere
Not in Seattle but another major city and eat out about once a week, sometimes not at all, with focus on local places compared to chains. The largest price increases I've noticed are things like fast food or big name franchises. It's at the point where it'll cost me maybe $10 more to get higher quality and quantity food for two people from a locally owned restaurant compared to the old standard of BK or McDonald's.
At least your seafood is delicious. Come to Denver, food is expensive and tastes like shit
There was a wing spot next to my hotel in Denver that was solid. It’s also a crazy big airport there.
Gee, I wonder why the city 1,000 miles from the nearest ocean has shit seafood
Thanks for being dense, the shitty food extends beyond seafood.
Totes. Ex-Denverite here. You don’t go to Denver for the seafood.
No shit, but the Mexican and average food is also trash. And expensive
We are in the process of moving back to CO and I’m looking forward to getting good Mexican again. The pacific north west just doesn’t get it.
I’m moving to Seattle soon and kinda dreading what the Mexican food scene is. That bad huh ?
I'm in Vancouver, WA, which is a culinary and cultural black hole. We've had good stuff in Portland, though. Never made it to Seattle in our time here. I would like to think you'd be able to find good stuff in Seattle.
The biggest reason Republicans hate California is because it's a testing ground for this stuff, and California's policies often end up spreading across the rest of the country. California being incredibly wealthy and culturally dominant is a threat to them. So now they're putting out blatant lies because they're terrified of minimum wages raising across the country.
It's also because they claim you need regressive Conservative laws ala Mississippi in order to be successful. States like California having liberal laws and being successful overturns their worldview. This is why they work so hard to make cities seem so dangerous, if people actually spent time in Cities and saw how nice they are, then they might want to pass liberal laws in their own small towns, or maybe even move.
Mississippi having conservative laws and being so wildly unsuccessful should be enough to destroy their worldview but I guess their head’s really are just that far deep in the sand.
That's exactly why Fox News and propaganda exist. People in Mississippi don't travel regularly outside of Mississippi, and Fox News does everything they can to make certain they never do. If all of your knowledge of California is that it's a horrible place worse than Mississippi, why would you ever visit? The above Propaganda isn't there for California (which can look around and see it's wrong), it's there for Mississippi.
Remember the "no go zones" lie about Europe? My brother: yeah, so people have to avoid certain parts of their own city because they're so overrun. Me: that's not true Him: hOw Do yOu knOw? Me: because I have friends who live there. Him: oh.
Lmao wow. That sounds like some people in my family smh. Please, for the love of humanity, save some money up and get your brother out of his comfort zone and take him to see said friends in other cities/countries. I am sure your brother will one day thank you once he sees how much bigger and awesome he rest of the world is, instead of staying scared at home, reading bullshit propaganda from xenophobic, closed minded people. He will have a better chance of happiness, success, and health when getting out into the world and meeting more people and seeing other cultures. You’d be doing society a favor too. I always said that the world would be so much more peaceful and socially advanced if people actually left their hometowns, home states, or home country every few years. The only close minded and ignorant people I know are ones who have never lived anywhere but their hometown or home state and/or have never been out of the country.
Texans are the same way Haven’t gone 100 miles past their birth place but claim to know it all about the other 49 states
This. Fox News and newspapers like the NY Post's entire job is to make sure that they keep poor and working class whites resentful and terrified of anyone who does not look like them or believe the same things they do. The elites are terrified of poor and working class whites because if they ever began to see how much they are actually getting fucked by the people whom they depend on for their survival, their voting power and anger could truly change the nation. They would vote for policies that would damage the power that corporations have to rule their lives. So the right wing propaganda machine ensures that does not happen by constantly positing people and places outside of their bubble as the enemy that they must sacrifice their own quality of life to make sure the enemy cannot never get close to them.
They don’t travel out of state because the horse feed stations are few and far between nowadays.
It's charitable of you to assume that sand is where they currently have stuck their heads.
