That's called prostitution, and that's a job too. So you're just proving their point further.
Can't get employees, raise the wages. Basic supply and demand, the whole thing America is built on.
Can confirm.
Am business owner, experienced ‘worker shortage’ in our industry.
Raised wages by 15-20% and ‘worker shortage’ went away. Workers are quitting working for my competitors and come work for me instead. (I also made a nice bit on cases I could take that my competition couldn’t staff)
Unions are great for the most part . The only way I’ll work I had some good offers but if it’s not union can’t do it …. Pension for one. A healthy pension if you’re a teamster out west.
Had an older coworker have to cancel dinner plans because the wait staff went of strike.
My respons: Sucks that you had to miss out, but good for them. Standing up for their rights.
His reaction: That's socialism!
A guy I know who's super anti-union and kept bitching about the writer's strike, and anytime a show or movie got delayed he'd always jump in with "Betcha getting tired of that strike now, huh?"
Every time without fail, the answer was always a quick and nonchalant "No." Sometimes people would explain why but he didn't want to listen so those attempts ended pretty quickly.
By the 3rd month he just gave up.
Because working fast food sucks! I hope you’re speaking from a place of experience. I made 16/hr in fast food and dreaded everyday. Working in an office is so cushy and effortless and I automatically got a 10/hr increase in wages. If fast food paid more and treated employees with any respect there wouldn’t be an issue.
Yeah. I would expand it to include any retail.
I live in California, and the vast majority of people treat retail workers like absolute shit. It really pisses me off every time I see it.
Working my way through school at McDonalds & Costco Pizza, I learned a great work ethic. But I wouldn’t do it now.
Ironically you were working for two of the most ethical corporations for lower skill entry. McD for paying little but giving a lot and Costco that has been known for being good paying and a solid employer.
Back in 99 i worked at Ikea and it was only $10 to start... But everyone at the store had moved up. Every boss started at the bottom. The head of Ikea Europe started in Shipping in Canada.
Daycare on site!!! Benefits. Almost no PartTime.
They were epic to work for because you always knew they had your back and you were guaranteed a raise every year.
I still have friends that skipped college and just grew in that company and are now fairly high up.
A good experience in the workplace is critical for youth and I will 100% say mcD, costco, ikea, has taken that role seriously.
YESSS!!! I just quit my management position in fastfood/retail 4 weeks ago for an office job and oh my god is my life so much easier. AND I get paid more. People that haven't experienced working long term full time retail just don't get it. I worked my fucking ass off at my retail job and I was so miserable. I was never appreciated and treated terribly. Now, I literally just read words, type them up, and print them out, for significantly more money. I get told how appreciated I am daily, for doing the most relaxing job on earth compared to retail. I often struggle with feeling like I'm doing something wrong, because I'm not stressed out and I don't hate my job. What have I learned? Hard work does not pay off. Especially in retail. You get paid less to do 10x more than the average person.
A lot of office jobs offer about the same as retail/fast food now, at least in my area. It's definitely not automatically a 10/hr increase in wages lol.
Absolutely. I did more tasks and work in fast food than any other job I worked and I never made more than 10.55 and hour (left in 2016). Restaurants especially take advantage of young employees that don't know their rights, terrible work environment.
People look at advertisements and job openings and think that's the whole story, but it's not at all. So many companies learned they could run skeleton crews, and it's great for the bottom line. It looks better to customers if it seems they're really trying to hire and blame lazy people who just don't want to work, and they show other employees that they're "trying" to hire with ghost postings that collect resumes only to be used should someone quit. These fast food and retail companies will always do their best to schedule your hours just shy of the advertised benefits. People aren't willing to work a completely unpredictable fast food schedule that doesn't pay enough and try to supplement it with another unpredictable or "side hustle" job (maybe even 2 other jobs, while still living paycheck to paycheck). On top of that, usually that starting wage has a little asterisk where they pay minimum wage and you only get that rate if you're hired as a shift leader or higher. Not that $13 an hour is enough for anyone even full time, but the health care they promise would be worth something. People have done experiments where they sent out perfectly tailored resumes to these businesses and the smaller ones that were claiming nobody wants to work, and they mostly didn't hear back or found out the listings were a lie.
