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I mostly agree with you.

However, it may not (always) be that simple. The media here in France reports that some industries, in particular restaurants, are having a hard time finding employees, with not enough people applying and even employees who were there before Covid hit leaving.

I don't know how actually true this is, but when they (the media) ask people why they won't go back, the main reason doesn't seem to be a preference for sitting on ass, but rather a realization that given the wages, those jobs were a terrible proposition. They claim instead to be looking at how they can improve their situation, like looking for work in other industries, going back to school, etc. Which I think is a good thing. How many random empty bars does a country really need?

Now maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I hope that that's true and that this will at least increase wages for those jobs.

But I can't help but think that all this soul-searching is helped by government aid and that, sooner or later, when that runs out, the people will have to get back to those jobs and then, whatever rise there might have been, will be swept away.

Here in California every restaurant/fast food place is hiring. They all list the things they offer (PTO, 401k-no matching what you put in, and that's it). What they don't put on the signs is what they pay (minimum wage every single time), or the hours (always part time, always weekends, mostly if not always nights.

But obviously it's just that no one wants to work, it couldn't possibly be because no one wants part-time (especially because they change your days/hours and wait till the last minute to give you the next week's schedule so you can't plan around it and get another job). It couldn't possibly be because part-time minimum wage day-shifting jobs are literally worthless as these places are finding out.

I keep hearing owners whine and bemoan their lack of workers. What I have never heard of, not once, is an owner making less profit to pay their workers better to get the loyalty and hard work they want but refuse to pay for.

> I keep hearing owners whine and bemoan their lack of workers. What I have never heard of, not once, is an owner making less profit to pay their workers better to get the loyalty and hard work they want but refuse to pay for.

I agree with you, but do those places actually make a lot of profit? Over here they seem to be pretty fragile operations, so I don't think there's that much they can shave off their profit and give to the workers.

I'm wondering whether, maybe, there are simply too many of those restaurants?

The reasoning goes "yeah, but if I raise my prices, people will go next door". Which is probably true for your random restaurant. But then maybe the issue is there's too many of them?

But of course, up until now, this was workable because many people were willing to put up with the bad conditions you've described for a low wage.

It tells me we need a higher minimum wage. No individual can raise prices without losing competitiveness, but clearly higher prices would fix some of these serious issues. A higher minimum wage would prevent the “they’ll just go next door” issue.

It tells me the upper deciles of wealth have been enjoying life on account of the bottom deciles drawing shitty hand.

Less entertainment, vacations, eating out for many who previously enjoyed it will be the result.

You may be right.

But then, the question becomes: what will become of these employees? Less eating out means less restaurant staff. But said staff are people who need to eat. Will they all go on social security?

Maybe, maybe not. But it's a question we should ask, as a society.

> No individual can raise prices without losing competitiveness, but clearly higher prices would fix some of these serious issues. A higher minimum wage would prevent the “they’ll just go next door” issue.

That seems right on the face of it. But then there's another issue: are you sure that the same number of people would continue eating out? Personally, I wouldn't bet on it.

I don't often eat out, mostly because it's not something I particularly enjoy, but also because I find it expensive for what it is. If the prices were to rise, I would eat out even less. I doubt I'm the only one thinking like this.

It's not clear to me that raising the minimum wage, and therefore the price of a restaurant meal, would not have less people go out. And by less people I mean a drop high enough such that the sum of money spent eating out would drop. Which would mean there would be less restaurants which could afford to stay in business.

> It's not clear to me that raising the minimum wage, and therefore the price of a restaurant meal

This study[1] specifically looks at the effect of raising the minimum wage on restaurant prices.

What they found is that increases of 10% to the minimum wage are correlated with only a 0.36% increase of prices, and minimum wage increases may cause some prices to decrease, too:

> Many business leaders fear that any increase in the minimum wage will be passed on to consumers through price increases thereby slowing spending and economic growth, but that may not be the case. New research shows that the pass-through effect on prices is fleeting and much smaller than previously thought.

> By looking at changes in restaurant food pricing during the period of 1978–2015, MacDonald and Nilsson find that prices rose by just 0.36 percent for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, which is only about half the size reported in previous studies. They also observe that small minimum wage increases do not lead to higher prices and may actually reduce prices. Furthermore, it is also possible that small minimum wage increases could lead to increased employment in low-wage labor market.

