A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier
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I've been overworked at many professional technical jobs in different roles before.
I'm paid a great deal more now, and yet I was never more tired or worn out or found it hard to study than when I worked the ovens at the pizza place.
I often work with people who have never worked such jobs. They're upset that they're 'overworked' and spend their time in the fancy break room with all the perks. Many I suspect have no clue.
To get more money you have to pry it from people's hands. You have to have something they can't resist not paying you for. That's it.
The suffering of low minimum wage is supposed to "encourage" people to move up the value chain, as the conservative doctrine goes, but it just doesn't work when all your time and energy is spent surviving.
Honestly, I only made it out (I was probabbly not going to make it through college due to all the work and my own personality when I was young was NOT ready for college) because I got lucky, had some mild technical skills and the .com era came along and companies wanted warm bodies.
I picked some aged old company and they hired me. That company stuck around for a long enough time to establish a career.
Working pizza ... could easily have kept me down due to that and other challenges.
Another bad thing about those types of jobs is that they can start to warp your mind after a while, to the effect that you start unconsciously considering your superiors / managers as role models, and start trying to 'move up the ladder' because the pay is marginally better, when in reality most of the time the _top_ of the "ladder" at such organizations are compensated less than entry-level positions for in-demand skilled workers --
I've been continuously employed [out of what I _thought_ was necessity] since I was 16, and until I was about 26 the majority of my jobs were in the foodservice / warehouse / gofer / etc hard-work-long-hours-very-low-pay category. If I had to do over again, I would have stayed away from those situations by any means available and used that time to build valuable skills [as I later did], which would almost certainly have resulted in better outcomes, sooner.
Hard work leads to prosperity. That's not the same as equating prosperity to hard work.
Most prosperous people achieved prosperity due to earlier hard work and sacrifice of themselves (or their immediate ancestors.)
Clearly, the 'value chain', as you put it, exists as evidenced by the numerous posts on this thread of describing the previous fast-food-type jobs they held that led them to more 'prosperous' positions (at least, affording enough prosperity to spend time posting messages to the internet instead of digging ditches or flipping burgers.)
Sometimes it does. Other times, it's barely enough to achieve survival.
> Most prosperous people achieved prosperity due to earlier hard work and sacrifice of themselves (or their immediate ancestors.)
Or their distant ancestors. Or due to their -- or their ancestors' -- criminal activities or exploitative behavior or sheer luck.
Every single office job I've had, except my first (which was a data entry job, not programming), has been a lot more stressful a lot more often, and I'm including the job where the first thing my coworkers and I did each morning was play a video game to determine who was going to go pick up coffee (Carcassonne on Xbox Live Arcade, if you're curious, took about 20 minutes).
Any guesses on when the people working hard at a fast food restaurant will have prosperity arrive?
And this is true whether your folks won the lottery or earned their money through hard work.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/29/study-to-succeed-in-america-...
This part wasn't in your link, I don't believe this is true.
Not that it's a realistic idea but damn if everyone had experiencing working in the demanding, underpaid, crappy jobs in the service industry, we might be more empathetic and better off as a whole.
My local store had a good sale on 12-packs of soda and so I decided to stock up with a dozen packs (I like a variety). I loaded them into my cart upside-down so the barcodes were facing up. The cashier just had to take the hand scanner and zap each one super easy and didn't have to lift any of them. It saved both of us time and effort and the cashier was extremely appreciative.
Agreed. When I worked retail and waiting jobs, I got grief from both out-of-touch wealthy people, and bitter poor people (although there were also kind people from both of those categories).
Myself, and I suspect most people, I got grief from everyone.
Poor.
Middle Class.
Wealthy.
Those with accents.
Those without accents.
White.
Black.
Tall.
Short.
You name it. It's brutal if you have to work such jobs for a long time. (Like say, throughout high school and college.) A lot of people out there turn terrible as soon as they interact someone of lower status providing them a service. Even if you never make a mistake, you can't escape it. I remember a girl spilled a drink on the dress of some woman. Apparently the table was already bad, and it turned worse. Manager made me take the table. (Not proud about it, but I was the best doormat he had.) I don't even remember the rest of the night, but I remember that table. Remember every face. They didn't even look like bad people either. That's what was so surprising. Man, that has stayed with me.
So if you only got grief from a few people, then you should thank your lucky stars. You got off easy.
- "you were lucky."
- "thank your lucky stars"
- "You got off easy"
- "It's brutal if you have to work such jobs for a long time"
I worked retail, bused tables, and waited for almost 3 years full-time, and I'm certainly not claiming to have only gotten grief from a few people. I never said anything even remotely close to "few people" in my comment. I suggested that there was a trend to the people I got grief from, in agreement to the GP comment. Note: a trend, not an absolute cut-off.
In addition to the comment I was responding to, there are other comments in this thread making similar assertions, so I'm not the outlier here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21717225
Walmart does something interesting for their software development process. Say a developer is working on a warehouse automation system -- that dev. is then trained and works in the warehouse for a month. Same goes for checkout/cashier, or customer service, or whatever. You WORK that job for a month and you'll understand just how trying it can be to struggle with lousy software on top of a sometimes difficult public. You'll know the trouble spots and the workarounds, and can take that education back to a nice safe quiet desk where you can then go on to help solve the problems.
That probabbly explains why there are such great free development tools out there too ;)
I simply look at eBay and see the $200-$400 price tags to replace my current machine (10-year old ThinkPad T400) and try not to cry. (This one was given to me by a friend)
I found an 800MHz AMD Duron with 128MB RAM on the side of the road in 2013. Browsing the web on that box was fun, even after maxing out the RAM with everything in the house and getting it up to 320MB.
In 2005 I was running a 66MHz 486DX2 with 8MB of free diskspace (oh and 4MB RAM).
The outlier was the Pentium 4 I used for a bit in 2006 - it had a crippled motherboard that couldn't do DMA to the HDD, only PIO, so the cursor would freeze if anything was accessing the HDD even for a fraction of a second. This was the Firefox 2.x era, so with 512MB of RAM I was mostly staring at "Task Manager (Not Responding)" instead of doing anything useful.
My point with all this: it has taken me about 20 years to realize that my general lack of success at mastering computer science wasn't entirely due to the learning difficulties and other mental health issues preventing me from holding down a traditional job - it was access to sane equipment.
I have had the ABSOLUTE HARDEST TIME EVER (emphasis appropriate and necessary) to FORCE myself to do ANYTHING with computers beyond what I'd describe "theoretical learning". "But what if I start this project and the computer dies tomorrow?????" is what a part of my head sort of screams/cries out anytime I have a new idea (with that many anxious questionmarks).
Unresolvable problem, currently. And an interesting one, too, since if I _could_ start a project, and hold it together, I might actually be able to get somewhere and move up.
...Except for the fact that the disability support I'm currently eligible for only recognizes casual/part time work payment structures, not bulk post-payment consulting/bug-bounty up-front types of remuneration, which is the type of thing I have any confidence in my abilities with. (Since I can cram and do the work in a sprint, then run away and have a break for a million years afterwards.)
So yeah, I am practically disabled because of how my mental health issues are classified, not directly because of the issues themselves (which have an impact but do leave me with some level of functionality which I am unable to effectively use).
I was constantly asking our designers and PMs to try using our product as a user might. I'd write up little scenarios that I knew our users struggled with and invite people to try them out with our product.
Sadly, I found it impossible to persuade anybody to design for anything except what looks good on a presentation of UX mocks.
But I'll be able to understand their job better and what the software really needs to do to make than more efficient and productive. They'll appreciate that and be more likely to buy in and adapt to the product they'll be using.
That's not your job. Your job is to implement the features you're told to implement.
But the users saw those features and said that is not what they asked for.
So? Why do you care if the project fails? It's not on you if it fails. Just do what the BA's said to do.
Boss, they aren't translating the business needs correctly. We have to rebuild features 2 or 3 or 4 times. Is we could see what they do and talk to them it'd only take once. That's happened a couple times during user acceptance. They said that's not what what we asked for. I said what did you ask for? I coded it right there on the spot and they signed off on the user story.
Go back to work. I'm busy. This isn't a productive conversation.
Same should apply for software as well imo.
* empathy - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy
* sympathy - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy
Imho that's trying to solve a symptom, not the actual problem.
Why does society tolerate &^%$ jobs in the first place? Why not strive to make jobs non-&^%$?
Instead, it somehow has become completely normalized that these kinds of jobs exist, and anybody who doesn't want to work them is considered "too entitled", which all goes back to this notion of "work as a virtue".
And while the idea that this experience might help change something from the desk job, the reality is most people will just be glad to be having their desk job, with a lot having a mindset of "I went through the &^%$ jobs to get here, everybody else should have to suffer like I did!".
They can be low / lower pay and still be a fairly reasonable place to work with fairly reasonable people to work with.
But, if we accept that work conditions fit some kind of natural distribution / bell curve, it's probably unrealistic to believe there will be no shit jobs.
We do strive, which is why we have non-shit jobs now. After the advent of agriculture, overwhelming majority of people has worked mundane, tiring, repetitive and straining jobs. It’s only recent increases in technology allowed us to produce immense amounts of wealth, finally allowing huge swaths of population to enjoy light, interesting and fun jobs. We still have lots of shit jobs out there, but don’t worry, we’re working on that.
Service and social jobs are usually those "closest to the base", being in constant contact with people from all walks of life, while at the same time usually the least well paid.
That's a lot of exposure compared to many other jobs, in particular, desk jobs and pretty much most management and executive positions.
Imho the importance of such real in flesh contact to other people, across peer groups, is vastly underestimated these days.
The ever-present social media gives digitally affine people often the misleading idea they can find everybody, with all their issues and opinions, online but from my experience that just holds not true.
There's plenty of people out there that don't even know what Facebook is, as unbelievable as that might sound.
Slowly the org transitions to much higher paid people in these roles across the board.
I think part of it is mgmt types think they save money reducing wages for the most numerous type of employee and it creates a black hole race to the bottom.
High end restaurants have very well paid front of house because they have a financial incentive to perform. Cashiers don't.
Can you point to any point in human history (since the invention of farming) in which a smaller fraction of people worked menial jobs than now?
There are tons and tons of bullshit jobs that don't produce anything valuable, don't fulfill anyones need to have a meaningful life, but somehow keep butts in seats often at keyboards getting paid to justify someone elses jobs existence.
There is a reason why job satisfaction is abysmal, why depression and opioid abuse is rampant, and why those weren't as large problems two centuries ago when people were almost universally subsistence farmers. The labor wasn't easy but it always justified itself to those doing the work (assuming it was your own farm, growing your own food, which was and has always been pretty rare). You knew why it had to be done, something lacking in many modern careers.
E.g. flipping burgers at McDonald's isn't a shitty job because you're flipping burgers; it's a shitty job because you are paid badly, made to work much faster than it's healthy, and the management is shitty to you both personally and structurally, in how they plan the shifts, etc.
I'd argue that any shitty job could have a non-shitty variant with mostly the same tasks and responsibilities, and only the conditions changed. Which leads me to the answer to your question: anywhere between invention of agriculture and the industrial revolution, or perhaps even up to XIX century. Even when people toiled on farms, to then give most of it away to some nobles with swords, at least they weren't micromanaged day-in, day-out by said nobles.
One step up, the corporate managers putting the pressure on the local managers are themselves pressured by market conditions to cut cost and drive efficiency. And who drives those market conditions? You and I, my friend. We like cheap stuff. The consequence is that others suffer.
I worked on a farm throwing hay. It’s literally backbreaking work, but I had an awesome employer who thought about safety and making for a better workplace. If Amazon were running that farm, I’d be crippled by debilitating pain today.
It seems to me like it used to be a lot more common for people to take up a "shitty" (e.g., low paying, menial, and hard) job when they were young, to help pay their way through school, for some extra pocket money, etc. You would do this during the summers, or part-time, or both. This was just considered an ordinary part of life and a character building experience.
It seems like this experience is a lot less common now. In part because we're coddling our children and our young adults (hard work increasingly seems to be a dirty word and something no one should ever have to do), in part because we're handing off all the worst jobs to illegal immigrant labor.
I'm sure this will prompt some "ok boomer" type responses (I'm not that old btw) but that's just how it was when and where I grew up. I was expected to work and make money as soon as I was able, because my family wasn't rich. They were also super clear with me that there was no free rent after I turned 18, and that if I wanted to go to college I needed to pay for it myself. So this fantasy land "we'll have only perfect jobs for everyone and work will always be a fulfilling endeavor" crap does not connect with me and I suspect does not connect with 90% of Americans. It is popular with techno-fantasists who went to Stanford and work in SV and drink the kool-aid from their employer about how they are changing the world by optimizing the profitability of some billionaire's advertising inventory.
(None of this is to suggest that Cierra Brown's situation is fine and we don't need to change anything about the system btw! Biggest practical issues I saw in that article were that she doesn't have healthcare and she walks away from 2 weeks of work with only $215, something is very wrong there.)
When the Reagan administration changed the regulations around meatpacking to break the unions and ship the industry back to 1910 standards to rural places, none of the principled conservatives were complaining about cheap meat packing and illegal workers who didn’t collect workers compensation or have pesky demands for health insurance.
Likewise, none of the large apple growers around me were too concerned about guest worker visas when they were able to hire on Jamaicans for a few months, house them in onsite dormitories and pay below market rates. They love to bitch about Mexican construction guys though.
When I worked in the mall in the 90s, the struggle of unskilled workers was obvious and sad. At that time, most workers made $4.25, and the barrier to moving up for folks not in college was a car. Getting a $12/hr job as a line cook at Pizza Uno or $15/hr job cleaning offices meant freedom for those people.
If labor standards didn’t allow the abysmal working conditions that only desperate Latin American or other immigrants are willing to take, the market would take care of that problem. Instead of shipping in Apple pickers from 4,000 miles away, you could hire folks 10 miles away and bus them in.
You have this backwards. My point wasn't that immigrants are taking American jobs, it was that Americans are giving them these jobs because Americans are being lazy, soft and cheap.
The immigrant is not at fault. It seems like you're responding to Fox News talking points, not to me. I would suggest doing that on foxnews.com.
