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Comment by seneca | Hacker News Reader

Well, the point is that these jobs don't create that much value. They're only worth so much, and the only skill required to do them is to put up with the misery. If you argue that all jobs must pay a "living wage", then jobs like this will just cease to exist and high-school kids won't be employable.

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...these jobs don't create that much value...

Concessions account for 1/3 of AMC's revenue. $1.7 billion of AMC's $5.4 billion in 2019. That accounts for about 85% of their profit.

https://qz.com/2006440/amc-says-moviegoers-are-eating-a-lot-...

https://business.time.com/2009/12/07/movie-theaters-make-85-...

It might come as a surprise to some, but in some other countries service people are really paid a living wage. And the economy is still doing fine.

> these jobs don't create that much value

According to what I read online, apparently eating out is something that is necessary for mental health and the pandemic causing issues with eating out is actually causing issues for people for some godforsaken reason.

So probably not as valueless as you might think

Eating out and employing low paid workers don't have to be the same thing.

Significant amounts of that can and will be automated. We are already seeing it happen.

The value these jobs create is the fabric of modern society. To quote the article, "Just shut up Mom, it's Christmas." Not saying they should be paid as much as doctors, but without these normal things that were lost during the 2020 shutdown I suspect that the protesting/looting would become more prevalent.

These jobs don't create that much value? Did you look at the theater's financial statements to come to that conclusion? I suspect someone - most likely the owner of this establishment - is making quite a bit of money on this deal.

No, this job in particular creates a lot of value for this specific business. And if you read the piece, the others did too -- they've now got angry customers who arent' getting the experience the business is selling.

I'm not sure how you get to the takeaway that a bartender job will "cease to exist" if a bartender is paid a living wage? There's clearly a market demand for, in this case, alcoholic drinks in a movie theater. Labor prices are seeing upward pressure. Seems to me that if you got rid of the bartender because they cost too much, you wouldn't have a bar at your movie theater anymore.

Sure, you could talk about robotics replacing low-wage workers, and in some instances that may happen, but you're also now dealing with needing to have a robotics tech available during the Spiderman rush at your movie theater where the machine that makes the drinks is a core part of the draw. So I'm skeptical of the economic argument there as it is -- you're going to replace one or two bartenders making a living wage of $20-25/hr with a robotics tech who makes the same or less?

That's just incorrect. Wages do no accurately represent value generated. They are an incredibly noisy signal thereof. Wages are better at representing replaceability.

Low skill jobs are the first to be automated. Theaters, quick service restaurants, a lot of retail are pushing customers to use things like apps (for ordering), delivery, and pickup because it removes the need to employ unskilled ticket-takers while simultaneously removing the need to interact with difficult customers.

Good! High school kids shouldn’t need jobs. Encouraging that just ensures we have a child labor workforce that we can underpay, driving down wages for adults who need that money to survive.

Child labor laws are a thing for a reason. If there’s not a lot of value in a job, it shouldn’t be a job. Yes, this will mean a degradation in service level across service jobs. Yes, that’s okay. Customers need to adapt to a world where they are expected to be more considerate, otherwise they’ll find themselves without help.

High school kids shouldn't need jobs, but they can all benefit from working part time jobs. Having a job teaches them how the real world operates and exposes them to diverse people outside their social bubble. In retrospect the jobs I had as a high school kid were tremendously valuable in ways that went beyond the tiny wages that I earned.

Until we can demonstrate that we have strong enough labor protections that employers don’t prey on these kids (and they absolutely do already because the kids don’t know any better), I’m in favor of banning anyone under 18. Part of it is the indoctrination — service jobs like that are often dehumanizing, and making kids do that work just teaches them to accept that kind of treatment. There is about to be a fundamental reckoning over the structure of our society and how we learn to function with less service sector labor overall while serving an aging population that requires more services. It’s going to be a labor-driven job market for quite a while, and employing kids is just a tactic to take advantage of their naïveté.

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