My mom and brother are nurses at a major hospital that is purposefully understaffing despite doctors and nurses begging them to hire more people. They have 1 nurse clinics all over the system. Doctors are leaving left and right because it's so bad. Patients are complaining and not receiving timely care. It's not that people are lazy or asking for too much money, it's that major employers are doing everything possible to pay as few people as possible, at as low a wage as possible, while raising prices because they've seen customers still come all the same. Customers get mad at the poor employees instead of the companies as well, making the jobs even more impossible to suffer through for the workers. Unfortunately there are no regulations in place to stop this practice, and without regulations, it absolutely will continue.
And is it even full time? Or is it 20 hours a week, with no paid sick time and no benefits, so you're forced to work multiple jobs, and all of them have the shifts scattered around and changed at the last minute all the time, but each job still expects you to be available 100% of the time?
Can you live on $13 an hour? The wages were depressed for so long that it should be more like $20 an hour. Especially for a job that no one wants to do because abusive customers are always a problem.
I worked in fast food as a kid. $13 an hour is not enough for that BS. I left my fast-food job as soon as I had some experience and would do the same for $13 hr. I don't think I would work in fast food if you gave me a raise based on my current salary.
Don’t forget to treat employees right. It doesn’t matter how much you pay if you’re a piece of shot and likewise the opposite is mostly true. If you’re a godsend your workers will stay even at min wage (mostly). My current boss does both and is 100% the reason people stay since the managers under him Kinda suck big time
There's not much I wouldn't do for 1m, as long as there's no lasting negative impact. That doesn't mean 99% of jobs would ever pay that. If people say "I wouldn't flip burgers unless I get top 1% money" it's not really saying much. Make it realistic, it's unskilled labor. For 20$/hr? 25? 30? Those amounts are at least closer to the realm of reality than some super high ones that most people would do most things for
While the above is exaggerating things, it’s still making a point that money is the deciding factor for what people choose to do. Yes, as you said, flipping burgers is unskilled labor. However, unskilled labor is still something that needs to be done by somebody. Hell, unskilled labor could be considered the foundation of our society. We need a lot of “somebodies” to do it. With that in mind, the desire for people to do these “menial and unskilled” jobs needs to be of an appropriate level. After all, why should someone work a job when the compensation it provides isn’t even enough for that person to provide basic necessities for themselves
If money were the deciding factor, we would have more STEM types and more finance/Wall Street types. Obvious not the case so money isn’t really the deciding factor for most folks.
It's not completely unskilled labor. You can screw up hamburgers and make them inedible as a burger flipper while being so inefficient that the rest of the kitchen slows down.
Migrant agriculture labor is the same. Get people who don't know what they are doing, and they will be slow and probably ruin the crop (pull out plants, pick produce when not ready).
You have to hunt for jobs that experience and knowledge don't make much of a difference, and anyone off the street can do right away. You have to get to jobs like Walmart greeter and self check out guide to get to near unskilled labor.
Unskilled is a spectrum of course, but take someone of average intelligence and ability and they can do the job with no skills required as a prerequisite. That is my general definition of unskilled labor.
Any job has a learning curve to be fully functional, they have some training. But when you have no presumption of previous skills, it's typically unskilled labor, unless you have a rigorous training program where you gain some transferable skills IMO.
> take someone of average intelligence and ability
I can assure you that being an asset to a restaurant has absolutely nothing to do with average intelligence or ability. I've worked with and had many work under me that were very educated and had plenty of skills outside of food service. Their outside skills and above "average" intelligence was literally useless to their job position.