[1] https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/does-increasing-m...

That seems pretty hard to believe to me. I suspect they didn’t take into account all the efficiency gains technology has enabled in that time period. Otherwise let’s just increase minimum wage by 100% if it will only raise prices by 3.6%.

4 years ago I ate lunch out 5 days a week, and Dinner 2 pre Covid that dropped to 3 Lunches and 1 Dinner due to increasing prices...

Post Covid I am down to 2 Lunches and Dinner ever other week...

I am considering dropping to 1 lunch as lunches with tip are now climbing to $15-20 where 4 years ago I could easily get out of the door at most places for under $12 with tip for a lunch.

if Lunches go above $20... I cease it completely

you do understand how inflation works right? If all prices raise then the purchasing power of the person on Min Wage stays the same thus their situation did not actually improve any.

Further Inflation has the common effect of hurting the lower and middle classes the worst and increasing wealth disparity. There is multiple ways this occurs but one thing that is trending of late is that as the wage floor is raising you are not seeing the same levels of raise in other area's of income until you get into the top 10% or higher of wage earners. Today we are seeing inflation outstrip wages in many skilled labor categories.

I agree with you, but do those places actually make a lot of profit?

In a lot of cases, they don't make as much as people think they do. Take supermarkets for instance. Many of them are hiring cashiers and shelf stockers right now, and they can't hire anybody because they can't pay enough to make the job attractive. Supermarkets and grocery stories have some of the thinnest profit margins in any business.

Without trying to counteract your points about the pay/work/parttime/etc.... It's worth noting that a large number of restaurant owners make very little money. The margins/profits in that industry are razor thin. So the owner making less wouldn't be helpful, or even an option for many of them.

Then shouldn't they be working more personally? Or shouldn't they no longer be in business? (And yeah, I'm well aware how much many small restaurant owners work. See door number two.)

People around here talk a lot about unsustainable business models. I don't think it's really any better if it's offloading its unsustainability onto its workforce, which is what's being described here.

From where I stand, as somebody whose career can be described (cynically but not incorrectly) as largely rendering people unemployed, there's a tension here that's only going to be resolved through the acknowledgement that there isn't actually a need for everyone to work to make the whole thing "go", and unsustainably poor work with poverty as the retribution for refusing to participate (as well as the reward for participating) is not a politically stable position.

>>>that there isn't actually a need for everyone to work to make the whole thing "go"

So what is the proposal? Pay people to stay home forever? Who determines who gets a free ride paid for by productive people, and who has to be the ones that provide that free ride to others.

be sure to sign me up for the free ride, but I sure as hell do not want to work 50+ hours a week so other people can play Call of Duty all day.... I would rather let other people work and I play Call of Duty

And their lies the rub / problem with socialism... If everyone can have a free ride no one works

Shorter work week, more vacations. Spread the work across more people. Instead of 1 person working 50 hours, have 2 people work 25 hours. Instead of 2 weeks off a year, have 2 months. Oh, and untie healthcare from employment.

That was the idea behind the 35 hour work week in France. Didn't work out as expected: unemployment didn't go down.

More recently, they had removed some tax breaks on overtime, but it turned out that that only hurt the people needing to work overtime; still no effect on unemployment. At least some of the breaks are now back.

I think the broader issue is that most people having to work crazy hours with multiple jobs don't do it because they're workaholics, but because they have to, as in they can't get a single "normal" job that pays well enough for whatever reason. I'm not sure that putting random limits on the number of hours worked will increase the hourly wages.

I think the underlying issue even above that is we've automated away the need for workers, yet people still exist. So let's say our economy only really needs 100 million people to do stuff and there are 150 million people, that's an obvious disparity. What really sucks is automation is cranking up but the next generation will be even bigger than the Millennials, which were much larger than GenX. So in the next few decades we'll have 160 million people and only need 95 million people, etc. This will keep happening until something breaks.

At some point crimes of desperation will become rampant.

People need work to keep them occupied. It's built in to our psychology by evolution. We know that idle people cause most of the problems in society. So I do think there is a need for everyone to work to make the whole thing "go", if by "go" you mean have a peaceful, civilized way of living.