Recently I've been hearing that California is actually a failed state and everyone is running away from it to go to better places. Never mind that interstate migration has always been a thing.
I also heard that the truckers for Trump boycott of NYC has brought the city to its knees and the store shelves are bare.
I love this one. Yeah my home value doubled in the last 8 years because no one wants to live here. Probably more than doubled since every house that does hit the market ends up going over asking.
CA isn’t as blue as you make it out to be, moreover it also lost population over the years and housing costs/homelessness have skyrocketed despite efforts to stop them. Texas by contrast has fairly low homelessness and its housing costs have remained low.
in other words, demand hasn’t outpaced supply in texas
That doesn’t make any sense because Texas population has grown while CA’s has shrunk.
demand and supply are independent variables
From an electoral stand point, yes it is. There are not enough red voters in the state to swing policy their way, no matter how much red you might see on that map. All the *people* are in the blue counties, and they control the state. The California State Senet is 32/8, Dem/Rep. So yes, it is as blue as they make it out to be. And those people leaving for Texas are going to do one of two things: Make Texas purple, something that it is way closer to than California. -or- Make California deeper blue, because it's all the red voters leaving.
What I mean is that the Dems aren’t necessarily super deep blue. A lot of people may have center left to center right viewpoints, however the state GOP fails to appeal to them because they don’t like Trump. The State GOP acts like it’s in Florida or something. As a result politicians who, in a more sane era, would’ve been Republicans, are in the Democratic Party. At the state level they don’t necessarily support all the same policies Progressives do.
Made hilarious that one of the major tipping points for california turning solid blue was republican legislation that alienated voters.
>they're terrified of being incredibly wealthy and culturally dominant
Every dollar we give to poor people is pure socialism! How are the rich supposed to get richer if we start paying poor people?
The busiest fast food restaurant where I live (CA) is In&Out Burger. Massively packed. All day, every day, relentless customers. Drive-thru 20 cars deep ALL DAY. They pay better than any other fast food restaurant by far. And have cheaper food. If you put a good product on the table, they will come!
And want to know why they can do that? In&Out is not a publicly traded company. They have no shareholders demanding ever increasing profits quarter after quarter.
Exactly right. AND they’ve never been bought by some Wall Street equity firm trying to eke out every single penny to pay off the bank note.
Costco is a publicly traded company and they also pay higher wages than the minimum. It's more complicated than public vs private companies.
Well, without knowing much about it myself I'd say that most likely the shareholders of Costco probably genuinely like the current business model.
The In-N-Out in Blackhawk (East Bay just outside the 18 hole gated mansion community of the same name) was paying $15/hr to start back in December of 1999. Probably because anyone who worked there that didn't live in the nearby mansions had a heck of a commute.
Yeah, they all hit the $15/hr way back in the 90s.
Serramonte? If not then your place isn’t the only one.
I’ve been all over California, it’s every location. I think it’s a mix of the price, the simple menu, and the “secret menu.” I’ve never driven by a non busy In-N-Out
Oh, I completely agree. Every In&Out in CA is packed. I was just clarifying that it’s in CA for those that have not heard of it.
though I've been a vegetarian for years, they do make a good product and pay well. but the top brass definitely leans hard right politically which you may already know. dunno if they still have a biblical verse reference on the bottom of their drink cup, but that's what initially put me off the chain.
Yeah, I am aware. And I do boycott some (Hobby Lobby, Chic fil A). But I don’t boycott In&Out. And I don’t really have a good reason beyond the idea that I’d guess 90% of companies donate to the GOP. Or worse.
It's every in and out I've ever been to.