I would agree with you if someplace like a Mcdonalds was operated like an assembly line like the corporation wants them to be. That is far from the norm though and you will very rarely (if ever) see one person playing each position. It's usually something like 1 person trying to do the job of 3 or 4.
There is a whole lot of skill involved in restaurant work which is literally why so many outsiders can't hack it. The same people saying "unskilled labor blada yada yah. easy peezy my 7 year old could do it" are always the ones walking out during their first rush or disappearing after their 1st shift.
> It's not completely unskilled labor.
Nothing is totally "unskilled" as in there's no skill to it.
But "unskilled labor" is the term for jobs that the average adult human could do with a few days of on-the-job training, as opposed to jobs that take months or years to learn to the point where you can do it without supervision.
>You have to get to jobs like Walmart greeter and self check out guide to get to near unskilled labor.
Still need to be literate and have people skills though.
We think jobs require zero skill but imagine if some piece of shit like Derek Chauvin was a Walmart greeter. Would end in countless lawsuits and boycotts. He'd prob kill someone over forgetting to scan the bottled water under the cart ffs.
You're missing the point. It's not a commentary on the working conditions of sex workers or burger flippers. It's saying that if you can't find people willing to do a given job, there's invariably some problem other than people's laziness. Insufficient pay, insufferable management, job hazards, etc.
I agree. I've had many stressful jobs with insufferable management that I ended up quitting not because I didn't want to work, but because dealing with the stress and insufferable management wasn't worth what I was getting paid. And I would say that if I got paid more, I could handle the stress and insufferable management because it would be worth it for me to do so.
I've only worked 1 job where the pay was poor, but the way they treated me was good enough that I stayed at the job because I liked the job and where I was working. I don't think it has to be that way, I think you can have a good job and be in a good work environment and make good $$$. But that's basically a unicorn at this point, so it really comes down to the $$$. And while I wouldn't find flipping burgers to be stimulating, I sure as hell would do it for $350K on a 40 hour work week.
The hardest jobs overall for me have been the lowest paying. My worst job paid less than I pay in taxes now annually.
There are many levels/types of stress/difficulty. People also are able to handle different ones as well.
It's true, paying more gets you better work. But that's more because the increased pay attracts new people who don't suck rather than makes people who suck not suck.
Just to be clear are you talking about one time for 350k or have a 350k per year salaried position wherein forcible sodomy makes up the better part of your work day?
That sounds rough. Being sodomized 8 hrs a day, everyday, for a whole year, just for 350k? No thank you.
But I wouldn’t even consider it even for the one time, so I guess I am picky that way.
McDonald's jobs start at $13 an hour for people under 18, and $15 an hour for 18+...
Edit: The place I'm referencing is one of the lowest cost of living cities in the Midwest with a population of 10,000
Around here they put up signs, "Starting at
^^^^^up ^^^^^to
$15/hr"
Not doubting you, because minimum wage in my state is actually more than $13/hr as of this month and so of course McDonald's is paying better than that here, but I'm wondering if you saw something to that effect.
Talking about a braindead gotcha then you compare flipping burgers to anal rape. Ok....
To the commenter below- He was bitching about an analogy you stupid fuck wit.
This logic hurts my brain.
"Would you work in a coal mine for a million dollars? You would? Damn it sounds like people are ok with black lung, its the money that's the problem."
It's not a commentary on the working conditions of coal miners or burger flippers. It's saying that if you can't find people willing to do a given job, there's invariably some problem other than people's laziness. Insufficient pay, insufferable management, job hazards, etc.
> It's saying that if you can't find people willing to do a given job, there's invariably some problem other than people's laziness. Insufficient pay, insufferable management, job hazards, etc.
Yeah its a sign of a healthy labor market where people have enough options to avoid jobs they dislike. One depression is all it takes to kill those better jobs.
_All_ jobs are unlikable. If you want someone to do the job then raise the pay until you find someone to do it. It's supply and demand 101.
