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Comment by bilekas | Hacker News Reader

> There is no such thing as a labor shortage.

Of course there isn't. This is out of touch employers saying "Nobody wants to work for $1 an hour, so must mean there's a shortage."

It's wild, that same in the service industry, restaraunts for example paying 1/2 dollars an hour and then putting the onus onto the customers to pay in tips.

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-to-work-at-waf...

It's ridiculous, GenZ has just realized they don't want to participate in the racket and I don't blame them.

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> It's ridiculous, GenZ has just realized they don't want to participate in the racket and I don't blame them.

It's not that they don't want to participate in the racket, it's that the racket literally can not sustain them. Older gens participate in the racket because most of them locked in housing or rents from an era where the racket could support those prices. Gen Z has much higher housing costs that make "the racket" untenable, despite the racket still working fine for older millenials just fine. Housing costs exploding, among other things, has ruined the ability of an entire generation to really thrive or ever have a chance of doing better than their parents.

Wait, how many people have rents locked in from a previous era? The vast majority of rental agreements I'm aware of renew every year or so and the landlord is free to charge market rate at that point. Older generations get hit with high rent the same as Gen Z.

No argument on housing prices. It's crazy how high they are in a lot of cities relative to the median salary.

Rent controls exist, although they're mostly a legacy thing now.

Yes.. and who benefits most from favourable legacy policies? Older gens.

The economics of restaurants are pretty unique. I'm all for not tipping and paying a normal wage to wait staff but picking out restaurants fail at an incredible rate.

Using Waffle House as an example is hard because it's a private company but food service profit margins aren't typically super high. A Waffle House, in a good location, I'm sure makes a good amount of money but the owners of those restaurants are often the hardest working employee there (and they are there, at least in the beginning) if they are going to succeed. Plus, those owners have loans to pay off at the beginning. It's a tough business.

There's more I could say but, the TL;DR is that most businesses aren't making the profits of a Google or Apple and don't usually have tons of spare cash around to give everyone a raise, as much as most (small) business owners would like to. Especially newly established restaurants, paying off business loans takes a big chunk of the revenue.

It is not even that. Plenty dont have a choice and participate in rackets. It is not like they were swimming in money and riches

But some places are worst then rackets the town nearby.

> Plenty dont have a choice and participate in rackets

I do appreciate that, but seems to me that the path towards change (CEO epiphanies) is for as many people as possible boycott the job.. It's a mentality change and I'm glad to see GenZ and others pushing to change it.

The problem is that there is a vast number of people in modern societies whom do not come from a stable background.

Something I have realised since managing to work my family out of the trenches is that the majority of people really do not have any idea on just how bad things can be. And I should add it is not their fault in the slightest. If you’re not living amongst it the articles you read in mainstream media seem like rare anomalies but the reality is that they are not.

The biggest benefit to having a stable background is the ability to be more selective about the job you take as you know there is a safety net.

When you are literally living paycheque to paycheque you don’t even want to risk having to complete another round of probation in a better job as you run the risk of being unemployed in three months time and loss of one month’s salary can start a spiral which makes your currently manageable situation a lot less so.

I say this from personal experience as someone in the UK, I can’t speak for anywhere else.

GenZ need to eat, room to live in, gas into car and occasionally healthcare. They can't ignore jobs unless their parents are wealthy and willing to pay for them forever.

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