At no point did I suggest that better labor standards are a bad idea, but I did observe that anyone who thinks society will eliminate all the jobs Hacker News perceives as shitty is drinking a lot of kool-aid.
Don't blame the American who doesn't want to do back-breaking work for pennies. It's the same everywhere: for example, Finland imports seasonal berry pickers from Thailand.
No sane local wants to work on the rates the market is willing to pay; mechanised agriculture has pushed the prices low enough to make manual agricultural work simply unsustainable. To make local work profitable we'd need to radically raise the product prices or provide subsidies.
These problems can be solved in other ways. A real world solution probably involves some workers getting paid less than they would like, and some businesses paying higher wages than they want to.
The least moral solution is to develop an illegal underclass and deny them human and political rights. This sort of thing is cancerous for a democracy and bears an unsettling resemblance to one of America's original sins, one which I'm sure I don't need to name directly, but which we knew was wrong from day one, and which we spent a lot of blood and treasure to abolish.
I'm not sure how to react to cases where this is true but the seasonal workers still see it as a good source of income. Would the market bear the increased cost? Likely not. Avocados would be imported in the US, and in Finland berries would disappear as an industry ingredient as there are no low-cost countries with climate suitable for cultivation.
Good point, it explains why well-traveled people often end up being insufferable racists.
On the other hand Sony Japan apparently has a policy where new employees fresh out of college (vs employees with previous work experience) are made to work 2 weeks in retail at an electronic store to get a taste of what it's like for actual customers. I ask some employees if they got any thing useful out of the experience. Most said no, it was just like getting hazed.
He does have the relative security that comes with having a long term partner that does make a professional salary, but I don't think that diminishes the motivational piece. Not everyone is as ambitious as every one else. Of those that are, not everyone's ambition is pointed in the same direction. Some people just want to rock up at work for 8 hours a day, go home, watch some shit TV that they enjoy and then go to bed. Frankly, that's ok. There's not enough programmer/marketing professional/CEO/Founder roles for everyone to have them.
That said, if I could get a retail job that paid what I make as a dev, I’d definitely consider it. Retail was grueling, but at the same time much less psychological pressure, and much less mentally exhausting.
I always say I’m not going to let my next dev job take over my life, and maintain work/life balance, and things always start out well. But inevitably, pressure builds, I cave, and things get bad again. I realize that I share the blame for this situation, but at the same time, this situation seems to be more common than not among software devs.
I never faced this kind of pressure in retail jobs. Work was grueling and at time abusive, but when the work day was over, I was 100% able to relax and forget about work. I struggle to do that with a software job.
But at the same time, my compensation is considerably higher than most other jobs. So I’m both grateful for my job and yet still wish there were another way. Like a part-time software development job, which seem to be unusually rare.
I'm a CS student and I've been working at a Panera for about a year now. I love my particular store and the work environment is great; I genuinely look forward to going to work every day. I'll miss my coworkers when I have to quit soon to start my programming career.
That being said, I understand why those jobs could never realistically pay anything near what a good software dev job can. If you could make the same amount of money working a job like that, why would anyone put in the effort to get stressed out as a programmer? It wouldn't make sense.
The solution is to fix dev jobs so they're more balanced and less stressful :)
If I could work the ride op or fast food jobs at my current salary, I'd take them in a heart beat. Hell, I might even take the ride op job for half the salary because the job could sometimes be a lot of fun.
But retail? Hell no. You could offer me double my salary and I'd still hesitate before accepting it. People treat retail employees like utter garbage. We once had a customer berate a cashier to tears, yelling at her and literally calling her an "incompetent stupid bitch", because his credit card was being declined and he was insisting she was just entering his card wrong.
It was a blast.
To some degree, serving the "customer" by cutting labour costs to the bare minimum (as a way to minimize the cost of everything), means we create an awful existence for the people who depend on these jobs for a living. The tyranny of their lives is dictated by a consumer base who constantly demand lower prices and will shop elsewhere to save a dollar or two.
I worked in a supermarket for four years, but it was part time, while I was in High School and in my first year of University. I didn't need the money in the way someone working full time needed it. I was given consistent hours every week.
Working retail for a modest wage (say $25 an hour), with consistent hours would be a really great career for a huge swathe of the population. Lots of people (myself included) enjoy interacting with people all day.
A lot of more traditional professions have a better balance between physical work and mental work (skilled crafts, engineering in the traditional sense, or being a doctor all come to mind). Modern knowledge work doesn't have enough physical movement involved.
I wouldn't like to do it full time, but sometimes I wish I could spend 20% of my time doing something enjoyable but menial like stacking shelves. I think I'd hate doing it full time, but one day a week? Practically sounds like fun!
* not having to cut labor to the minimum as a basic value
* sooo many jobs would be unobjectionable at 8 hours per week. Almost any job.
* professions should be designed to balance physical and mental labor, particularly to offer breaks from painful standing.
I am not with you on:
* Giving people 167% of the average hourly wage for an easy job like retail. As a society, we do not _want_ retail to be a great career. You don't develop the job skills or provide the same value as jobs that are more challenging, and the more valuable things you could have produced are lost. Retail should pay less than other jobs, _because_ it's more fun to interact with people all day than to work at a hot grill.
Broadly, as a society, we want people to have jobs that pay them enough to survive, and with enough margin to do other stuff. Not everything can (or should) tie back to economic value. Otherwise we end up cutting off our noses to spite our own faces, as we focus on the short term rather than the long term health of a wider community.
More than anything, we want to reward diligence, professionalism and effort, in whatever form that might take.
Part of the reason software jobs are nice and comfortable is of course the pay and the agency, both coming from demand exceeding supply. But a big part of it is also, IMO, that it's impossible to tell how much contribution to the bottomline a developer has on a day-to-day, or hour-to-hour basis. When my coworker and I start talking shit on the job, does that contribute positively or negatively to the ultimate productivity? By how much? Nobody can tell, which is why we can get away with it.
Conversely, in retail or fast-food joints, you can track people's contribution to the bottom line at minute resolution. Which is why they're being treated like slave labor.
When you are that poor, you need every hour of work you can get to make rent, buy food etc. You can't take time off to interview for a better job, or to study for a new career. You are stressed from a thousand extra decisions about money that the cushion of a little extra cash could save you. Also you are one emergency or injury or illness away from losing your apartment, or going hungry.
That's why advocates call for a living wage, a wage that people can make enough to live on. If they have the capability to do more, then that gives them a better chance to achieve it.
Though there will still need to be people working retail.
As for how fun it is to interact with people... that definitely depends on who you are and who you are interacting with. If you know someone working retail, ask them how it is.
And everyone needs to shop. Retail isn't just interacting with people all day: You are filing shelves. Sometimes you are a pharmacist or a pharmacy tech. Sometimes you are doing payroll or managing. Sometimes you are ordering product.
You are also cleaning up the shit someone smeared on the wall of the bathroom and the puke the kid left in the isle. There is no real way around that.
Not everyone thinks it is more fun to interact with people all day long. I'd argue that most factory work - lots of which is paid fairly well, comparatively - takes no more intelligence or training or knowledge than retail. In both, once you have experience, you can get another job. Same for call centers... which again, are usually paid better than retail or fast food (yet still treated poorly). I don't know why retail should pay less than these sorts of jobs. Most folks just wind up with retail jobs because that's what they started with and it is hard to get out of the cycle.
I don't like interacting with people but it is way more cushy than the factory work I did for fifteen years. I guess you're right about not taking more intelligence or training, but it takes so much more physical stamina and risk of accident.
Most folks don't do retail for fun. Those that do will also do a number of other part-time jobs for fun or whatever reason. Most folks working retail, though, are doing it to eat and pay rent. Sometimes having a flexible schedule is necessary. A great number of places have chances to move into management, sometimes moving out of poverty wages.
None of this means the folks aren't ambitious or motivated. You simply don't recognise it as such because they are doing what you consider to be a "lower" job or not doing enough to meet your personal criteria.
I will grant you that selling garden soil might be as physically demanding as working in a factory, and miles walked could add up too. But I never woke up in retail wondering if I'd be physically able to continue working my job much longer because of the wear and tear.
There's a reason every rich country got there by manufacturing and not retail, and in part it's that you don't build human capital by sitting in a chair scanning price tags. Manufacturing productivity increases steadily so workers have to become steadily more skillful to keep up. It's also far from a dead-end job, as productivity is easily measured and the cream can rise.
People in retail can be ambitious and talented, but their talents are wasted there. We can't get every ambitious, motivated person out of retail and into the job where they would do the most good just by offering them money, because money isn't everything. But we can avoid screwing things up by _pushing_ those people into jobs where their talents are wasted, by offering them too much money. I've worked lots of mandatory overtime because people wouldn't come work for my employer, so I feel the pain of jobs that need good people but can't get them.
Your response screams, "I've never worked a retail job in my life!!". There's nothing easy about working retail in the United States, and interacting with the majority of retail customers is far from "fun".
At the end of the day you just want a room temperature shower and a cold drink, the mental capacity isn't really there for much else.
This is why I feel so much for those building the stadiums for the next football(/soccer) world cup. What's even worse is they're being worked to death as slaves in all but name.
If you don't have enough downtime/nutrition to recover between shifts you slowly fall apart.
No complaints, I actually enjoyed the work, but it was exhausting in a way that no office job can compare. The experience also makes me want to throttle folks who have never lifted anything heavier than a pen as I hear them whine about utter trivial things.
I don't, because it is considered rude to throttle one's co-workers.
The urge remains.
Just because your work isn’t as grueling as someone else’s doesn’t mean you don’t get to be unhappy or dissatisfied with it.
Having a wider perspective leads to a greater appreciation for what one has, after all. And that is a good thing.
Now I work in an office. It's nothing to go 4-6 hours without stopping. But of course I can stop and pop out for a coffee or a snack, or lunch whenever I want.
$4 extra an hour would change this woman's life (and a lot of other people like her). $4 extra an hour.. I don't think I'd notice it.
Many of us are SO SO fortunate, we can't even begin to imagine how good we have it.
I worked at gas stations after that, before college, and while it was tiring, nothing at the same level.
I can totally imagine a pizza job would be draining.
Hard work is relative and people are working very hard at all salary levels. There are many other constructs which are the true reasons behind how much people earn.
I agree with the Fight for $15... But I think they need to attach this to inflation or somehow as a percentage of the highest incomes in the economy. Otherwise Trump will just keep pressuring the Fed to print more money and $15 will only be worth $5 in today's money.
You guys know that McDonalds manages to run in countries with decent wages as well, right? And that maybe a company with a yearly global profit of over 10 billion dollars might be able to afford giving their employees a livable wage. Hell, just the fact that it`s possible to have a full time job in the US, and still need food stamps should be a massive, red flag about your situation. But for some reason you prefer to (by extension) defend the extremely rich owners of these companies.
So while you can live on a McDonalds income, it's only because your fellow citizens are chipping in. Effectively we are subsidising McDonalds as they can now give you a lower income and get away with it.
I'm not sure if that is the best way to go.
Those subsidies, like the current ones, run deep.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae#Politics_and_the_...
The problem is that all powerful people own properties and they want to keep prices high. Main voters base also owns properties. It's an unsolvable problem.
London. The problem is the same in all large cities/capitals. I was listening on a BBC podcast a couple of years back discussing how the "not living where they work" is the main thing holding them back in progressing with their lives as much/fast as they could.
Especially in London, where near the center you can't get a decent studio for less than 1000-1300 pounds per month (just the rent now add council tax, utilities, etc.). The only way to make it is live on a flat with 3-5-7 more people.
There are some "maps vs rent" for London. I assume you can find some for other cities as well.
https://d36tnp772eyphs.cloudfront.net/blogs/1/2018/05/london...
https://static.homesandproperty.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails...
https://www.thrillist.com/lifestyle/london/london-undergroun...
If you see prices below 1k, it's per week.
One tiny benefit of these kind of jobs, if you ever need something to do to earn money, they'll most probably hire you.
But it's not a great thing.
i.e. in the u.s. you get fucked from both ends.
No, before social support networks of the modern mixed economy companies paid worse for basically unskilled jobs. The surplus of people desperate for work meant that if the pay was better than no job but inadequate for survival in the long term, people would still take it, and if the inadequate pay meant they died or became unable to work, well, there were always more people in the surplus labor pool to replace them.
Decreasing the desperate need for employment puts more power in the hands of labor, not capital.
And then you go to stand in line at the local wholefoods to buy $2.5 local chocolate croissants and $2 kombuchas from a teller who earns $15/hour.
Tip well, my friends, tip well.
Quite easily when they've spent their entire lives being told poor people are evil. That's American's for you. There's too much of "I've got mine, so fuck anyone else" going on.
Anyone can get ahead, get the American dream! If you're poor, well, you must be lazy or stupid.
“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.” -- Vonnegut.
For example, I've been vehicle dwelling and very poor in Silicon Valley for about 10 years as I've been unable to hold a job (ADD/Aspergers/speech impediment). I get called names and dirty looks all the time. I'd like to make some money, but only in a worker-owned co-op because slaving away while others reap the rewards seems like prostitution for nothing.
0. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pull-yourself-up-by-your-boot...
I am now convinced that a free market is the best way for everyone, particularly the poorest. There are many who think likewise and we are not callous or selfish. To me, you're the selfish person by keeping us from having better lives. Money does not grow on trees and everything the State does is another opportunity to slow us down and make our poor poorer.
I am always ready to be convinced otherwise, but so far every bit of data I have seen points that way, with ease of doing business, deregulation and a low tax burden being major factors towards a more prosperous society.
Not exactly the picture of a prosperous society.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21714138
and
But what do you mean "would go straight into the landlords pockets". Are you saying that rent would immediately rise to eat the difference if McD increased their salaries?
As for the maneuverability on raising wages, that's what a minimum wage would be for. No need for companies to let the competition ahead of them because they increase the wages - everybody else would have to do the same.
In the case of your example, if all companies increase wages all at the same time, then you end up pretty much in the same spot you started. Goods and services' prices adjust, companies make less profits, rents increase -- i.e. no actual increase in production (or housing) in the economy that might help the poorest the most. Some industries might be able to pass on the wage bill entirely to customers, others will get squeezed and stop investment and entry of new companies. It all depends on elasticities and the studies that we usually see trying to measure that show that shareholders are not the ones that get hit the most.