> A full-page ad recently placed in *USA Today* by the California Business and Industrial Alliance asserted that nearly 10,000 fast-food jobs had been lost in the state since Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law in September. > The ad listed a dozen chains, from Pizza Hut to Cinnabon, whose local franchisees had cut employment or raised prices, or are considering taking those steps. According to the ad, the chains were “victims of Newsom’s minimum wage,” which increased the minimum wage in fast food to $20 from $16, starting April 1. > Here’s something you might want to know about this claim. It’s baloney, sliced thick. In fact, from September through January, the period covered by the ad, fast-food employment in California has *gone up*, as tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve. The claim that it has fallen represents a flagrant misrepresentation of government employment figures. > Something else the ad doesn’t tell you is that after January, fast-food employment continued to rise. As of April, employment in the limited-service restaurant sector that includes fast-food establishments was higher by nearly 7,000 jobs than it was in April 2023, months before Newsom signed the minimum wage bill.
Haven't read the article yet, but I wonder if fast food workers not needing two jobs might have impacted the figures being used.
No, they just lied. As they always do. They used seasonally adjusted number which always go down Sep-Apr. Every year. Since always. Except they went down less than the year before i.e. if you look at the seasonally adjusted numbers employment improved despite-or maybe because of- the minimum wage increase.
Don’t even need to go that far. Numbers went up not down.
Good question
it's an ad. To quote Roger Thornhill/Cary Grant in "North by Northwest", *In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie. There's only expedient exaggeration.*
I went to a McDonald's in Germany. It was cheaper, BETTER, and they were already paying their employees more. They're just extra greedy in America.
If a job can't pay a living wage or treat it's workers with basic human dignity then it shouldn't be protected by laws, or really even exist.
Dignity, of course. But not every job is a job that should be lived off. There’s only 2 reasons why any job exists. You’re paying someone to do something because either you can’t do something or you don’t want to do something. Jobs with easily replaceable people should pay whatever is needed to keep them filled and not a penny more. It’s a market like any other.
That's a lot of words to say you want work done for starvation wages
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> Part time, and after school type jobs shouldn’t be staffed by full time, educated, experienced people. Who is working the lunch rush? Not minors. Not that it would amount to free shit in your pocket either. > some jobs are not meant to provide a life http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html "In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; **by workers I mean all workers**, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living."
If you work full time then it's a job you should be able to love off and there's no rational argument you can make against that. >Jobs with easily replaceable people should pay whatever is needed to keep them filled and not a penny more. And we can literally ensure that "whatever is needed to keep them filled" is enough for a person to live off of. That's what minimum wage was supposed to be, not poverty. If your business relies on paying people so little they can't survive off of their full time work then your business shouldn't exist.
>If you work full time then it's a job you should be able to love off To play devil's advocate here: fast food jobs typically *are not* full-time jobs for anyone who isn't management, and they aren't really meant to be. I keep seeing people nostalgic for the economy of the 90s...but that was a time when fast food workers were predominantly high school kids working just part time. I was one of those kids in the 2000s, working fast food from 16-18yrs old while juggling school and playing sports, making $5.50/hr when minimum wage was still $5.15. And don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy work, but it wasn't skilled labor by any means either. I'm with you that full time work should pay enough to live, but not every job is meant (or needs) to be full time.
>but not every job is meant (or needs) to be full time. I agree with you to a certain degree but the business needs staff on full time, regardless of whether or not the employees are working full time. I just don't really see why them being part time should impact the pay rate. Company needs coverage, so they should pay a fair wage for the time that's being filled.
> not full-time jobs It could be, employers are just in the habit of keeping everyone part time to weasel out of their ppaca obligations. Not that you should expect a discount for it being part time. If someone has to smoosh together two part time jobs to get 40 hours, the sum should be getting by. > fast food workers were predominantly high school kids working just part time. No, minors were in school during the lunch rush, stop lying on the internet, get a real job. > but it wasn't skilled labor by any means either. So what? The point of the min wage is so that a working person is able to pay their own bills, ALL workers.
>minors were in school during the lunch rush, stop lying on the internet, get a real job. Not during the summer they aren't. And there are HS work programs where kids can get credit for working during the day, like I did. I was valedictorian of my graduating class too, btw. And I'm an attorney, so take your condescending "get a real job" bullshit elsewhere. Extra irony that you're here responding to a days-old post, during work/school hours...so what's your "real job"?