This sounds teleological. I can find plenty of things to do, many probably more personally fulfilling as well as societally beneficial, than flipping burgers would be.

I think there’s some merit in what you say, I’m just not sure we would agree on how to define “…large number of restaurant owners…”

This is completely anecdotal, but I know three different restaurant owners and all three of them live very very comfortably. Again, that’s just anecdotal so probably not worth much.

While I don’t think anyone would suggest that a restaurant owner should live in poverty, at the same time I don’t think we would suggest a restaurant worker should be poverty levels of poor to ensure the owner lives the high life.

If a business cant supply both its owner and workers a livable wage, then we should expect the business to go under rather than expect (or demand) the workers descend into poverty.

Counterexample: https://mobile.twitter.com/auren/status/1419149796284145667/...

I see hiring signs with dollar amounts on them all the time.

> The media here in France reports that some industries, in particular restaurants, are having a hard time finding employees

It's the same in the UK. Farmers cannot harvest some crops because the cheap EU labour is no longer present and locals won't do it.

The cases are different though in that the UK situation is clearly mostly a consequence of Brexit. That doesn't apply to France.

Who said these people aren’t working? I see a lot of people retraining, pivoting, and taking care of others. That’s work. Just because it doesn’t pay doesn’t mean it isn’t work or valuable. Being a stay at home parent doesn’t pay, but it’s clearly valuable.

Employment is a means to an end: basic survival. We do it because we’re forced to by forced scarcity. There may be virtue in work, but there’s no inherent virtue in employment.

This is a bit too reductionist for my liking.

Imagine, as a kind of empathetic thought exercise, that instead of someone taking handouts and playing Xbox all day, they were taking handouts and then doing online coursework to try and learn a new skill to make themselves more employable in the future. Does that still imply a lack of self-respect?

We're all effectively taking handouts to some degree or another just by participating in collective society. It's just a question of how much we're contributing back, and how. I try not to judge people too aggressively in terms of how they are contributing back; they may be doing so in ways that I cannot see.

I just head this same rap from a blowhard senator who's state is loaded with Covid.

"The self-respect that comes with working." Read this like you are nursing a hangover.

Americans are fed up with lousy jobs that treat them like crap.

Most likely that senator is from a net-taker state like kentucky or arkansas, one that would be bankrupt without california and new york overpaying the fed to subsidize poor republican states.

There is also more affluence in California and the Northeast vs Middle America. Regardless of politics Middle America is not going to be granted the same economic opportunities as coastal regions.

So, why should we subsidize them? I’m Californian and my taxes should go to help my home state, not those who hate me and my home?

Kentucky and the rest of those moocher states should pull themselves up by their boot straps, stand on their own two feet and sink or swim.

Because we live in a Union? The idea is that your state will be helped if the table is ever turned. Not everyone in Kentucky hates California and the people who live there. What you're essentially promoting is reducing the role of federal government, which is the same thing current Kentucky senators want. I'm sorry to be so blunt but to be honest your comment sounds hateful and ignorant.

I don't think it's likely that the Kentuckians would help out if the tables were turned

This is just baseless speculation. Also that's a great reason why the federal government exists.

disagree. in times of peril, the states consider themselves part of the nation.

Why stop at taxes? Let’s talk about water, why should all these states be subsidizing California’s water use? Why aren’t they bootstrapping desalination plants? Quit mooching.

Taking the handouts is the most rational thing to do. Why would you expect people to do otherwise? Relying on unspoken normative rules is maybe possible in a society with well defined and perpetuated values, but in our current society, utility far outweighs values in decision making.

Lacking self-respect for refusing to slave away in bullshit jobs that destroy our environment directly or indirectly, make some rich guy even richer or take place in a toxic work environment you mean?

Unemployment is one of the few ways government has ever done anything for me personally as opposed to general social goods. As a net payer into the system for the overwhelming majority of my working life I have absolutely no objection to getting a little of that money back when I hit a rough patch.

Actually we solved a ton of problems by throwing money at it: poverty dropped significantly.

https://www.urban.org/research/publication/2021-poverty-proj...

>Because you have self-respect and shouldn't be taking handouts if you're capable of working?

FWIW, I agree with you. But this is a moral take, not an economist’s. I think most economists would say people act to maximize utility. In the real world I think it’s both but it’s very hard to regulate/incentivize morals