If we want the poor to be able to afford more appliances, we need to make those appliances cheaper to produce. And to get there we might need many industries paying people very little, so that we can get off the ground somehow. This example is easy to visualize when looking at China or Bangladesh. But even looking at Europe as a whole it is very clear in my mind that countries like Greece or Portugal still need to cover at lot of ground in this manner. Former communist Eastern Europe countries are already surpassing GE and PT by following broadly that scrip. And even UK and Germany would only be bottom five if they were considered US states (in GDP per capita adjusted by purchasing power). And inside the US there is a massive gap between NY and Alabama. And NY itself is plagued by super high rents because we don't build anymore.
It sounds cruel to imply that a $15/h wage for the lady in the article is not going to help her. It will, but in the short run only. It also sounds impolite to mention that many people in her situation managed to turn their lives around out of that kind of precarity. Many will on account of their smarts, resilience or luck, but many will not. For these the only true hope is that we manage to increase the number of companies and productivity of all companies in the economy. So that we end up with very high productivity industries (read, than produce a lot for low prices) such as oil and gas, car industry, food production, appliances industry, hopefully home-building, “subsidizing” the rest through low cost products and competition of all those low wage, and unskilled jobs. Mandating minimum salaries is like chasing a unicorn.
Side note. In the article she mentions that she is trying to save for a car. Cars in the US are much cheaper than in Europe, and if you go to e.g. Argentina you would be surprised by how much a pile to junk is worth in the second hand car market.
It's also postulated in a recent book that a primary belief held by supreme court justice Clarence Thomas that the best way to improve the lot of African Americans is to make life as difficult as possible politically for them so they work harder(!) - this aligns his views on a lot of subjects with the conservative side of interpreting the Constitution but he's not really consistent on the latter as much as his belief. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/books/review-enigma-clare...
Can someone give me an anecdotal example of how this could come to be without some fault in Brown's decision-making process?
For starters, I've always heard that commute time is inversely proportional to career mobility. I made it a rule not to work anywhere farther than half an hour away. And that is the absolute maximum which was necessary when I lived rural area. Currently, I work remote, which has indeed provided more time for further career training.
My mother has worked at the same minimum-wage food joint for almost eight years. She tells me it's because she's "comfortable" and friends with everyone there. Personally, I think it affords her the time and lack of responsibility needed in order to engage in non-moderated drug use. This was certainly the reason she was usually unemployed and unable to provide the most basic resources for me as a child. If I bring up this or her other time-sucking addictions such as mobile gaming / simulated gambling, she becomes very defensive.
Regardless of the reason, comfort breeds complacency. Complacency leads to not making a meaningful change to your career trajectory in a 15-year period. As someone who grew up in relatively abject poverty, most of the positive things in my life have only come from within, due to my determination to succeed despite numerous setbacks. Sometimes I find myself having difficulty empathizing with people who seem reasonably intelligent but have been in the same situation for 10-20 years.
a lot of society's problems come from people in power and/or wealth projecting their anecdotal, perhaps personally bitter experiences (like yours with your mother) onto everyone that isn't making a healthy wage. It's over 40 million people, we are not all like your mother.
Obviously everyone is different. This is why I asked for other points of view for a better sample size.
That doesn't change that I had both parents and teachers who cared about me, educated me, disciplined me, and enabled me to succeed.
> As someone who grew up in relatively abject poverty, most of the positive things in my life have only come from within, due to my determination to succeed despite numerous setbacks.
There is nothing about my success in my adult life that has only come from within. Even my determination isn't mine and mine alone. Everything about my success is down to the opportunities that were afforded to me, to enable me to have that determination and outlook. My parents, my teachers, and my peers throughout my upbringing and adult life have all played a part. Nobody exists in a vacuum.
I am immensely privileged to have had the amount of support I have had. I expect the vast majority of commentators on this board have had similarly privileged lives. The people stuck (either by 'choice' or by 'circumstance') most likely have not.
At the risk of sounding like a <insert pejorative du jour here>, check your privilege, appreciate it for what it is, and try not to look down on those that didn't have the same opportunities that you did.
You're arguing a strawman. You are introducing absolutes into a conversation which was purposefully framed as fluid. For example, I said most of the positive things. Your post is built upon the premise that I believe all positive things in my life came only from within, however you said the word only, not me.
I am immensely privileged to have had the amount of support I have had.
That's great... almost comes off as bragging, but okay...
check your privilege, appreciate it for what it is, and try not to look down on those that didn't have the same opportunities that you did.
...Seriously? You are literally coming from a place of higher privilege and looking down on me. You are projecting your own fortune onto me and consequently expecting the same attitude. I have not had such fortune as you, in fact most people haven't.
I don't need to check my privilege, I am aware of everything I have and wake up every day thankful I don't live in a place like Saudi Arabia. But we aren't talking about Saudi Arabia. We are talking about America, and our conversation about privilege is relative to America. And relative to America, I have lived in abject poverty for most of my life.
I may also have not been sufficiently clear in my messaging. I am talking from the perspective of someone born and raised in a "first world" western developed democracy similar in many ways to the USA (in this instance, the UK).
> I am immensely privileged to have had the amount of support I have had.
The intent here is to drive the point that the support I have received is not financial, and while coming from a financially wealthy family is hugely advantageous to future financial success, there are many other variables in play that are not financial.
When I talk about the support I have, I am recognising the time and effort other people have given me.
Having good parents isn't a right. It's entirely luck of the draw. The same largely applies to your teachers. It really shouldn't, but that's what the situation looks like today. If you're in a good school district, your chances of success are significantly better than if you're not.
I'm not talking about Saudi Arabia, I'm talking about being immensely grateful that not only were my parents incredible, hard working people, who did the best they could with what little they had; and that my teachers, overworked and underpaid, never gave up on me, even when I was a total shit in school, and persevered to ensure that I actually got a good education.
My relative financial poverty during my upbringing doesn't change any of that. I still attribute my success to my upbringing. Not the (lack of) money, and not myself.
And some have neither money or the good upbringing. I was privileged enough to have parents who were able to keep a full-time job (even if it was a minimum wage one) most of my life. However, I would say mine were wildly poor on every other front. In terms of their own education, ability to parent, and most every other front beyond managing a positive bank account balance - they were poor. (Didn't stop my mother from racking up over $10,000 in credit card debt because she didn't know how they worked I guess)
I would align myself with soulofmischief in terms of the view on determination. It was purely my determination more than anything that lead me to getting to where I am now. (Beyond the basics like how I didn't grow in a war torn country where clean water was a scarcity) I've hit pretty much every setback a person in a first world country could give and persevered through it. Sometimes it taking years of incredible pain for any kind of payoff. I wouldn't attribute my success to my upbringing at all and neither would anyone who knows me even a little. Not being in abject poverty probably had some minor benefits for me but considering I had lived near that for the first 8-10 years of my life, I wouldn't consider it a huge amount of consequence. In fact - I thought those years were probably more pleasant than the later years! The only difference from going from near poverty to lower middle class was the age of the house since my parents didn't have any addictions besides nicotine and alcohol. (Alcoholism is ?probably? easier to deal with than an opioid addiction - but I only know the experience of dealing with the former combined with PTSD)
A little quote from a text I recently received: "You are exceptional to be where you are given where you came from. That said, the working class chip on your shoulder will hold you back from achieving what these people can achieve. You gotta get rid of that chip. (It's that chip and the behavior it causes that puts you on the edge of being fired. You aren't behaving the way these one percenters are behaving and they want to punish you for it.)"
My point is this: Don't underestimate determination. Upbringing in all forms is very important but a person with exceptional determination can overcome so much. It doesn't mean that it's fair or that it's even worth it but it's amazing how far someone can get with the refusal to give up. Something that I'd think people here on HN would be all about since this is owned by a startup incubator...
I am either a bargainer, a clueless, or a sociopath (in the context of organization). I will never be a bargainer, life is too short! I'm not clueless and middle management is not for me. Only one path left.
I reached this decision through information like this. Perhaps Ms. Brown needed something similar.
Personal agency isn't all that there is. It wasn't the nail's fault that it broke. I bent it and kept hammering it down. I pushed it beyond what it was supposed to be used for. Sure, a different nail would have survived, but in the end it was my fault. A roofing or masonry nails would have probably been able to put up with the abuse (but caused bigger holes), but I was using a drywall nail. Was it the right nail for the job? Eh, in the end it worked out and my picture hasn't fallen down. I mean I don't have any expensive pictures or frames, so I'm still just going to grab whatever nail looks like it will work from my box. But I also have two measuring tapes now.
If you don't start out with wealthy family or relatives to bail you out of emergencies, unexpected expenses of just a couple hundred dollars are devastating and can take months to recover from. Not to mention all the more subtle network driven benefits like getting your foot in the door somewhere or training in professional culture norms and lessons in navigating bureaucracy
When you work a physically demanding low wage job without that fallback, thinking about anything but survival (literally feeding yourself and loved ones -- sometimes including parents) at the end of the day is unlikely. And the smallest lapses in judgement end up being far more catastrophic.
This was my reality for about a decade. I worked in the San Francisco Bay area in grocery stores and restaurants, and held multiple full time minimum wage jobs concurrently.
I had PTSD from a young age, didn't prioritize my formal education after high school (let alone during school), self medicated with drugs and alcohol. Certainly made bad decisions.
I randomly picked up a trigonometry book in my early 20s, was excited by the fact that, given some agency in how I approached the material I could, in fact, understand it -- and eventually self taught up to calculus before deciding to go back to school. I was accepted to UC Berkeley as a transfer student when I was about 26, transferred and studied pure math... While still working two jobs to survive, dealing with housing insecurity as my landlord started aggressively raising my rent, and figuring out how to best allocate the $300 or so leftover after rent and bills were paid.
So yeah, I ended up dropping out. I spent a couple years coming home from my very physical near min wage jobs exhausted but still stayed up late into the night teaching myself to code by building shit in Python and Node, learning SQL and CS concepts.
Doing this was not the cake walk the manic learn-to-code survival bias narratives on Medium might have you think. It took years and involved significant sacrifice to my health to forgo the sleep that I did, and ultimately my success boiled down to someone taking a chance on me. Now my financial calculus is drastically different. Make no mistake though: if I were much older, had a child, were non-white, non-male, had a more severe disability, or had any more unexpected critical expenses over a few hundred dollars, it's entirely possible I would still be broke and toiling away in kitchens
I was able to change my circumstances, but it took many, many years, and a lot of backtracking whenever circumstances (even plenty beyond my control) shifted.
And it required me to effectively make the best possible decision at all times. One thing I find interesting about your question is the implication that fallibility in someone's decision making process means they deserve poverty, and all the horrible shit that comes with it (like housing and food insecurity, and even bring forced to contend with dangerous conditions during pregnancy).
I am no less fallible in my judgement today than I was when I was broke, the difference is that today I can afford to make bigger mistakes.
Anyway, I hope if anything my story helps you re-evaluate that particular point.
> I am no less fallible in my judgement today than I was when I was broke, the difference is that today I can afford to make bigger mistakes.
Nail on the head. People with money make just as many (if not more) mistakes with their cash than people who are struggling on minimum wage. They just don't feel it the same. Most people posting on HN aren't going to struggle to pay their bills if they go for coffee today, or even everyday this month.
The truth is, I think, nobody perfectly optimizes their prospects. People are people and people like to be in their social groups and compete in their social groups, which puts you on a track to a specific future.
Kids from middle-class families don't have to abandon their social circle to become white-collar workers, they can just be comfortable with their friends and "fail" and become a depressed white-collar worker in a not so cool company with only O.K. salary. There are numerous movies about people on this path.
When kids from an affluent background choose to stay comfortable with their friends, they "fail" and become spoiled brats. Usually portrayed as d-bags who don't live a fulfilling life and simply spend their daddies money on drugs and luxury.
When a kid from a lower-income background chooses to stay comfortable with their friends, they end up just as miserable but they also have survivability issues.
This is why "going to college" is such a monumental part in life: It gives you an option to change social circles and if you still fail, at least you can fail in a bit more comfortable house and car.
I hear that college is inaccessible for many Americans, maybe they should fix that. Equal social comfort opportunity can create a much more just society.
What people choose is how comfortable they would like to be against their odds and people who choose to have nice social lives in their current circle end up staying in this circle.
Each circle have different failure modes, I won't argue that the lady in the article failed in her circle, she just didn't move up in the ladder. Failing in the low-income circle doesn't look like that, failing in that circle is overdosing in a meth den or ending up in jail. She actually seems to be doing fine but probably could have been doing much better if she had chosen to abandon her original social environment.
The life might give you fries but you can refuse that, stay hungry for a bit more and demand nuggets if that's what you want, ignoring your friends rolling their eyes for you being a drama queen. You may have to endure sitting on another table, being left alone by your friends who had their launch and left. This is the price you pay for jumping social circles and eating in a college cafeteria usually eases the pain.
1. Brain development of teenagers is not complete.
2. Information available to sub college age kids is not perfect.
If you don't believe in free will, the only question is what combination of mechanics and information serves to produce the observed outcome.
I'm not asking for perfect optimization. Getting out of a minimum wage salary in a 15-year span doesn't require much optimization for most people. So I am asking about the cases where it does.
I hear that college is inaccessible for many Americans, maybe they should fix that. Equal social comfort opportunity can create a much more just society.
Some states offer free tuition. However in the state I grew up in, we had to get scholarships based on scholastic merit.
I worked hard and aced my tests which lead to a full 4-year scholarship along with room and board and an on-campus job, plus I qualified for government aid due to my situation (living on my own since 16 due to homeless parents).
Right before graduation a vindictive teacher changed my final project grade from a 100 to a 0, ignored school policies as well as ignored a doctor's note for excused absences, and the school administration promised they would follow up.
Well, they didn't, and on the day I received my final report card I had an F in a class I should have received a B in, and had to forfeit all of my state scholarship money. I ended up not being able to afford college and was homeless and very sick for a year after high school until I was able to get on my feet and pursue my own education online.