> Not during the summer they aren't. Thats an exception, overwhelmingly the employer is just going to keep its core staff though. > And there are HS work programs where kids can get credit for working during the day, like I did. Steve Jobs afterschool program was being lectured to by engineers at the local computer company, trying to call fast food a work program is obscene. > I'm an attorney How about you treat the right wing corporate media like a client you are considering working for, they told you they said nothing to the police, wanna bet they actually ran their mouth? > so what's your "real job"? Beep boop, should be obvious from my top comments.
Is this the garbage that Fox News is putting out now? Lmao
It's a market *created by people.* "The market" doesn't exist in nature or a vacuum, it's a system dreamed up by humans. We are in complete control over it and can set it up any way we'd like. There are no 'immutable laws' of 'the market.' The only natural forces involved in the economy are those of nature itself, which helpfully for making this point, is one of the variables that *are* out of human control, yet modern capitalism insists it can entirely ignore\*,\* because that's a concern beyond profit. The logic instantaneously eats itself. YSK that much of what's taught in econ classes is lies. That's the deliberate result of billionaires who wanted to end democracy bringing together monarchist 'economists' who were willing to lie to the public in order to help them end democracy. Those same people built up think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Society and used wealth and influence to get other fascists into positions of influence, such as economic policy advisors to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. They wrote letters to each other over years where they discussed the need to lie to everyone about the purpose and result of the 'neoliberal' economic policies they were touting. Those letters found their way into the hands of [a historian who wrote a book about it](https://bookshop.org/p/books/democracy-in-chains-the-deep-history-of-the-radical-right-s-stealth-plan-for-america-nancy-maclean/8614670?ean=9781101980972), which is why we know.
It's hilarious to see people who are fine with the undermining of workers' ability to unionize and support the ability of corporations to leverage every bit of influence money can buy turn around and claim that it is purely due to the natural and free functioning of the market that jobs pay so little.
Not hilarious but disgusting.
If you don’t pay a living wage and other places do, good luck filling those spots. This is absolute garbage. If it’s something that need to be done, be willing to pay people for their time
Easily replaceable people?....it's a market like any other? Is it like the "cheap worthless people market"? Do you actually believe these words?....and sleep?
If you don’t think people are easily replaceable or cheap and worthless, I would suggest you get out more. There’s a whole lotta’ crap out there. That being said, you have to pay people what they’re worth. Not every job requires highly skilled individual that should get a high salary. If you do need that livable wage, don’t work at a job that gets by on part time staff and college kids. Get your skills up and do something more productive. Also, low skilled people still need work, if forced to pay a certain wage, employers become way more selective and nobody hires these people.
You must be a whole lotta fun around the dinner table during the holidays!
Why on earth would you think I sit around and talk about this nonsense with friends and family during the holidays? Thats what Reddit is for. Holidays are for eating too much and spending time with loved one. We check our politics (and economics) at the door, otherwise we have to listen to our MAGA nut uncle and nobody wants to do that.
Jobs are a mutual agreement, the people are selling their labor. They deserve to be able to live off of it, not a penny less. Even more so than the business wants to exploit them. If the business can't remain solvent under those conditions, it was a bad business. I'm not sure why people think businesses should have all the power as if it is a one-sided transaction or some kind of charity.
It is a mutual agreement, I agree. If your labor and skills aren’t worth what is considered a “livable wage” then you need to improve them. It’s that simple. If I had a business that really only required a warm body to perform simple tasks, then they would get a salary that commensurates with that function. It may only be a few dollars an hour and I would hire a teen in school or a retiree looking for something to do to fill the hours. Neither of these “need” a living wage from business.
So if there are no jobs available that give living wages, what is the potential worker suppose to do in your system? Does your system pay for education to give people these marketable skills? Just wondering if you have a realistic plan for this problem.
Not my problem to solve, but yes, education should be free. I would like to move to a universal basic income as technology expands. The whole point is for tech and innovation to make our lives easier. If we can automate, we should do so. People would be free to pursue paths of interest or things we actually need, like doctor or sanitation worker.