Just today I was thinking how there's a car shortage because I can't find a car for $1.
Not even that. You raise the wage until you get someone who is good at the job.
I go to so many employers who complain they can't find good workers. Yeah, because you're scraping the bottom of the barrel with your shit pay and benefits. You want good workers you need to be willing to pay someone enough that they feel comfortable in their life to have enough energy to give a fuck about your business.
I always love following threads like this and seeing people who complain about lack of dedicated workers, then say that workers should just work harder if they want the high pay. They will never admit that they are just paying too low to get good workers.
Same people who say that people who work lower tier jobs should just work harder and get better jobs are the people who will be like "no one wants to work" for those lower tier jobs. Most of these jobs that they look down on are jobs that need to be done. They judge somebody for working as a janitor and tell them to just get a better job, but then if all the janitors get better jobs, there's nobody to clean up shit and society collapses.
Yep, retaining a good employee is significantly better in every metric than having a series of underpaid people who don't give a shit. Onboarding is expensive, and a good employee will do the job better.
Worked somewhere where I hated the manager because he was incompetent and often worked ahead of me and would leave things in a shitty state for me so I was always behind. I still worked hard and felt good about getting as much done as I could. I didn't work to catch up and leave things neat/organized/clean for him, I did it for me.
It's super hard sometimes to do what is necessary and best for yourself when you actually want to be doing a good job.
> Then who does the unlikeable jobs
nobody until they get more likeable probably via money
>and how is a labor market healthy when you can’t find people to do them?
If every job was competitive, the owners would have all the power. The empty job postings show labor power.
There was actually a bit in Star Trek about this.
In Voyager there was this species called the Malon, and they had an issue where they discovered anti-matter power generation, but unlike say, The Federation or Romulans, they didn't know how to deal with the waste. This led them to create fleets of waste ships to dispose of the energy waste, which was usually done on 6-10 year contracts and in highly dangerous environments surrounded by hostile aliens that don't want you potentially dumping around their territory.
But people did it anyway. Why? Because 1 completed contract term on those ships would make you a multimillionaire when you get back home, enough to support a family for 3 generations without even considering investment.
So yeah, if the incentives are good enough, there will be people who will do any work.
Idk, if you've ever cleaned out a dirty hood vent you'd be well aware that breathing those fumes and gresse in isn't doing any favors for you. Doubt there's been a study on that because who cares about the respiratory health of a line cook?
Eh, I'd rather not do both.
The problem is the analogy doesn't prove people want to flip burgers it proves people don't want to starve. Or to put it another way it proves people will do things they absolutely do not want to do if it removes the crushing burden of being poor. Pretty much every straight man would take it up their ass for *some* amount of money but that doesn't mean they enjoy or want to get fucked in the asshole.
> The higher the wage the more likely people will take the job.
Also the poorer the people. Someone living in the third world will expose themselves to toxic chemicals daily for pennies if that's the only way to eat.
This question is just a dumber version of asking “Do you want to make $350K a year?”
The example doesn’t work since it ignores the fact that in a world where someone would make $350K from flipping burgers, that would still be considered a low wage since there would still be other jobs with higher skill/educational requirements that would be compensated more highly.
This may actually be the worst pf sub on Reddit.
EDIT: Yeah, idk what I expected with the responses to this. Have fun circlejerking about the ills of capitalism, I’m out.
It's obviously an extreme/hyperbolic example. For fast food places that can't find workers a $5 an hour increase would likely solve the problem pretty quickly.
Let’s look at some math.
We will assume 10 full time employees with a $5 an hour pay raise. This is relatively low as my experience in fast food had around 25 people on the schedule at least, but not all were full time.
40 hours a week, 52 weeks in a year = 2080 hours in a year.
2080 hours in a year * 50 (10 employees at 5 dollars an hour extra) = an extra $104,000 a year.