This is an example where working hard was not enough, and I got completely railroaded by a system designed to keep the impoverished as such. If I or a family member could have afforded a lawyer, I would have gotten my grade fixed and been able to attend college.
How are you now ?
On the other side of the coin, I've seen people who have worked at a small company because nobody else will hire them, the company gets aquired and the old boss retires, and they end up in a cushy situation a the big company. In fact, I've seen this happen multiple times and it was definitely not the master plan of these individuals. It was just a lucky break.
Your tone implies that I don't understand the disparity of the human condition. I lived my entire life very impoverished and at times homeless. I come from a very abusive household and grew up in a rural area with little prospects. I've never caught a break. I saw a way out, computers, and I took it. I was able to pivot to a better career by building skills in my free time.
This together with a conjecture that in most cases the average person has indeed the possibility of upward mobility. A conjecture that was posed with an invite to hear opposing view.
A discussion of how much we should expect help from outside is important (and I believe soulofmischief would agree), but it is not relevant to how to improve your own life in the situation that help does not exist yet.
Personally I think we should separate the morality issue of being poor/rich from the mechanics of how people become/remain poor.
The anectotal example he is asking for is in the very article we're discussing. Not that she has made no mistakes, but that (as has been stated several times in these comments) such mistakes are extremely punishing when you are this poor.
As for the discussion on societal help, I think it's very relevant, because the very definition of working yourself up from poverty means climbing the societal ladder. As such, the society you're in is intrinsic to improving your situation. It's a fallacy to say that you are completely in control of your own destiny and luck - the society around you is always helping and/or harming your efforts.
Every person has an obligation to themselves to improve their life as best they can, but a society that ensures basic needs are met is the best springboard for being able to do so.
The truth is that you're being way overcritical. Nothing about my post is clear as day, the only comments I made regarding Ms. Brown were in the form of questions. Are you going to help answer those questions or just light me up with your virtue signalling?
It's clear we're approaching this issue from completely different fundamental positions. To me, your question is uninteresting because my underlying belief is that all human beings that live in a society deserve a life where they don't have to worry about fundamental needs, such as food, shelter and hygiene.
I think everyone should receive enough money from their jobs to afford decent, nutritional food, a small apartment, and hygiene articles. Even if they are hard-working or complacent, stupid or intelligent.
We have to learn how we can take personal agency despite hardships, and instill this agency in others, so that we can stand our ground and ensure a better economic outcome for our children.
I can say that one thing which did help me was that even though I grew up impoverished, I still had a few middle-class friends whose relative wealth "rubbed off on me", if you will. And I had a handful of teachers whose participation extended past the obligations of their jobs and who were ready to write letters of recommendations at a moment's notice to any institution and give me space to learn in my own way.
But these bonds were formed with the express intention of networking and while I am thankful for the help I've received from these people, I also recognize that I would have not received this help if I were generally a dick to people around me and didn't seek out friendships with useful people.
If we can discuss these kinds of things and reach a general consensus on what the obstacles are and how to overcome them, this information could be critical to others in their struggle. What information is Ms. Brown missing?
> I saw a way out, computers, and I took it. I was able to pivot to a better career by building skills in my free time. To be able to pull that off requires a certain amount of natural aptitude that is not a given for most people.
I respect people who have been able to find a way out of tough situations, but I also respect those who keep pushing through tough circumstances even when they haven't been able to find a way out.
As the poet warrior Lil B The BasedGod once stated, "I'd rather be a broke rapper than wash some dishes."
Well, I ignored that advice once because I figured my dish-washing skills were more employable than my street cred, and ended up having to quit that job because I developed carpal tunnel from being overworked. Several years later, I still suffer from the consequences and have to be vary careful not to injure myself at my desk job. I don't think physical or mental burnout gets anyone anywhere good. At least my former boss ended up having to get surgery for carpal tunnel himself sometime later.
So clearly, everyone can follow that same path, right?
It is a failure on society's part that free career counseling and mentoring isn't mandatory, however as individual agents we must also take personal agency and make up for the shortfalls of society.
I’m an emergency room doctor (part of the time). Due to the advantages I had of birth, gender, country of origin etc, I live a great life, most of which has been because I took every advantage; cf. many of my peers from school who squandered it.
I also work in emergency departments, in a country where anyone can come to the emergency department for treatment, and I am continually frustrated by the lack of agency many people display in changing their circumstances.
Many, many problems in many people’s lives could be solved by slicing the Gordian Knot - but neither society or you benefit from such a pessimistic view of others
Ie a person in a relationship with someone clearly toxic. Or experiencing domestic abuse. The external answer is ‘leave’, the person doesn’t.
The obese patient - walk, change diet.
The representing twenty year old with third presentation cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome - pretty much every time you smoke pot you are going to experience abdominal pain and vomiting, you cannot smoke! How are you not getting the message!
The person spending 5 hours on a bus to work 2 shifts... ?? Is this a rational choice?
To me it sounds like you're saying, "why doesn't she live closer to her workplace?" which carries with it a kind of subtext of blame. Reading the article a few possible explanations for her choice come to mind.
The author mentions she lives with her boyfriend's parents. Probably this is the cheapest possible living arrangement available to her. Living closer would probably require her to live independently, which tends to be more expensive. This may be compounded by more expensive rents closer to her place of work, which turns out to be a common problem for the working poor and an age-old cruelty of capitalism: Poor people have higher transportation costs -- both in terms of time and money -- because they can only afford to live far from urban centers where their jobs usually are. It's just one of the many ways the old saying "it's expensive to be poor" turns out to be objectively, measurably true.
It's also totally possible that none of the above applies and the author is not being smart with her money, or may have a drug habit, or may be "complacent". But we certainly shouldn't assume these things about her, because we just don't know her circumstances.
Apologies if this comes across as pedantic, but I think the mistake you may be making is projecting your narrow personal experience of your mother's problems onto a complete stranger, whose circumstances seem quite different than your mother's based on the article (the admittedly limited information we have about the author's situation).
It's heartening to see that you recognize your perspective may stem from your own problems with empathy. The author David Foster Wallace has written much (an understatement) about empathy and awareness, but probably the best short work of his about these subjects is this speech. I still find it to be a really good reminder of all kinds of things:
I'm confused by the tendency of you and other users to call a post which is literally asking for other anecdotes of economic struggle to be projecting and indicative of a narrow mindset. I was simply providing my own data point to start. The very act of asking for other perspectives is not what I would call narrow-minded. This kind of response is why people are afraid to open up to others.
In fact, in this entire reply thread only one user bothered to actually share a story of economic strife, which even acknowledged fault on their part (no one is perfect). Meanwhile, tons of comments criticizing me for my point of view when I am literally asking people to change it. One user even called me sociopathic and then proceeded to offer an even more callous point of view while relating that they do not come from a position of poverty at all.
It's heartening to see that you recognize your perspective may stem from your own problems with empathy.
No, that is not what I said. I do not have problems empathizing with others, and I do not appreciate that extrapolation. This is a very specific situation I have trouble empathizing with. David Foster Wallace was a great author and the world misses him.
That was not what happened; an anecdote was offered as an example and other anecdotes were requested as counterexamples.
You've really never made 1 bad decision, or 10, in your life?
I have plenty of bad decisions, total screwups even, in my history. Some of them were from being petulant, or naive. Some because I was depressed. Yet I'm a white collar educated professional, I'm part because I made some good decisions, and also because that's the environment I was born into, so I was taught how to succeed in that world.
Why do we expect the poor to be paragons of perfect decision making, when the more privileged can make a normal human level of mistakes and still retain their position?
Random fluctuations in decision quality average out over time to reveal a smooth function of decision-making prowess.
The implication is that I expect people of reasonable intelligence to do whatever, and I mean whatever, they have to do within ethical boundaries in order to increase their economic opportunities. I don't need a crash course in the history of racial socioeconomic exploitation in the US.
Ask any successful black entrepreneur in the US if they agree with me.
But we're only here to discuss those who are capable, and why it is they might not be taking advantage of upward mobility.
As for your second point: I wasnt aware we're only here for that? That's in any case not my agenda.
That was the discussion my post opened up. So if we're going to discuss anything here together, it's going to be that.
How can you believe in UBI and still believe that it's up to private initiatives to care for those who can't provide for themselves?
UBI does not currently exist, and the only reason it will ever come to exist is if we all take personal agency and revolt against the current status quo maintained by CorpGov.
Until people like Ms. Brown are provided the education and motivation they need in order to fight for a secured future for posterity, these problems will continue to get worse.
It's not easy. It's not fun. It's not ideal. But life and liberty come at a cost, sweat and blood, and if you are not willing to pay those costs or assist others in paying them, you do not necessarily deserve life and liberty.
I'm not talking about daily bad decisions. I'm talking about things like: failing a college course needed for my degree program because of a bout of depression, but having parents who would pay for me to take the class again to pass it. I did that. A lot of people with professional parents have done that.
The poor and the working poor don't have that kind of safety net. The personal consequences of failure are far greater for them, and they experience those consequences at high rates, which one way they can get stuck in the rut of poverty for a long time.
Just last week I had someone explode on me Thanksgiving night and physically assault me for a prolonged period of time, while saying things about my poverty and how I was born in poverty and would die in poverty, and trying to blame me for every bad thing that has happened in my life.
This is a person who has been to jail twice for federal property damage and a DUI, who has had several cars given to him by his parents, and who had to resort to a contract with the military in order to straighten himself out. He couldn't hold a job for the longest time and would steal from everyone around him. His parents have helped him again, and again, and again, while mine were just not there.
When a meth-dealing police officer who often stalked my friends and I planted drugs on me at the scene of an accident, I didn't have parents to back me up. Probably a dozen friends who had a parent that was a lawyer, but no one offered to help. I was railroaded by the system and received the maximum possible incarceration time. It didn't matter that I had witness testimony; I didn't have money.
So I am aware of how a socioeconomic safety net works. I am aware of the classist mentalities which keep these systems in place. If you aren't going to provide meaningful anecdotal data or answer my question, then please refrain from giving me a crash course in socioeconomics like the other couple dozen posters who beat you to the punch.
I, on the other hand, desire social accolades. The emperor's new clothes are beautiful.
I didn't go to preschool, but I did go to a local Head Start after qualifying.
I went to 5 kindergartens because I kept getting handed around relatives, and at one point I was even kidnapped by a relative before again being rescued and changed schools. After finally staying in one place for more than a few weeks, teachers saw that I had arithmetic down and put me in a mathathon. I came in second because I was a brat and didn't want to use counting blocks, preferring to rely on mental math. This planted the seed for the person who beat me to become a childhood rival, which helped immensely in my extra-curricular pursuit of education. We were always neck to neck in scores for everything. We each read 2-3 books a week to compete in Accelerated Reader scores. I think having a rival really made a difference in my motivation.
One issue with children is they often lack motivation of any kind, and if you look towards their parents you will see the same thing. The motivation to best my rival was really an internal motivation to prove to myself that I could be great at anything I put my mind to. I don't know where this internal motivation comes from. Is it something that can be consistently instilled in others?
I went to a similarly large number of middle and high schools, bouncing around a lot between family members, my atheism being a point of contention among my relatives. I actually attended both the worst-ranked high school in my state which is often ranked worst in education in the country, so basically one of the worst high schools in the country, and I also attended one of the top dozen elite high schools of the country.
The disparity is indescribable. On the bad end, half of my classes were a revolving door of substitute teachers with no curriculum given to them, the other half were just the teacher yelling over students who were yelling over each other, throwing things, smoking cigarettes, and playing music on their phones in the middle of class. Regular police raids and schoolwide body searches. Massive school board corruption. And I do have sympathy. I want them all to succeed and be happy. The heat map for high test scores very often conspicuously radiated from my position in the classroom.
In the end, it really came down to the desire to learn. I was not allowed to use the computer for anything not school related for most of my childhood (it's the devil's silicon), and so I learned how to hack computers, sideload applications, circumvent firewalls, gain root access, etc. so that I could sneak out in the middle of the night and learn about things that interested me like 3D modeling, graphic design, music, programming, and general web geek culture. After school, my idea of a fun time was hanging out at the library. I even had dates there. My entry into an elite boarding school was entirely merit-based and paid for by the state. The school is open up to anyone in the country however and there are other schools just like it.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/15/trump-releases-rule-requirin...
The stick is not big enough.
A massive amount is about to be spent on lawyers, so clearly they see this as a huge threat.
[0] - https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/12/04/55...
Minimum wage laws are fundamentally a tax on low-margin businesses and the low-wage workers who frequent them. There's a better option available. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). It can ensure that workers take home $15/hour, while also ensuring that the cost is borne by the entire society. Not just a few specific industries and the specific demographics that rely on them.
Small businesses outside of the tech sector don’t have the access to capital that tech bro’s have.
Especially since we know that most venture funding goes to people who “pattern match” with Zuckerburg not the people who are running small businesses.
Yeah that’s going to make the poor better off while people in tech shake their finger at them - or in other words let them eat cake!
If low margin companies don’t deserve to be in business then why do money losing companies deserve to be in business? What if we made it against the law for public pensions to invest in VC funds or made it illegal for companies that don’t show that they can be profitable to be listed on the public market?
The mom and pop shop can’t get millions of dollars thrown at them because they “pattern match” what a successful founder “looks like” without a business plan. They actually have to be profitable.
What if capital wasn’t chasing after money losing startups where the VC partners take 20% management fees no matter how badly the fund performs - much of that money coming from public pensions?
I haven't qualified for the Earned Income Credit in quite a few years, but I have nonetheless claimed it a number of times. I experienced none of the magical properties you seem to think it has.
You can get a Notice of Withholding to get the credit in your paychecks instead of at the end of the year. I don't know how well it works.
It's clearly possible in theory to get $15,000 on April 15 and $15,000 from McDonald's and live the same lifestyle as someone who makes $30,000 from paychecks. I could manage it easily, it's basic consumption smoothing. Should be able to borrow against the credit if necessary, too, since it's guaranteed.
Depending on the structure of the rest of the tax system and on whether the UBI phases out or not, the effective marginal tax rates can also be quite different, though this part can be massaged to make the two options look identical, I suspect.