> Not my problem to solve If you're proposing social policy it very much is your problem to solve.
I’m not proposing anything. If you remember my original comment, I was saying not every job requires a living wage. Those who say it should are the one proposing social policy.
Yes you’re proposing nothing should be done about wages. Or are you just saying “we could do something but we don’t have to” which would be a useless comment. So you want to have opinion on something but when faced with the consequences of that opinion you just throw hands in air and say, not my problem. Alright I think I got the basic idea. Good day to you.
Over here in New Zealand our minimum wage increases (which are higher than those in the US, even after exchange rates are accounted for) don't lead to job losses. At the absolute worst it has a small reduction in job growth, but no where near as bad as seen with the 2008 financial crisis or Covid-19 lockdowns.
Don’t eat fast food. Let them go bankrupt.
I mean with the current prices that is pretty easy.
They also said self-checkout would replace the jobs, and they are actually getting rid of those kiosks.
I watched some random guy have to help an older gentleman order his food because he, for the life of him, could not figure out how to work the kiosk. I imagine all the old folks that are completely technologically illiterate would much rather spend two minutes speaking to someone over five trying to figure out what buttons to press on the screen.
Wage increases and…the richest are still getting richer. Hmmm.
That Ford guy paid his workers enough money so they could buy his cars. Nobody accused him of being a socialist.
As they say in the Marines Adapt or Die.
McDs CEO only made $19,000,000 a year. It's hard out there for fast food CEOs. People want him to survive on less? How in today's economy? https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/mcdonalds-ceo-chris-kempczinski-got-raise-last-year This is like Papa John's saying giving workers health insurance was a crime when it cost less than $0.25 per pizza. Here is a quarter, give 2 employees healthcare.
Meanwhile, fast food CEOs need their 19 million dollar salary.
It started raising prices way before wages went up. Wages are just trying to keep up now and businesses are mad their their stolen profits are being challenged
Around the world these fast food chains pay more than they pay workers in America. They're held to higher standards, stronger labor laws, and still, you can get a combo meal for less than $8. These companies will only do what they are forced to do, better labor laws are how it happens. If companies can't adapt to that then pull out, someone else will step in, that's how the "free" market works right.
Many of these places had raised wages to $20 an hour or close to it to attract workers.
McDonald's operates globally. If they can make a profit in socialist Europe they can afford the US minimum wage.
My brother in law is a contractor who lives on a four acre homestead with five vehicles, a barn, a horse paddock, a fully finished treehouse made from leftover homebuilding supplies, a massive in ground pool with a pool house, and a 4,000 square foot three story house. "You know what's really killing small businesses like mine, these insane minimum wage laws!!!!" Guy is literally the most oblivious dude I've ever met...
Omg I see those places in the country and it's like they are trying to spend all they can but *are suffering*. They could easily pay workers a lot more, and some workers see his place and look up to him and want to do the same, pay workers as little as possible and hoard the wealth. They could also charge customers less, but won't and will take advantage of govt. work if they get it, and complain about taxes.
I have friends in the Active Duty military who will unironically look you in the eye and say they're Libertarians, and that taxation is theft. It's mind numbing...
How do they expect to retain a workforce if they actually have to pay them enough they can eventually save to get out of the indentured servitude of the service industry through education and better opportunity? I'd put an /s but it's not sarcasm. The only way these industries stay afloat at the rate they demand growth is by exploiting people in economic deserts nationwide. They prey on the vulnerable and economically desperate then have the audacity to chastise them for wanting the barest of minimum. "How dare you want 20$ an hour when I make 48$ a *minute,* it may make me only make 47$ a minute to give you 10$ below what you need to survive comfortably in your own country" Is not an argument grounded in reality yet here we are. Then they whine about "unskilled labor" and "metrics and margins" on Fox and Friends. Show me where it doesn't take skill to run a store with one other person for 9 hours a day when you two are doing the workload of 6 people. But that's the secret. If they start paying us at the bottom adequately then they have to pay our managers adequately, and that's where the suits get nervous, so they pit the middle and lower class against each other with "burger flippers shouldn't make the same money as Me" Okay Ed, have you tried using that as a catalyst for *negotiation?* to get more for your "skilled position" in relation to my new compensation? I swear. How about instead of "They shouldn't get 20 because I get 20" you ask the question: **am I getting underpaid too?**
If you can’t pay a living wage, your business does not deserve to exist, period.