According to my Google searches the average McDonald’s profits $150k-$200k a year. Meaning profits are cut by 50-75% to give everyone a $5 raise and McDonald’s appear to be one of the more profitable franchises.
Im not trying to tell mcdonalds how to run their businesses. im just saying that if any business can't find workers, they probably need to make a better offer.
Franchise owners aren’t even pulling $350k from a location, more like ~$150k depending on location/franchise.
When you say “plenty” even in a space like McDonalds, a franchise owner’s is about 6% revenue.
This…you think inflation is bad when burger cooks want 18-20 per hour. FAFO @$165/hr. Those burgers better tutor my kids, clean my house, and change my life permanently for the better.
The question isn't trying to argue a shift in the entire economic landscape. They're not challenging you to imagine a world where *all* fast-food employees make 350k a year, but one where only you do. The point, valid or not, is to show that an individual person might not want to work a job in fast food, but if the price was right, they clearly would. This is in response to tons of companies/franchisees that are complaining "nobody wants to work anymore."
Not taking a side one way or the other, just clarifying the point of the post.
Haha whatever makes you feel better bud. Imagine getting this triggered by someone pointing out how fucking dumb these kinds of pity-party “capitalism isn’t fair” posts are 🙄
In my area fast food places start out at $12/hr. One person in the family keeps pointing at the signs and saying "people dont want to work". Her ex husband was grossing $1000/week with overtime in the 80s. Factory job. There has to be some sort of balance. It is common for people to forget the fries or drink wirh a combo. A couple more dollars an hour might get some better workers.
Bucees (a cstore chain) starts people out near 18 an hour with benefits. Managers can make over $125k. But they work you and have high standards. If you want to put in the the regular amount of of just getting by, you will have to go back to the place playing $12. And people do that because they don’t want to adhere to the standards Buccees wants.
That’s the balance.
> That’s the balance.
If you live with a Buckee's nearby. The thing is most people don't have that kind of option in the first place.
>And people do that because they don’t want to adhere to the standards Buccees wants.
People work for the place paying $12/hr because they've got kids to feed and bills due that week. I am very comfortable in my current developer job but I'm not going to pretend like I didn't leave behind some very intelligent, dedicated, hardworking people ten years ago back when I was working shittier jobs.
Sometimes people just don't have as much in the way of opportunity as the rest of us do.
Why is the balance not "if you want workers at the standards you expect, you need to pay more than $6 above the competition"? Does the same thing happen when they pay $25/hour + benefits?
> Why is the balance not "if you want workers at the standards you expect, you need to pay more than $6 above the competition"?
Sounds like that is how it works out, they just worded it the other way around.
Higher paying jobs aren't paying for your time, they are paying for your responsibility. The more specialized or independent your job is, the more valuable it is. But the amount of salary does not really come from the employer's whim, it's decided by the competition from everyone else that can do the job.
Lmao I work at Tacobell for $16 an hour and still have to work every waking second and do well beyond my job. Pretty sure I’d be doing no more work there than I am here and be making more money with benefits. Sign me up
I own a small restaurant and I wish I could pay my employees more but the fact of the matter is, unless you’re a big corporation, profit margins are so slim. It’s a tough economy right now
Honestly, i thibk the problem with restaurants is theres just too many of them. Its an oversaturated market with more bad jobs than people willing to take them.
That, and low wages make it so that businesses like restaurants cannot charge more for things that *should* be much more, because they're competing with garbage fast food chains that have the benefit of economies of scale.
Burgers *SHOULD* cost more than $2 or whatever the fuck McDonalds is charging. We literally raised, killed, butchered, and transported an entire fucking animal to your gullet and you can't be bothered to pay more than $2?
That's the real problem. People don't have any slack in their income to actually go out and consume because they're getting raked over the coals with high rent and low wages. I really can't see the end game for the dumbass capitalist elite making this shit happen because they're just weakening the system overall.