But the core of the difference is whether employment is explicitly encouraged (EITC) or not (UBI).
You aren't immune.
Minimum wage laws impact the supply chain that feeds Whole Foods and nice restaurants by increasing the cost of rural labor.
https://www.indeed.com/salaries/farm-worker-Salaries
A quick google will show you that farm workers are well below the $15/hour goal most progressives are touting.
The argument that "society should carry the cost" is based on your opinion that is in error. Society carries the cost of minimum wage increases because we all have to eat. We all have to patronize low margin businesses to some degree (even if it is indirect).
You can argue the EITC is a better "solution" than a minimum wage but if you are trying to ensure $15/hour for people paid $10/hour, you are really talking a negative income tax or UBI. At which point, you are probably better off supporting those proposals instead of pushing the EITC.
Personally, I'm not a fan of subsidizing low margin businesses that from a Capitalist perspective should probably be allowed to die if their workers can't afford to live on what they pay.
> you are really talking a negative income tax or UBI. At which point, you are probably better off supporting those proposals instead of pushing the EITC.
I do support UBI too but it seems like an extreme stretch to say that is easier to sell than EITC. Especially when you consider that EITC already exists today as a federal law, and UBI does not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit
> Personally, I'm not a fan of subsidizing low margin businesses that from a Capitalist perspective should probably be allowed to die if their workers can't afford to live on what they pay.
Allowing McDonalds to hire workers at wages set by supply-and-demand, is the very opposite of a subsidy. Killing off profitable low-margin businesses, will by definition, lower the nation's GDP and tax base. Everyone, especially the workers like the one featured in the article, will be far better off in a world where profitable low-margin businesses aren't killed off by government regulation. It's far more effective to tax McDonalds, as well as every other profitable company, in order to fund the safety net that every citizen deserves.
To do what the person I'm replying to wants, it would be on the scale of UBI/negative income tax. Otherwise, its not the equivalent to $15/hour when they are being paid $10/hour.
I think it’s kind of rich that the same people who are probably working for money losing companies backed by VCs think that small low margin businesses owners don’t deserve to make a living.
Also, that's a flat out lie. Greece, Spain, and Italy are pulling up the average with their huge unemployment rates, and the vast majority of unemployment rates besides that are almost the same as the US and in some cases lower.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/268830/unemployment-rate...
Germany and the Netherlands have some of the highest minimum wages in the world, and yet they have unemployment rates that are lower than the US.
Moreover, your claim was that most of the countries have twice the unemployment rate of the US. Your very own source shows that only 5 of the 28 nations have double or more, and less than half have an unemployment rate 50% greater than the US. Are you going to admit to your lie or are you going to change the story?
This turns the low paid workers into unemployed workers.
I'm fascinated that people honestly think it's better that people make $0/h than $10/h while "exploited".
Most studies that have been done on minimum wage found no correlation to unemployment rate. The economics you learned in high school can rarely be applied perfectly to reality. There are plenty of countries with minimum wages with no significantly different unemployment rates in the service industries.
This makes it very hard to measure the effect with any precision. You have to remember that wages are not 100% of the compensation for employees. So if MW increases from $10 to $10:50, fringe benefits may be cut from $2 to $1:50, and you end up with no measurable effect.
> But the reality is that these shops need the workers regardless.
If their expenses become higher than their earnings, the shops will close. Maybe that at least is an economic fact we can agree on?
For what it's worth, here in Australia there's only around 10% less McDonald's stores per capita to the US, despite a $20 minimum wage. All these workers can afford to eat and live in some of the most expensive cities in the world and the country isn't collapsing under unemployment.
If I was emperor, abolishing MW would be my first and most obvious reform to help the poor.
> All these workers can afford to eat and live...
But the problem is the people who can't get work because on MW!
Citation needed. In fact, I did a quick Google search and found out that several US cities/states have increased minimum wage this year and they've seen NO significant job losses. In fact, in some cases these states have seen more growth in low-income jobs than states with lower minimum wages.
Minimum wage takes money out of the pockets of the rich and puts it in the pockets of the poor. Half the time the rich people would have spent this money on luxury goods instead of spending this money on everyday things anyway. As such, in many cases you end up seeing increases (or at least no impact) in the numbers of low wage jobs because of the increase in demand of the products of said workers.
Or they could raise their prices. That’s what normally happens in my experience when a small business faces an unavoidable and significant increase in one of its input costs.
"For the fiscal year 2017, McDonalds reported earnings of US$5.2 billion"
Why are you making this sound like a bad thing? What's with the EITC drum-beating in this thread?
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mcdonalds-reports-f...
Their net income was less than $700 million and it’s not corporate McDonalds that pays the employees in the stores - it’s the franchise owners.
Franchise owners make less than $70K a year per store.
https://work.chron.com/average-income-fast-food-franchise-ow...
Keep in mind that the owners make that after leasing the building from McDonalds. It’s a turnkey business and there are many, many people who have gotten pretty rich on operating these places.
Most franchise owners aren’t “starting a business” they are “buying a job”.
But a 2013 report from Franchise Business Review dug down into the numbers and came up with a net profit of $66,000 per franchise. McDonald's did much better with an average of around $150,000 per restaurant. But when you consider that a McDonald's franchise costs more than $1 million and can easily run more than $2 million, even McDonald's doesn't generate excellent average returns on investment. The fast-food franchise business is tough, and success doesn't come easy.
With Chick-Fil-A, operators just get one store. They are buying a job. McDonalds franchisees usually own multiple stores and have different business interests.
There’s no regulatory environment that prevents exploitation of the workforce, so doing so is the low risk choice. The company chose a low quality bar and competitive pressure forces them to mercilessly attack cost.
16 hours x 4 people x 7 days x 52 weeks Equals about 2400 hours a year.
How much could they raise the hourly rate of their employees and raise prices before the demand went down and still be profitable if they are only making $150K now? At what point does it not make sense to invest $1 - $3 million a year to make meager returns?
They may need to look at the business and franchise model. They have a fubar business with hundreds of SKUs. 5 Guys is able to make money on a freshly cooked burger, higher standards for quality and higher cost. Make a "McDonald's Classic" concept that cooks real food at higher prices.
Again, McDonald's makes a business decision to have a system that encourages franchisees to utilize labor at the lowest cost possible because it is the lowest risk decision for them. For the larger company, the profitability struggles of the operators aren't a world-ending problem -- they own the real estate assets, and get to be an exclusive supplier and pull their percentage of gross sales first.
From my POV, I don't care a whit about McDonald's -- as a human it's awful that people are treated the way that they are, and as a taxpayer it's awful that society as a whole gets to pick up the pieces when hard working people fail and end up dependent on social services for survival. If McDonald's business can't deliver, that's their problem. The demand for food isn't going anywhere and a competitor will fill the void.
What’s the percentage of people that work at McDonalds are working there as a primary income?
Isn’t kind of hypocritical that you criticize McDonald’s profitable business model but you’re okay with all of the startups - including ones that are backed by YC who are losing millions of dollars but are able to access capital?
Five Guys also costs a lot more. The people who eat at McDonalds every day couldn’t afford Five Guys.
And if the magical competitor becomes available, are they going to be able to sell food as cheaply as McDonalds?
If their business model is not compatible with humane treatment and fair compensation of workers, why should we subsidize it? If the quality of McDonald's food is such that a small marginal cost increase will destroy the business, is it a good business?
Competition in the fast food space is intense, and market forces will drive prices. Perhaps the people who cannot afford a hamburger at Five Guys would be able to do so if paid a decent wage.
Maybe if we didn’t give special treatment to VCs Capital gains, many of the tech bro’s would also be out of a job. If we want to stop subsidizing bad business models let’s start with not allowing public pensions and tax free endowments the ability to invest in VC.
Don't be misled by people unintentionally (we hope) citing revenue numbers to bolster their case.
You're right, but then we have the employer class generally lobbying against society actually providing these things.
Consumers almost certainly have more elastic purchasing preferences for insurance as a group, as they are much more granular. Insurance companies love negotiating with companies, because fewer, larger customers with greater inertia and specially-negotiated deals enable greater price discrimination than a mass-market product compared directly to others. This has further enabled the rise in prices.
I firmly believe that the individual is better-equipped to make his own decisions than any central planner or procurement department. We've messed things up enough with centralization; it's time to shift back to letting consumers make their own choices. Rather than taking even more choice by further centralizing from an oligopoly to a government monopoly, give people a chance to make their own decisions. I picked health insurance as it is a particularly hot topic, but this reasoning applies to many other areas.
[0]: https://fm-static.cnbc.com/awsmedia/chart/2019/8/19/image%20...
[1]: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/10/08/50...
[2]: https://www.insurancejournal.com/app/uploads/2018/10/2018-eh...
Criminal.
– Transportation. The US is very unfriendly to forms of transportation that are not cars. There are a few exceptions, but these are exceptions. Good public transport or even bike lanes would massively improve conditions for a lot of people.
– Health care. Private companies are overcharging people and have made health care(hospitals and medication) unreachable if you don't have your costs subsidized by your employer.
– Education. Higher education would likely help this person. But how could she afford it?
Bring up public transit or bicycling to people in nearly every non-urban part of the United States and you'll get a million reasons why it won't work.
Car culture is so engrained in America that people have convinced themselves there is no alternative. "I'd get sweaty", "Oh but I have to carry...", "Walking to the stop would take...", "My kids...", "I don't want to sit next to people..." . Even the rare people who actually have to drive refuse to understand why they should be among the strongest proponents of alternative and public transit.
It's amazing to think that he was the first generation of the ubiquitous automobile in the US and now can't comprehend how the generation before him got around.
The generation before him _didn’t_ get around, relatively speaking. Widespread use of the automobile changed transportation patterns dramatically.
Also remember San Francisco to Yosemite was I think 6-7 hours by train at one time.
I feel this is most pronounced when I go to the mountains 2 hours North; which was a popular summer destination at the turn of the 20th century to the mid century. Now it's a long drive away and no longer has the visitors it used to have.
Ripped out 60 years ago and only now are the same right of ways being reconstructed at the cost of billions.
Medicare for all is one of the most important policies to alleviate pressure on lower-income people. Even for the middle class, the freedom to change jobs or take time off without fear of disaster will take such a load off of society.
Alternatively, the Canadian system does not require any sort of insurance-like payment to access all but a few parts of the healthcare system. While wait times are a bit of a problem for non-emergency care, Canada pays ~1/3rd of what America pays for healthcare. That leaves significant funding available to improve on that system simply through more doctors and and better equipment availability, while still being much more cost-effective than the current system. It should also be extended to dental and drug insurance, but again, there is ample funding available to accomplish that and still remain cheaper than the current system.
Medicare For All is most similar to the Canadian 'insurance', and the best candidate for healthcare reform. There are some important conditions for it's success however---the restrictions on price negotiation must be removed; equivalent private insurance must not be allowed; and taxes must be increased to appropriately fund the system. Ignoring any of these will allow the system to be corrupted by wealthy interests (of HN includes many), and could result in a system deliberately designed to fail. Rich people _must_ use the same healthcare service as poor people, aligning incentives among all socio-economic classes, ensuring the system remains effective and well-funded.
http://www.archwaystoopportunity.com/tuition_assistance.html
Seems like giving up your best employees who are motivated to improve themselves.
Unfortunately the women in this article probably lacks the free hours to pursue this benefit.
I started working in 1998 at 16-years-old. I could make $9.50/hr washing dishes or more as a bus boy on a busy night. Shit's whack.
Of course as a suburban kid I had reliable transportation. The constantly rotating cast of dishwashers virtually never had this access.
The couple that owned that restaurant sold it for several $M.
Housing in town I guess was relatively expensive (not as much as now). And it wasn't under the table, though I was responsible for claiming tips and they didn't follow child labor laws. Built a studio with that money!
I’m not sure what “freedom” is supposed to mean in that context. How is being dependent on paying for public transportation better? In countries where public transportation is amazing enough to obviate the need for cars, you just trade in the freedom to go wherever you want whenever you want.
However, there are things like the Dollar Vans in New York that do actually fulfill the niche. They're also sometimes illegal.
Seems to me the goal should be to get a wage where you can afford to go back to school. I don't think it's fair to argue that the kiosks are replacing the cashiers only because they want a $15/hr wage - that's coming whether they want to or not. The only thing that the cashier can do is do their best to collect the resources right now to get out of that situation, and one of those is more earnings.
There are places in the world where you can make a living without any particular skill set, but I don’t think the US, or any other first-world country, should really be among them.
The US needs immigration reform to bring more high-skilled people into the country, but it also needs emigration reform to find new homes for people who can’t necessarily make a reasonable living in a first-world country.
Seriously though, countries with labor shortages will allow unskilled people to visit and work for awhile at least (eg Australia).
I don't even want to think of the new suicide rate in that world.
Study visas are virtually unrestricted. But there are more being issued than immigration pathway seats (which are restricted).
The USA has a labour shortage problem. There aren't enough people that want to spend their lives picking fruit, doing maid services, working fast food, and just generally taking care of all the problems that wealthier people pay to have taken care of.
You can pay immigrants rock bottom wages to do this work, which is the status quo in the USA today. They accept it because it comes with the promise of a better life one day. If not for them, then for their children.
If you want to send all those people packing, then get ready to pay $10 for a tomato. No, robots aren't going to help, either.
In a poorer country they would have a decreased cost of living but a decreased earnings and fewer family and friends.
I cannot comprehend the thought process that leads you to come to this conclusion.
Example my wife is disabled we live on my very modest income due to costs of life and medical care we have zero wealth of any kind and a well maintained 2004 car. I think I have $13 in the bank right now.
Where ought I move to increase my fortunes and who would let me who would also pay for my wife's medicine.
Poverty often follows medical issues which then wouldnt see any help. Compare total mortality with projected mortality and you can figure out how many exactly you are murdering.
To facilitate the operation you will have to gut civil rights setting precedents with horrible implications for everyone's freedom.
If you can send someone to a foreign land because they are poor, lame, or merely unsuccessful removing all of their rights merely because their fellow citizens will be richer for it then what rights do YOU have left that are inalienable?