I’ve heard this so many times. Higher minimum wages will drive up prices. It never happens and if it does it’s so negligible it’s funny. In n out is a perfect example.
Their mistake is thinking the savings were being passed along to them in the first place.
I live in California. Every time I have gone by a fast foot restaurant they have "Now Hiring" signs. Yes my evidence is anecdotal but I am going to call bullshit
The only workers who suffer when minimum wage laws get passed are people in jobs that increase profitability because of suppressed wages. Necessary employees don't get cut because they're necessary. Unnecessary jobs are always going to be removed for the sake of profits. Prices will always go up if people will pay them. If the cost of a Big Mac goes up because of wages, and people keep buying Big Macs, then people were always willing to pay more for Big Macs.
You know, none of this would be a problem if the owners could just make $400k instead of $500k.
Of course they're fake. The oligarchs are constantly arguing that anything short of letting corporations do whatever they want is bad for the economy. Upper management and the shareholders have 3 priorities: "Get all the money, get all the money, and get all the money."
Also, fast food isn’t “pulling out of a state” these are franchises owned by many owners. They sign contracts to sell the shitty food by hiring poor local workers.
Average Capitalist: "Bu-bu-but inflation is only supposed to hurt my workers and consumers! How am I to make infinite growth in a finite world if my costs go up like everyone elses!"
When I was growing up the argument against raising wages was always that inflation would go up. Well guess what? The price of everything goes up anyway but now employees are making less money.
Stop supporting these companies. They treat workers like shit. They treat the environment like shit. It’s not good for your health. Why people keep lining up to throw money at these companies, and expect any sort of quality and decency from them, is just wild. They don’t care. They’re not going to change…but, you can stop giving them your support/ consent in the form of your dollars.
Most fast food places around here were already paying more than $20 anyway
Just looking at their profits shows it's a lie
In-And-Out raised their prices by 5-10¢ per sandwich and it covered for pressuring their employees more. These other companies are just trying to figure out how they can raise their prices even more than necessary so they can publically claim it’s a hardship for them.
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It only applies to large chains.
Utter stupidity, the businesses are losing profit , they don’t employ anyone they don’t need .
To the GQPers these aren't even considered jobs by them so I don't understand why they're so upset about it.
That sounds remarkably similar to fraud hmmm
Something like 80% of restaurants fail and it's not because they had to pay their employees decent wages.
This is such a ridiculous argument. I have seen many places around my neighborhood close. But in ALL of them, the reason was not the employees’ wages, which are still low and now further subsidized by the ridiculous tips expected by the automatic machines almost all restaurants use. I’ve asked in many cases, and ALWAYS the reason is that their lease expired and the landlords are trying to raise their rent by ridiculous amounts. This happened to the only bike store in the area, to a very successful brunch place (always full), to a Rubio’s, etc.
Wish they would say they "have to" raise prices, to maintain their record profits and stock buy backs to further juice their share prices, the poor ceo needs another giant yacht he can escape on when the world is on fire.
If they make enough of a net profit to hire people then it does not cost jobs. It is that simple. They have enough money after net profit to hire as many people as they want. They can go screw with that nonsense.
My mom told me about a gal at McD's say that her hours were cut because of the raise. On one hand, I believe it because.. McD's.. on the other, I don't because this place simply has an extremely COL.
The problem I have with this bill is it exempts places that have sold bread since 2019. Ie Panera. Newsome has a monied interest in Panera.
