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Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

1. There is only so much you can pay the people doing the kind of work like cleaning the Shinkansens or manning the 7-11's because it affects customer costs. i.e. There's a point where you increase the salary of 7-11 workers that it causes a $2 fried chicken snack to inflate to $10 that customers will refuse to buy

2. Even if there was magically enough money and time to retrain people, they would still be short of workers.

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Out of curiosity, what percentage of a fried chicken snack's final cost do you think is labor from that 7-11 worker?

Probably quite a lot, 20% of the marginal cost or so? Maybe the truck driver has a bigger share, but they're a very similar case.

It's not even just labor, it is the fully burdened labor (i.e., all costs of that labor, which is well beyond the wage/salary an employee sees...the true cost of labor, i.e., a $20/hr wage is actually a $25-28 expense), multiplied by the number of hours and number of people working during those hours that becomes a cumulative overhead cost that is added to the wholesale and other general overhead costs that the item margin must cover in addition to providing a certain profit.

Then there is also something like spoilage that comes into play in an example like your "fried chicken snack", which may not sell within FDA food regulation timeline and temperature, and therefore must be thrown away...a total loss.

But it's not just a total loss; not only did you then not make a profit on the sale of the "fried chicken snack", you also are in the hole to the tune of the wholesale cost of the chicken snack, e.g., $4, the labor and other indirect and overhead costs in addition to the opportunity cost, e.g., $1.

So a $1 earnings from a $6 "fried chicken snack" may turn into a $4 loss of the chicken at wholesale price and an additional loss of $1 for labor, overhead, etc. So now you are $5 in the hole when you had hoped to be $1 in the black, and now have to sell 6x$6 "fried chicken snacks" just to break even and finally make that $1 you had previously hoped for.

That's just a very simplified version of just something as simple as "fried chicken snacks". It gets way more complicated from there.

We manage it in Sweden, even with þ weeks of vacation. Regular people including workers can still eat there.

Different from the USA, 7-11 in Japan and China are mainly self checkout at least, so they can technically run a store with less people since they don’t have to man cash registers to get people checked out.

This. Also there is a social backlash against Vietnamese, Chinese, and Thai service workers in Japan now (the people who tend to be working the counter at a kombini, but apparently Asians all look the same to Western HNers), as well as Western tourists.

Edit: can't reply

> I doubt many Chinese youths want to work for minimum wage in Japan

Chinese are the 2nd largest nationality of foreign agricultural and food workers in Japan [0].

As long as the median household income in China [1] remains below the minimum wage in Japan [2], members of the bottom half of Chinese society will continue to emigrate there, Korea, and other countries to work, that said not at the same rate as was seen a decade ago.

[0] - https://catalog.lib.kyushu-u.ac.jp/opac_download_md/4738336/...

[1] - https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202507/t202507...

[2] - https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9C%80%E4%BD%8E%E8%B3%83%E9...

If you click on the time the person you ‘can’t reply’ (where it says ‘n minutes’ or ‘n hours ago’) posted their comment you can reply to your hearts content.

This is what I did to reply to you.

You don’t have to say ‘ can’t reply’ then quote someone like that.

Context is preserved better the proper way but it’s not very discoverable.

I saw Indian workers in convenience stores when I was there. I thought that was kind of cool.

Yep!

It's a very recent shift that began in the last 3-5 years.

Traditionally, India never had a Japanese vocational program in the manner you'd find in Vietnam, Thailand, China, Phillipines, etc but in 2021 [0], the Japanese and Indian government began working on a vocational/blue collar mobility program [1] to build a Vietnam, China, or Phillipines style pipeline.

There will be a lot of Indians coming, but they will be cycled back in 2-3 year batches to then become floor managers and foremen for Japanese fixed investments in India. It's the model that Japanese automotive JVs in India operated on for a decade [1].

And it's was these kinds of vocational programs that helped dramatically upskill Chinese manufacturing in the 2000s and 2010s.

[0] - https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/govt-clears-india-jap...

[1] - https://www.jim-jec.in/

But who's going to unlock the expensive items from the plexiglass case?

You mean the hot food in the display case? They still have a person for that, but they aren’t taking money.

I don't know about China, but I live in Japan and most konbini I have visited still have real human cashiers.

Yeah but more and more have self service cashiers as well with cashless payments

Huh, in Tokyo and Osaka I didn’t encounter a 7-11 without self checkout as an option. The smaller convenience stores sure, but not 7-11. China is much more aggressive in this regard though.

As an option yes, but not most of the cashiers.

They might have one person ready, but the amount of volume they do means that the kiosks aren’t really that optional, most people are using them or they would be waiting awhile for human help (and most people use them so the manned check is pretty clear most of the time for those that need it).

This is a linkage in theory but in practice it's an indirect linkage and the 7-11 owner does not have a handbook dictating how prices rise or fall relating to labour costs.

As evidenced by the non arrival of across the board 10% rises in meal costs when tipping is banned.

TL;DR cost and price linkage is not amenable to simplistic claims about the impact on pricing.

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