Presumably your rules don't apply to all those who have no wealth or income who depend on others so now dependants are slaves who need fear losing their status if they fall out of favor.
We can apply the same logic to the working poor who now must fear deportation as a result of losing their asses when terminated.
Spousal abuse and labor mistreatment will rise substantially.
Then we must ask what nation would willingly serve as our ashtray of undesirables.
Your idea is like an endless cornacopua of horrible implications. The last time I read a blueprint for a worse outcome it was written by George Orwell.
Here, too. But usually half of them are broken in one way or another, like the touch screen doesn't respond or the receipt printer is out of paper, or something I saw in a TV commercial isn't in the menu structure, or the pricing isn't the same as in an ad, etc... These are things a cashier is still needed for.
As an aside, I find it curious that my local McD only got the kiosks maybe two years ago, but I used them in Germany almost 20 years ago. They are fantastic for when you can't speak the local language.
Edit:
Is the answer to fight for $15/hr or is the answer to go back to school, apply to more jobs, and/or go into a trade?
The vast majority of McD cashiers I see are in no position to go back to school or change jobs. They're too old, low-skilled, physically constrained, or low-education to do that.
I work in an organization that deals with the poor a lot. If you're 50 years old and only have a fifth-grade education and need to survive, you don't have the time to go to school. You're probably working two or three jobs just to have a place to live.
Is a cashier needed, or just an on call tech who oversees a dozen restaurants? I would imagine working on the kinks in the kiosks and improving their reliability to be doable.
And while the store waits a couple of days for the $75/hour tech to show up, $10,000 walks out the door. Better to pay for a $15 cashier.
Without money ? My girlfriend was a cashier. Now she's studying law because my job can provide for us and we have free healtcare in belgium. Otherwise it would be impossible !
> apply to more jobs
That basically mean more slavery since she will apply for job that pay like McDonalds. It wont solve any problem.
> and/or go into a trade
I don't understand what your mean here.
Is it a real thing ? Or just something they do to have a good image ?
He thinks poor people could be electricians helpers tomorrow instead of mcds cashiers if they only applied themselves.
https://www.hln.be/geld/consument/wat-gebeurt-er-met-uw-100-...
For example plumbers.
On the residential side, you have more solderless fittings, YT videos and even pre-fab bathrooms in a box.
The plumbers themselves will be fine as they’ll just reduce training seats, but that makes it harder to become one.
But of course it's kind of convenient if people at least think that their job can be automated tomorrow: that makes it easier to make them sell their workforce for peanuts today. You just need to hope that they don't realize that it doesn't make a difference once the day comes on which they can be automated away - it won't matter then whether they get $9.50 or $15 an hour, the automation will be cheaper regardless. But by demanding $15 now they will at least have earned a lot more during the decades until that day finally arrives.
I used to work in a kitchen, so maintaining food service grade of cleanliness on robots, sounds frighteningly expensive to me.
Maybe everything won't be automated all at once, but if the economic incentive is there, it will happen. Pizza making robots are already a thing. There's no reason the shake machine can't measure its output to the cup instead of pulling a lever; drink machines in many places already do this. Dispensing the cup too is not a big step.
French fry hoppers automatically filling baskets from a frozen mini-closet. Out comes fresh fries.
Same for the cups that they can use in drive-throughs.
I think it’s up to the franchises to buy/install them. Depends on volume/space whether its worthwhile/possible.
Or they just push it to the customer to do it.
That machine is, like, 5 machines including an oil moat. With all of them together it makes up something like half the entire store's footprint. It's only remotely viable because that shop mostly only makes one thing. No breakfast sandwiches in the morning, no burgers at lunch time, just donuts.
Plenty of employees are still required just to make the different types of donuts and donut-adjacent items (and also presumably to be there in case a monumental grease fire starts, or the dough machine blows a gasket starts spewing dough all over).
> Pizza making robots are already a thing
Presumably making the frozen ones sold at grocery stores, which might be a meaningful percentage of all pizza sold, but effectively 0% of any other pizzas?
This is an entirely different thing than a McDonalds.
Yes, I could trivially make an automation machine to cook meat, we have them, they're called a charbroiler, similarly, toasting buns is pretty easy. The hard an expensive part is assembling all the parts into a package.
For argument's sake, let's assume that no jobs can be automated. The cost to the franchise owner to operate goes up, and in response they raise prices -- but at some prices they're going to really start losing business, so they also have to lower costs elsewhere or simply get lower profits. How does it all shake out? The fact is that it has to be paid by someone, and it'll likely mean fewer McDonalds are opened because it'll just be harder to make them profitable.
Maybe you're OK with that trade-off, but it IS a tradeoff that will happen, and it means fewer jobs.
Your analysis presumes that the business owners can and will absorb anything without reacting, as if more value can be extracted but there won't be a new equilibrium. I assume that the franchise owners aren't making the kinds of profits where that is true, I assume they're mostly bumping along on fairly low margins.
But for the sake of it: yes, in a time of practically full employment, I do indeed prefer less workers to make more if this trade-off you assume is even a realistic model of reality (which is a big if, in my opinion).
With a McDonalds restaurant, you can control your environment almost perfectly. If you throw away the kitchen that was designed to be used by humans, and then develop a kitchen never intended to be used by humans, you can drop a lot of environmental constraints in terms of the automation concerns. Trying to fully-automate the existing kitchen layout will certainly end in disaster.
As you reach 100% automation, it actually starts to get easier because the system is now all oriented in this direction, and you have standardized specifications/interfaces across the board. Also, once you fully-automate a single McD restaurant, the next one becomes trivial because it's simply another copy of the exact same thing.
And I think it’s more than that before we have no humans behind the wheel of cars!
DOM Pizza Checker (Domino's camera 'AI' that checks the pizza toppings are correct) could be used for other things, other than it's 'other' current use of store tracking. https://www.itnews.com.au/news/dominos-turns-its-pizza-check... Stores now get updates ;)
Designing food so it's optimised for cooking has been going on for a while but I suspect there gains there. Even if you can design more food variety for fast food that can be cooked or created efficiency, it can cut out labour at other food outlets as they close and society moves to highly efficient food outlets like McDonald's.
Automation in processes is where it's at. Designing food and processes for mostly automated machines and schedulers.
But you are correct, so far the threat of automation to keep wages low seems to have had more impact than automation.
So if everybody in this situation goes back into school, applies for more jobs, and/or goes into a trade, what do you think will happen? Do you think minimum wage jobs are only being offered because people aren't trying to get higher paid jobs?
I agree the kiosks are a bit harder for a customer to use, I accidentally ordered something like 80 chicken nuggets the first time I used one, simply because I tried to add extra sauce.
I still prefer them because it's easy to have a bunch of kiosks which means there are shorter lines.
I prefer the kiosks, much in the same way I prefer self checkout at grocery stores.
My local McD just got them, as part of an extensive remodel. By "extensive", I mean that early this year they tore the whole place down and built a new one there, which opened near the end of October.
I've used the kiosks when I can, but for most of November I had to use the human cashiers. Why? Because the kiosks insisted on applying a "discount" that actually raised the price! The cash registers used by the human cashiers would also apply that discount, but the interface there allows the cashier to remove it. The kiosks (and the mobile app which also applies it) do not allow removal.
On the one hand, I am impressed that their software is automatically applying discounts instead of making the customer manually ask for it. I've seen at other places things like a parent order a burger and a drink and their child order fries and a drink, and unless the cashier notices that this is cheaper as a combo (burger, fries, drink) plus another drink, it will be rung up at full price.
On the other hand, come on! It's pretty obvious that if you are going to be looking for discounts to apply, the software needs to have a check to make sure that the total with the discount is not more than the undiscounted price and if it is not apply the discount.
This situation came about at my local McD because to celebrate being at the same location for 40 years, they rolled back prices on several items to '80s level for the month of November. Among the items rolled back were Sausage McMuffins, to $0.79.
Sausage McMuffins and Sausage Burritos are part of the "any 2 for $3" discount. So if your order included two Sausage McMuffins, or included one Sausage McMuffin with one Sausage Burrito, it would decide to apply the 2 for $3. In both cases that raised the price.
A couple times that month I wanted two Sausage McMuffins and a Sausage Burrito. To order that at the kiosk or on the app and get the correct discount ($0.79 for the McMuffins, regular price for the Burrito) could only be done by doing it is 3 separate orders! (Well, I suppose it could be done on one order and then selecting cash payment...that prints a receipt that you take to a human cashier, who can then recall the order at their register and collect payment. I assume that they can modify the order at that point to remove the 2 for $3).
The only person who seemed to be doing well was the person who bought the store as a franchise. When I quit the manager said "I couldn't cut it as a cashier".
> The bus stops running at 10 p.m. on Sunday, but McDonald's asked me to stay until close at 1 a.m. They asked me to stay because they need my help.
Thats not a job, that's an abusive relationship.
When I was 18 (many years ago), I remember having a job that did the same "we need you to stay later" BS. The buses stopped running at 8PM in the suburbs and I had to regularly walk 5-6 miles back home. Cabs and Lyft/Uber aren't much of an option when it would significantly eat into your paycheck. Most people get tired of giving you rides because you cannot afford a car.
Using a bicycle was more dangerous than walking; some people would throw things out their window at you or swerve/yell to scare you.
Factor in how managers "reward" certain employees with better shifts or punish by cutting hours. I could see why many people switch to the dole or dealing.
The USA really is a strange place.
The really strange one was 5 AM on a 4 lane street, no other cars around, and a single car comes up behind me and starts honking, about hitting my rear tire.
A more humane and less distorting way to help poor people is to just give them money.
She likely can't move. It's expensive to move, no matter who you are, and since she has two jobs, it seems like she's going to spend a lot of time on the bus no matter what.
She definitely can't demand McDonald's pay for a taxi, or she can ask, be turned down, and have her hours cut for next week. They'll cut her hours if she just leaves at the end of her shift, and they ask her to stay.
She's already doing something that could ultimately have a positive material impact on her life, organizing with her coworkers. It's just that the many interlocking systems around her life all work against her; bad public transit, bad pay for physically exhausting work, and having to fight so hard for something as basic as a union at her workplace.
This is a situation that calls for compassion, understanding, and working alongside her to change the systems that keep her in this situation, not suggesting "why doesn't she".
It's pretty crazy that we spend nearly 15% of GDP on transportation costs. I mean sure, we can all reduce the expenses by buying a 10 year old Prius and get our travel costs down. but, a big part of the problem is that housing is always so far away from work. 500 years ago, people lived within a mile or less of their work places. now it's normal for people to live 20 miles or more away. we need to start building our cities with residential and work places closer by and hold employers accountable for where they create jobs. If you want to regulate it, then by all means regulate as follows: no job can be created unless there's an available residential place to live within 1000 feet of it. this would not only save people's lives, but also significantly reduce C02 pollution as transportation is a major source of c02.
The article highlights a real need for more bus stops and 24/hr bus service.
I ride the second busiest bus route in LA. Its serviced by a local and a rapid route with less frequent stops, and only the double long accordion style busses are run.
You would think the ridership and equipment would make for frequent and reliable service. But sometimes the headways are 7 minutes, sometimes back to back, sometimes over 25 minutes, sometimes skipping the stop. There is no telling.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/04/realestate/05...
(Yes, this an NYT Real Estate fluff piece, but god damn, sometimes I wonder how this is the same country.)
At my peak I made $11/hour and employees started at ~$7.50 so a $2 tip was a wonderful bump for the hour. Tips weren't generally shared since they never officially happened. We weren't setup for them because of tax purposes. Other fast food restaurants like Sonic rely on tips and are equipped to handle those kind of situations.
Since then (2015) McDonald's raised their USA minimum to be $9 and likely more since I last checked.
Source: I was a McDonald's employee for ~5 years, working my way up from an entry level position to eventually Asst. Store Manager at a Midwestern Franchise
I am strong believer in a social safety net but I think that should be the role of government. She shouldn’t have to depend on private corporations for insurance, that should be the taken care of by government like it is in every other first world country.
We already have a program where the government (instead of corporate America) recognizes that the monetary needs of an adult is different from that of a teenager staying at home - the Earned Income Tax Credit. We as a country should both make that more generous and easier to be distributed through out the year. Historically, the EITC was supported by both Democratic and Republican administrations.
It shouldn’t take her two hours to get to work, we need better public transportation. Heck barring that I wouldn’t be opposed to subsidizing private transportation solutions like working with Uber and Lyft if it’s cheaper long term.
In general, we Americans believe in the free market, but we also believe that we need limits on what people can legally contract for. For example, we don't let people sell organs. We don't let people sell themselves into slavery. We don't let people put their pre-teen children to work. And we do indeed have a minimum wage. Do you feel like we should abolish the minimum wage altogether, or just that it shouldn't be $15/hour. If so, why?
How many people on HN wouldn’t have a job at all if their company wasn’t subsidized by VCs?
There was an article posted here a few months ago that the average 7/11 owner makes $35K a year and that’s with them putting in 60+ hour weeks. Most small business owners aren’t getting rich.
Actually, I wouldn’t be completely opposed to abolishing the minimum wage and having a universal basic income.
It’s the role of the economy for someone to get a livable income if that’s what they’re seeking. If it’s not working then it needs a nudge.
The "living wage" thing is a marketing weasel phrase. It's intentionally non-specific and encourages the listener to fill in their own idea of what kind of lifestyle a "living wage" entails. I would encourage everyone to ignore "living wage" marketing weasel-speak and only listen to concrete, specific goals.
I'm sure that's not what most people are intending to communicate, but I think that's a good starting point to demonstrate how meaningless the phrase "living wage" really is.
http://freakonomics.com/2013/03/21/the-most-bountiful-food-i...
Imagine if 50 years ago you could easily import millions of impoverished people willing to work for a lower wage and could also force your local worker to compete against a $0.15/day ($1 in 2019 adjusted for inflation back to 1970) foreign worker. Do you think that would have impacted 1970s minimum wage regulations? I do.
Why do you believe workers/voters were able to demand a higher minimum wage 50 years ago? I explained what I think changed, I'm curious to know your thoughts.
Should they also get paid more if one has a medical condition and the other doesn’t?