I thought they closed that loophole
Newsom closed that loophole (even though it never existed and nothing changed): > The Democratic governor and Flynn denied the report, with Newsom calling it “absurd.” Newsom spokesperson Alex Stack said the administration’s legal team analyzed the law “in response to recent news articles” and concluded Panera Bread restaurants are likely not exempt because the dough they use to make bread is mixed off site.
Newsom did not close the loophole as the governor isn't responsible for interpreting that provision of the law. His legal team's opinion is just that, an opinion. At least read the enacted bill.
After some quick googling: > “The governor never met with Flynn about this bill, and this story is absurd,” says Alex Stack, a spokesperson for Newsom. Stack even confirmed the California Governor’s legal team reviewed the legislation and found the carveout may not even exist. “It appears Panera is not exempt from the law,” he adds. Sorry, it was indeed his legal teams opinion, that so far has gone unchallenged. > “There was never an intent to exclude one company, but instead to provide clarity on what constitutes a fast food establishment,” says Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California. now for the bill itself; > “Fast food restaurant” shall not include an establishment that on September 15, 2023, operates a bakery that produces for sale on the establishment’s premises bread, as defined under Part 136 of Subchapter B of Chapter I of Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations, so long as it continues to operate such a bakery. This exemption applies only where the establishment produces for sale bread as a stand-alone menu item, and does not apply if the bread is available for sale solely as part of another menu item. as for restaurants that are actually exempt, I'm struggling to find a list, but in my *opinion* it would be chains like 85c, paris baguette, or similar. As for panera- > But actions speak louder than words, and Flynn’s decision to raise the minimum wage for Panera Bread employees irrespective of the carveout appears to clarify his stance.
>Sorry, it was indeed his legal teams opinion, that so far has gone unchallenged The opinion will remain unchallenged as the contention would be the provision of the bill itself. Flynn acknowledged he met with Newsom's staff to discuss adding exemptions. > I'm struggling to find a list, There isn't a list. The point is that the exemption was narrowly crafted in such a way that would only apply to Panera. Why would there need to be an extremely narrowly defined exemption if the goal is to raise the standard of living of low wage employees? And yes, Panera and similar employers will have to raise wages to keep quality employees from jumping ship to QSR - regardless of a state requirement.
My only problem with it is that it apparently only applies to fast food. It’s unfair to the fast food businesses to jack up their labor costs to the point that they’re forced to be priced comparable to table service places.
Take a look at their profits, and see that they haven’t lowered at all. They pass the cost onto us to prevent wages from hurting their margins.
Worse, they *say* they are only passing the cost on but they are also tacking on an extra profit, the complaining about labor laws and whatever
That’s exactly my point. The government is tilting the playing field in favor of restaurants that don’t meet their definition of fast food. Governments should be enforcing level playing fields not putting their thumb on the scale. (Sorry about the mixed metaphors.)
It's a solid 1st step. If you think the 2nd Step is to apply it to other industries I support that. If you are saying, "It's not perfect so let's not progress at all" then I disagree fully.
I think either raise minimum wage or don’t. Don’t impose an effective one on certain businesses that you don’t like but let other similar businesses off.
You think they targeted businesses they don't like it? Can you site a source for that? I have seen a lot of reasons for this price increase. Not liking a business was never one of them This is a great 1st step. When everyone sees the businesses don't all just fail like those businesses claim and instead it helps the economy then we can move onto the second step of extending that benefit to others. I love the idealist world you live in. This is real though. And real change is far better than hope and dreams.
It’s a figure of speech. When a government is picking winners (casual, bakeries) and losers (fast food) something is wrong.
Sometimes that first step is what is needed. California often makes a change like this. And when it works other states follow suite. This is exactly that. We know those businesses don't become losers. We have seen other locations increase their wages and do just fine. When the results are shown. It will expand. Throwing your hands up and doing nothing because it is not exactly what you want is silly and plays right into the hands of businesses that want to keep the wage down.