If everyone has a living wage, the businesses will do better because people will have more money to spend. That’s the point of investment. Our economy is built off of the consumer, who has been stagnating for decades. We could be doing far better with a stronger middle class.
VCs aren't taxpayers. We're not getting equity or an upside in McDonalds paying below poverty wages.
Let me tell you about a personal anecdote:
My mom retired from teaching probably about 15 years ago. She was approached a year later about working for a program with the school system for at risk kids. It was based on a federal government grant. When she did the math, she would only be able to work about 10 or 15 hours a week at the rate they agreed to pay her and it not affect her teacher’s pension. She volunteered to take a pay cut - that was under $15 an hour - so she could work more hours and actually help the students. Should she not be allowed to voluntarily work for less?
My own wife when we met was working a job that allowed her to support herself and her (now our) two kids and live in one of the best school districts in the area. She voluntarily took a lower paying and lower stress job that again was less than $15 an hour so she could be on the school schedule.
On a less anecdotal level, there are freelancers in California who are complaining that the government “stepping in” to “help” Uber drivers has made it harder for them to stay freelancers. Jason Snell the former editor of MacWorld who gave up his job to go freelance said the law made it more complicated for him.
I mentioned before that the average 7/11 owner makes $35K a year and puts in 60+ hour weeks. What do you think is going to happen if he is forced to pay $15 an hour? Have you seen the balance sheet of the average small business? Not everyone gets to be subsidized by Big Daddy VC while losing millions of dollars.
Anytime you have government unnecessarily involved in price fixing you get unintended consequences.
Some jobs aren't worth doing, thats for sure. We decided that if a job isn't worth paying someone $15 an hour to do, it's not worth someone doing. The market can figure that out.
We're forcing the policy on the worker as much as the corporation, they cannot sell their labor for less than $15 an hour either. We, as society, are saying "if the market says you aren't worth >$15/hour go to school until you are" as thats the best use of everyone's time.
Arguing that teenagers deserve less protections against exploitation of their labor is arguing we should go back to pre-industrial revolution policies.
I'm also not sure what your point about the EITC is, it gives different amounts of tax credits to adults depending on if they have kids or not recognizing that parenting costs money. You have to be aged 25-65 to claim it if you don't have kids yourself, so teenagers who work do not benefit from it directly. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit
As an outsider it seems like the way Americans think is "If you don't earn enough its because you didn't work hard enough" And any of your suggestions go against the idea of personal responsibility that is held so strongly.
Quality is just so rare these days. Everything is built to be replaced in 5-10 years.
American homes are a sham. My grandmother's home back in Greece is 180 years old at this point and I fully expect it to outlast my current home.
I was reading a blog by an American who took a job at a hair cutter in China and 12 people lived in 3 rooms in bunk beds in the back of the store and they never fought. He commented that this living situation would never work in America.
What retail stores have this in place for cashiers?
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/22/jimmy-johns-drops-non-compet...
I worked there for a year with a rotating cast of characters including those from first generation immigrant /low income backgrounds such as myself. One thing that year taught me? I needed to get into a good college and learn something useful.
Or is that just a Canada trial thing?
This is tech fantasy, like Musk promising that Teslas will be fully self-driving any minute now.
Similarly, sometimes when I see a restaurant use Yelp for check-in, reservations, and queue management, I imagine that's a sizable fraction of a job.
No, we're talking about the making and packaging diverse types of food to order. That's why people go to McDonalds, and it's something that's surprisingly difficult to automate. McDonalds workers will be able to strike effectively as long as that's true.
Also, I don't consider ordering kiosks a value add for a customer. I've used them, they've been little to no benefit over ordering in person. It's just futzing around with yet another flaky touch screen, and who knows if the last person who used it had a cold or something. Their handling of process exceptions is like Google's customer support: non-existant. They're just a cost saving measure for business owners. It's not about "providing a value-add to customers" at all.
Remote ordering is a small value add, since it does permit some level of customer multi-tasking.
The Australian minimum wage is AU$19.49.
A burger and fries doesn't cost you $20.
The cost for this meal appears to be US$5.99 in the US - quite similar.
That's not close to $15 (or $20) by any stretch of the imagination.
Either way, I think that the assertion of “this thing worked over there so it will work the same way here” is overly optimistic. But ultimately I don’t much care - I rarely eat there, so if McDonald’s got very expensive or went out of business, it wouldn’t have much impact on my life. If they want to unionize, more power to them.
I’m not a fan of unions overall. I recognize that they’ve done some good things, but the people I’ve known who were in unions or worked in union shops don’t describe places that I’d want to work in.
If unionization and a near doubling in minimum wage makes a hamburger, fries, and Coke cost $0.71 more, I think I can accept that.
He cited this as a reason to not give his employees health insurance
Sounds like a recipe for business closures en masse and ballooning unemployment, which I don't think is something anyone wants.
Or are you just arguing that the franchisees are also getting rich by paying people as little as possible?
People should not have to do things like this. It is clearly a robot's job. And if it weren't for the parasitic managerial class constantly collecting all of the unclaimed resources for themselves, we would praise automation for freeing people from such mundane painful existence.
Automation should free up humans time so that they can do things that humans enjoy. The only reason that won't happen is that the people in charge of the system are evil and greedy.
And the cycle repeats. I know it's a cold, impersonal take, but when life sucks, having a child is going to make it worse and most likely just lead to a new generation of suffering.
As much as a $15 minimum wage might help, even at $12 in Colorado, McDonald's already has touchscreen machines you can order from instead of at the counter - which might already not be manned all the time (it seems that now they often have a single person taking orders at the front counter and the drive through). So I'm skeptical if $15 minimum wage would work. It might work for the hospital job, at least the margin's there are higher and they are less able to automate the job away.
She could've had the child when her economics were in a better place. She could've been assaulted. She could've been denied the education to prevent the pregnancy. There are a bajillion and one reasons why a child might exist and she is responsible for it.
It's possible but not probable when you consider that 42.3% of births are paid for via Medicaid [1].
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_13-508.pdf
This is very much a class thing. Well-educated middle class and higher simply can't comprehend why a single mother or even married couple would even think about having children when they can't provide the basics, let alone a solid education in good schools that aren't feeders for prison.
The folks who make that decision do so because they see it as a part of life and don't see any change in their circumstances for the foreseeable future. No light at the end of the tunnel, so just get on with living.
Preying upon the weak is an industry. The admonition to "work harder!" is propaganda disseminated by those who passively benefit from the labor of others. The fact is that wages have not risen along with productivity: it is mostly just ownership dividends that rise.
A food-service worker should be able to enjoy the benefits that have accrued to our civilization over many centuries of specialized labor, and still be a functional person in civil society after a day's labor is done--even though food-service work is one of our lowest-status specialties. Even the least of us are still persons in their own right, and in a nation of temporarily embarrassed millionaires, we are all far more likely to stumble into deeper embarrassment than to recover those grandiose estates that were so unfortunately lost when we erred in choosing our parents.
In the United Arab Emirates, there are price-controls in place for certain low-level services. Like the price that a hair salon can charge for a haircut is price-controlled at a low price-level. This way they prevent a situation where a hair stylist can start accumulating wealth beyond their socially assigned (slave-like) status by becoming great at their craft, opening a premium hair salon and charging premium prices and accumulating wealth in the process. [Needless to say, craftsmanship is at a very low standard over there as a result]. -- The U.S. system is basically that, only not as blatant. It keeps down the underclass, because that's what's needed to enable the elites.
That makes it sound cruel and cynical. But the opposite is also cruel and cynical.
Take Austria as a counter-example which has very high per-head GDP and is at the same time one of the countries with the lowest Gini-coefficients in the world (low income-disparity). Your yearly increment in wealth post wealth-transfer like tax & government spending, social security, etc in Austria when you're a McDonald's cashier is probably three times what it is in the U.S. But for a highly qualified Software Engineer it's probably only a third of what it would be if they worked an equivalent job in the U.S.
Imagine you earn a six-figure salary in the U.S. in a Software Engineering job and you move to Austria: You might well find yourself in a situation where your neighbor, who is a bricklayer, has a bigger house than you, drivers a nicer car, works less hours, etc because they get paid in cash and cheat on their taxes.
Scenario A: Your dad is a bricklayer and teaches you how to do bricklaying. You start taking jobs in the black economy, working at construction sites, getting paid in cash and not paying taxes. You start doing that when you're 14 (which is the earliest age you can legally quit school). By the time you're 30 you will have built your own house and paid it off.
Scenario B: You're 28 years old when you graduate from university with a PhD but you still cannot expect a level of income higher than the bricklayer's. In Austria you wouldn't have student debts, as your university education would have been paid for by the government, so that's good. But your daddy would have had to pay for your living expenses until you were 28. So that's a lot of money. Also, you've just spent 14 years not earning anything, so that's opportunity cost. Maybe you worked very hard at university, working late, instead of going out with your friends, doing summer internships instead of going on holiday, etc. All of that is investment not only in financial terms, but also in terms of "life energy" (if that's a word).
In Scenario B, as compared with A, there is no way you will ever be able to earn a return on that investment or recoup it in financial terms. You will never catch up with the level of wealth under Scenario A.
It doesn't work for the individual, and it doesn't work for the country as a whole: This is an advanced economy, and it couldn't work if there weren't doctors, lawyers, bankers, software engineers etc. But people are disincentivized from wanting those jobs, because you can do far easier and less stressful jobs that will get you to the same or even higher levels of wealth.
If minimum wage will go up to $15/hour -- her prospective employers will fire her, because it would be better to either automate her service away or just hire a more skillful worker.
But one thing I don’t understand is why so many people have to live on their own before they have the skills and the job.
Some of my Indian friends don’t leave home until they get married lol.
As a parent now, I can’t imagine kicking my kid out at 18 and saying “go make it on your own making minimum wage”.
How I Get By: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier Cierra Brown is trying to do all she can on her own, but it rarely feels like she’s doing enough. By Maxwell Strachan Dec 5 2019, 11:11amShareTweetSnap
Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. Your letters:
Eric:
My dear 80-something year old dad is normal in every respect. Except, he collects McDonald's receipts. Yes, that McDonald's.
They do it with human cashier's and are insanely popular and low-cost.
No one truelly cares about self-service, it's just hype.
( Personal opinion)
My grocery store recently instituted scan-as-you-go via a smartphone app, and I love it. I bag as I go along, precisely the way I want everything bagged (no crushed bread, no meat juice dripping on the candy) and basically walk out the door.
I wish they had a proper barcode scanner to carry around instead of using the phone to scan though.
What I also like is that it helps me keep the cold-chain better sustained.
I'm not sure what stores you go to, but just about every (bagger/cashier who bags) that I have ever interacted with has done their job quite well, and much faster than I would.
They have incentive to do so, because when they fuck up, or are too slow, they get chewed out by their manager. They also have 8 hours a day to practice.
Combined with the shit-show[1] of the self-service checkout station UIs (I haven't memorized every one of the 50+ produce codes - the cashiers have), and there is no universe where I get a better service in the self-serve checkout aisle.
Unfortunately, most of the full-service aisles have been eliminated, because it's cheaper to make customers waste their time struggling with the machines, than to employ cashiers. To the grocery, my time is free.
[1] To add insult to injury, the bagging area for the self-service machines is tiny - you can barely fit two shopping bags on it, so you end up playing a game of Tetris, as you try to scan your items. F* everything about self-service checkout machines. I still use them, because, thanks to the shortages, the full-service aisle lines are always too long.
The system I'm talking about is scan-as-you-go. No issue with the size of the bagging area. You're just putting things into your reusable bags directly in the cart.
Produce codes are simple - every produce display is labeled with a four or five digit code, and there are scales with label printers scattered throughout. These scales also display a bar code for use with the scanning app so you can forgo the label entirely. Even the folks going to a human cashier use these.
I've also been fairly impressed with their self-service UI when my phone's been too low on battery. Several years ago when they tried it out the UI was abysmal - it's clear they've made serious improvements in that realm and I've found it fast and user-friendly.
I like being able to decide how I organize my stuff. I can forgo bags for cases of soda, I can make the bags heavier than a cashier might, I can load them up based on how I'm going to unload at home.
Wegmans has kept the human cashiers, incidentally, with no noticeable increase in lines. Self-service is thus far an option, but one I prefer.
Typically VAT tax is unpopular because it is regressive. But the UBI more than compensates for the extra tax burden.
Example:
Now:
$12,000 a year + $12,000 in benefits = $24,000
$50,000 a year + $0 in benefits = $50,000
UBI:
$12,000 a year + $12,000 in UBI = $24,000
$50,000 a year + $12,000 in UBI = $62,000
The poorer person receiving benefits is actually poorer then before, relatively.
Someone let me know if I'm missing something.
$1000 poorer relative to other person but not actually poorer in terms of my purchasing power.
On net the only people who come off worse are unmarried individuals receiving ssdi who are too young for social security retirement income.
Average ssdi income is around 1200 10 million people are on ssdi aprox 6 million under 65 45% in the overall US population are unmarried.
One could reasonably suppose at least 2-3 million out of 327 million will make no more money and will see slightly to somewhat higher costs. This could be corrected by cola.
In comparison the bottom 25% is 82 million strong and will benefit substantially as will the next quartile to a lesser extent another 82 millions
Now:
$12,000 a year + $12,000 in benefits = $24,000
$24,000 a year + $0 in benefits = $24,000
$50,000 a year + $0 in benefits = $50,000
UBI:
$12,000 a year + $12,000 in UBI = $24,000
$24,000 a year + $12,000 in benefits = $36,000
$50,000 a year + $12,000 in UBI = $62,000
Also keep in mind that the more well off people will end up paying more VAT because they spend more. VAT can also be tweaked to not tax on necessities like basic groceries/etc.
And many don't get it because they don't meet a threshold. And those who get it, have to not work (aka not make money), in order to keep getting it.
Second, the average benefit isn't $1,000 a month and in almost all cases the $1k per month is an increase on existing benefit numbers.
Third, since it doesn't come with strings, you don't have to worry about losing your benefits when you get a job or a kid leaves the home, when you relapse or when you get sick and can't manage the tangled web of government red tape.
This might be true for you personally, but it is not true in general; whether people are dissatisfied with their level of wealth/poverty has a great deal to do with how it compares to others.
It's perfectly possible to get by with rice and lentils and a few vegetables, and if that's the common lifestyle of everyone in the community/country, many people are well satisfied with it. I've lived in such places.
But if you see the people around you enjoying an endless variety of steak and sushi and lobster and so on, and you're working all hours yet still only able to stretch to rice & lentils, your satisfaction may be less.
An illogical reaction? Maybe. A human one? I think so.
Sure, but even people with benefits are struggling to get by. To not be poor absolutely we should be giving them $1000 a month on top of current benefits. Just $1000 a month will leave many absolutely poor. Also, I'm not an economist, but I don't think we can really predict what will happen with inflation, rent prices, etc, when the vast majority of people become $1000 richer. I find it hard to believe it won't cause increases in prices in at least some things. If that happens you aren't just poorer relatively.
> Second, the average benefit isn't $1,000 a month and in almost all cases the $1k per month is an increase on existing benefit numbers.
It doesn't really matter just changes the amounts a bit. Even if you assume benefits are $100 a month only, you still only gain $900 a month from the UBI(because you lose the $100). Everyone else is gaining $100 more then you.
> Third, since it doesn't come with strings, you don't have to worry about losing your benefits when you get a job or a kid leaves the home, when you relapse or when you get sick and can't manage the tangled web of government red tape.
Yeah fair enough, I'm not against UBI. I'm only against Yang's implementation. I think we should add it on top of existing benefits. I also think it is only a band-aid or should be a small part of the overall solution.
But even if not, I think there's a case that giving everyone else UBI has ancillary benefits:
- More cash in the hand of your neighbors means more customers, which means more economic activity, which potentially means better employment prospects, in a virtuous cycle [0].
- Strain on existing benefit-granting institutions is greatly reduced, as those who opt for cash exit the system, meaning faster response times and more assistance with forms/approvals/etc.
- The working class tend to be more economically interdependent by necessity; someone who declines UBI still comes ahead from a spouse, relative, grown child, etc. who requires less economic support.
- Yang has spoken at length about the effects of economic anxiety; even someone who declines UBI may experience less anxiety (and therefore greater executive function and capacity for long-term planning), simply from knowing they have a "Plan B" for basic necessities.
In addition to offsetting costs, I think one of the motivations for the "either/or" strategy is political viability with libertarians and moderate Republicans, whose exaggerated fears of "socialism" can be assuaged by the opportunity to shrink bloated federal bureaucracies. (I'm somewhat sympathetic here: the most efficient charity is usually to write a check to the poor [1], and I suspect UBI or negative income tax has greater efficacy than most means-tested federal programs, with possibly the exception of health care.)
The McDonalds cashier is likely getting subsidized housing and food stamp benefits.
Yang's plan would require that the cashier has to choose between the "UBI" or her existing benefits.
I asked his campaign why they designed it this way and they did not have an answer, I was told to ask the candidate directly, which was disappointing.
I'm neutral on Yang's campaign, but I like the idea of a UBI because administering it will be much cheaper than running existing benefits. Means-testing has a real and very sizeable cost.
What will happen to all the guvment workers who will get laid off once existing benefits have been supplanted by the UBI? They will go home to merrily enjoy their new UBI checks.
Which might be cheaper for the government than paying them to do their current jobs.
Cutting back existing benefit programs saves money in bureaucracy and empowers individuals to spend in ways that most benefit them.
Most people under the poverty line do not receive over $1k in means tested benefits.
Also, millions of Americans living in poverty receive no benefits at all.[1]
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-p...
(ugh, this sounds like a commercial...)
My biggest concern with UBI specifically is that it will be absorbed by landlords and other societal rent-seekers. My personal opinion is that we should democratize workplaces, through unions in the short-term and co-ops in the long term. McDonalds cashiers should have a say in their working conditions beyond the bare minimum employment regulations (that are so often ignored in retail and food services).
i think the crux has always been separating the unfortunate from the lazy. i don't think anyone would have serious a problem with supporting the former if the latter could be sieved.
There will always be lazy people in society, and we have a lot of evidence that lazy people are a burden no matter how hard we try to make their lives. I'm happier giving people enough to get by unconditionally than having them steal or cheat enough to get by.
Trapping people in poverty means if they decided to not be lazy at some point, it's incredibly hard for them to get out of their situation and it's much more likely for them to fail. Furthermore, poverty only affects poor lazy people. Rich lazy people (those that got lucky or were born into wealth) can live on dividends their whole lives with no 'punishment'.
Lastly, attempts to distinguish lazy people from non-lazy people are easily corrupted by monied interests that don't want to pay as much into society. See the 'welfare queen' narrative that was popular under Reagan.
Society would be better off if lazy people were excused from the workforce. The weird obsession with forcing everyone to run on a treadmill has got to go.
Some people are beaten down, discouraged, unexcited at doing hard manual labour for just enough money to get them through to the next day. And some, even if you get them to work, are not going to be much use there.
I know in my own career (have worked for decades with no sabbaticals or more than 3 weeks off at a time), I'm really lucky to do a job that I find interesting. That allows me to really dig in and work long and hard.
If I was doing a shitty manual labour job I think I'd revert from being an apparently extremely hard working person to one of the laziest ones around.
Hell, I generally enjoy my job but go though legitimately lazy periods. These are well-contrasted by productive periods, but 9-5 work is a strange thing and people aren't machines.
My point was mostly that even if these imaginary lazy people exist, it doesn't invalidate the need for real economic freedom where you can choose not to work. You were fair to call that out as a lame take though, and I appreciate the perspective.
I whole heartedly support people who organise to ensure a more equitable split for people like them, I got out the trap but for every me there is a dozen who didn’t, never will.
I was fortunate to be born in the U.K. and for the last 39 years at least have never had to worry about health insurance care, that’s just the final cherry on the shit sundae isn’t it.
She works full time hours but because it’s split over two jobs neither corp provides medical insurance, what an insane inhumane system.
I envision an open-source disk image (likely a NOOBS) with learning materials, support resources, and community tools built-in. One could sell pre-loaded SD cards and/or full hardware packages to make it turnkey, or as turnkey as RPi gets, further reducing the barrier to entry. Perhaps even donations and grant money could subsidize hardware.
Has something like this been done? Is web dev a good fit? Thoughts?
In the end the workers will be as fucked as they were before UBI. The problem is modern capitalism itself. Ford-era capitalism where capital owners were proud in paying employees a wage they could live on... that could possibly work for a long time, but many equate even this level with outright "communism".
Tech jobs are just mentally stressful sometimes. I can totally see a good amount of people not wanting to switch places honestly.
I worked my fucking ass off as a teenager, starting at 13, making minimum wage for 2 years at various jobs; I slowly upgraded my job status to the point where I was earning almost 3 dollars an hour more than minimum-wage by the time I was 19, and I was proud of that at the time.
Needless to say, I didn’t go to college (nobody paid for that and I certainly didn’t have the money).
I became motivated by learning how much profit some of the customers I helped were making as entrepreneurs (always being nosy and asking questions, etc.), and I started a half-ass business at 22 years old. I made a little bit of money and learned some new skills burning the midnight oil till 3am for months, which translated into a sort of graphic design job, now making more money. I got acquainted with web design and web development just by reading stuff on the Internet and reading books, seriously burning the midnight oil. I worked my ass off nonstop and never stopped trying to learn more and more. Fast-forward 6 years and many hundreds of hours studying, and I was earning almost $200,000 a year as a software engineer.
Nobody gave me anything. Minimum-wage was much lower, inflation adjusted, when I started out. I started out at a huge deficit with a poor family that was uneducated and did not steer me in any particular direction. Yet, I made it.
The moral of my story is that all of the “adversity” that I experienced was exactly what made me successful. Earning minimum-wage is for people who are starting out for people who can’t make it past there. I certainly didn’t deserve more than minimum wage money earned it; but I’ll tell you what, I did deserve more when I got there, and I didn’t have to be thankful for it, because I earned it. Nobody deserves anything by default, not even clean water. Everybody has the freedom to make their own choices, including how to create a safe and clean society. It’s not the job of some government overlords to fix everything for us plebeians by passing laws. It’s our job. It’s our world, until we give it away to hucksters masquerading as our saviors.
Listening to people on here whine like groveling animals about how they deserve this and deserve that, because life is expensive, like that’s somebody else’s job to fix for them... imagine trying to describe your woes to an Irish immigrant, who just came home from a 12 hour day at the same factory where he lost his finger a few months back; and you’re typing your message out to this laborer on your $1400 phone.
Some people won’t make it; that’s OK. It sucks, but it’s how life has always been for every species since the beginning of life on Earth.
You might as well advise people to buy lottery tickets because they give away $1M for only $5
What does it have to do with lottery? I’m suggesting that hard work and diligence makes you successful. Sure, I’m moderately intelligent (or I might not have been able to learn web dev, etc.), but if others are not intelligent enough to pull themselves up in the world, it’s not my job to pay them more for not being intelligent. People that are less intelligent can do labor jobs and get paid less. It’s not an insult. It’s common sense and it has always been the case. Even the poorest of poor laborers in America have a better life than the middle class in some countries. Anybody who’s got $1000 phone (read: just about everyone) has no right to complain about how expensive it is to afford an apartment and that somebody else should help them pay for that by forcing them to pay higher wages... this nonsense is completely nuts.
The ignorance of this alone makes the whole comment worthless.
$1,000 is much more than some sub-Saharan Africans and some Asians can afford to eat in 1 year.
If you have enough money for a phone that costs as much as another man’s year’s worth of food, your woes are irrelevant.
It sucks when people who don’t have the things they want, and live in areas they don’t want to live. But in the grand scheme of things, these are all conditions that we control. Unless you are incapable of providing for yourself (truly handicapped), and then the only reason you don’t have, to a certain degree, what you want, is that you don’t want it bad enough. If you have even a moment of downtime (TV, gaming, relaxing), then you live in luxury compared to those who relentlessly pursue their dreams.
- McDonald's offers college tuition reimbursement, when you're low income this is one of the best ROI you have available to you.
- McDonald's offers a 401k plan with up to 7% match. Even if you took the 10% early withdrawal penalty this is money in your pocket.
I don't think the best use of her time is lobbying for a $15/hr minimum wage that will more quickly move her to a $0/hr wage. Gain knowledge, skills, and have a good work ethic and it is not that hard to get ahead in America.
It can be hard to put money in a 401(k) when you're already living paycheck-to-paycheck, especially if you're trying your college idea.
If someone says "c'mon, it's not that hard" they don't mean it's difficult, and I suspect you know that.
My point is that's frequently false.
It reminds me of when one of the more well-off kids at college is shocked to find out that his/her colleagues are taking out student loans, and suggests "why don't you just ask your parents to pay for it?"
This woman is literally living paycheck to paycheck, and your suggestion is to... put money into a 401k? That simply isn't an option for people living in poverty like this.
> Gain knowledge, skills, and have a good work ethic and it is not that hard to get ahead in America.
This is a really out-of-touch perspective. One's ability to gain knowledge and skills is determined by the amount of free time they have when not working, and when you're only earning $9.50/hr, you have to spend a _lot_ of your time just earning enough to scrape by. It _is_ hard to get ahead in America when you're poor. Lifting oneself out of poverty is not easy to do here (or anywhere). If it were, we wouldn't have nearly 30% of our country's inhabitants living in or very near to poverty levels.
It's not that out of touch. She doesn't have to work at McDonald's. I know there's opportunities out there that pay better and are in LCOL areas, but they have to be pursued.
I'm sorry, but I can't empathize when I read through an article and the only thing she is doing to better her situation is use the power of government to force someone to pay her more. I gave actionable advice that she herself has the power to act on to improve her situation.
If you opt to take a loan against your 401K, then you will be required to re-pay back the loaned amount through regular paycheck deductions until it is paid back, and you aren't permitted to take another loan until this first loan is repaid in full. Furthermore, a number of 401K plans that have employer matching typically have some form vesting requirements before those funds can be accessed; often a year or more.
Regardless, in this scheme withdrawing any amount (i.e. making a loan and not repaying that loan, or withdrawing funds and closing the account) will end up losing her money in the end given that McDonald's is only matching up to 7% while withdrawing early from the account incurs a mandatory 10% early withdrawal fee that 401K administrators are required to levy and report to the IRS.
I literally can’t see how this tactic helps her in any way.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63908/00011931251820...
> This woman is literally living paycheck to paycheck, and your suggestion is to... put money into a 401k? That simply isn't an option for people living in poverty like this.
Another optimization she could make is to save the money she spends on food for herself and her family. It won't be easy, but after a few years of not eating she could probably save up enough learn to code and pull herself up by her bootstraps. /s
Cannot she ask them to pay for a taxi then? Also I didn't understand why she lives so far away from work.
1) Its unlikely the 30$ she's worth closing or whatever is worth hirind the taxi about.
2) Moving is expensive, and moving to a more desirable location even moreso. She may not be able to afford the time to seek out a space, the credit to be approved, the deposit, etc.
She might not live that far from work. It might be a 20 minute drive, but with the bus system in most towns in the US it's not crazy for that to take a couple of hours on a bus with walking (the closest bus stop to her is a 30 minute walk it said). I'm sure if she could get a job closer that pays as well she would've by now.
Not considering how far she works. And there are of course no shower facilities.
We don't know how far she works. We only know how long her commute takes. Bus routes in cities without good bus infrastructure are often circuitous and don't represent the fastest way to get to any particular place on the route.
Regardless, it's getting better, but even 3 miles gets me sweaty and I have to take a shower. We can safely assume this person's commute to be longer. Now she has to go to work all sweaty – at a customer facing role. This won't be well-received.
https://godurhamtransit.org/sites/default/files/godurham-sys...
Even if only 50% of days are suitable for cycling, if it saves her an hour a day then, at her hourly rate, a decent bike will return it's investment in less than half a year. And that's assuming her bus rides are free. She/a person similarly situated would have to judge for themselves whether it is a useful tool.
Should could ask...
> Also I didn't understand why she lives so far away from work.
Because when you earn so little, you really don't have much choice where you live.
This is pretty amazing delusion.