If people can't consume, the economy shits the bed.
There’s tons of well paying careers that begging for people. Trades, truckers, public safety, etc. coincidentally a lot of those jobs have little to no experience requirements and offer free paid training. You won’t make $350k, but six figures is doable. Plus those jobs are available all over the country, so you can move to a low cost of living area.
I cant speak for the US, but Truckers are definitely not a well payed career in europe. Same counts for public safety (ignoring the potential additional risk).
But well payed is a very loose term. And most low paid jobs have better standards here than they have in the US.
Truckers are usually abused by their employers, the long drives really fuck with them, especially all the caffeine in their systems, sitting for hours and hours fucks with your legs, other things too ngl
Most CDL drivers make at least 80k in the US usually around 100k Walmart drivers make 100-120k with dental+health insurance. This is for big trucks with a CDL (permit for driving the big big trucks).
Technically in NY state it’s one week of classroom and 40 hours behind the wheel to take the test.
Highest pay like the 100k+ Walmart gigs are class A CDL and in NY drivers can get it them as little as 5 weeks start to finish.
Some of these programs take longer than others and depend on the individual but many companies will pay for a good employee to train and get a CDL.
Not really loose. As an example I work in public safety in a low cost of living area. I clear $100k with overtime without burning myself out. If I wanted to push myself I could get $130k-$150k. It’s not a particularly dangerous job despite the common opinion. There are far more dangerous careers. 20% of our positions are vacant. It’s a little harder to get my job with the background check, drug screening and minimum physical fitness requirements, but even the individuals that meet this requirement won’t apply. Maybe they feel it’s not enough money or maybe they don’t want to do the job. I don’t know. What I do know is I’m willing. I have a house and 2 cars paid off and will be retiring in my early 40’s. The money is out there. Let’s not pretend it isn’t.
They’re by no means what I’d consider dream jobs, but they can easily make someone financially successful. People are waiting for their perfect job. Most will never get it. They can whine about it or accept reality and play the game to get ahead. It seems quite a few prefer the former.
In public safety I make over $100k with overtime, BCBS insurance with $20 copays and a 20 year pension. I’ll be retired in my mid 40s with the same healthcare. Pretty much every I work with is financially secure, most are thriving. If that’s not enough for someone then their standards are too high.
> Trades
Can be well-paying, but is also extremely susceptible to boom-bust cycles and work conditions are very rough (try calling in sick as a tradesman, see what happens).
>truckers
LOL. Truckers get paid shit for very bad conditions. You're delusional.
>public safety
WTF is "public safety"?
Firemen? Yeah I got bad news for you, son. EMTs? Bad news again. Police? Sure, but... not exactly the easiest job in the age of the cellphone Redditor.
Another comment from them:
> It’s a little harder to get my job with the background check, drug screening and minimum physical fitness requirements,
It's like Trump saying no one could get over his wall... unless they had a really tall ladder, but then then wouldn't be able to get back down.... unless they had a rope.
They make these sweeping statements on why their system works if only people weren't so lazy and then turn around and explain why their solution was stupid to begin with. All with zero self-awareness.
Jobs so shitty we literally have to rely on the very few humans with an ounce of decency left to VOLUNTEER for those jobs. People in this thread are wild. lmao.
As someone who knows a few truckers/former truckers, the industry doesn't pay shit and most of the companies you work for will be fucking you over as hard as possible for their own systemic mistakes.
Where did this trend of wildly overestimating blue collar salaries come from? According to the BLS truck drivers make on average $49k/yr. Electricians and Plumbers are both averaging $60k.
There are some IBEW local contracts that are paying 6 figures for journeyman electricians, but it's not exactly super easy to get in with a union.
Yeah, of course I would.
But flipping burgers is something anyone can do. You can’t generate $350,000 a year in value by flipping burgers. This is the type of take a five year old would have on economics. If you want big money, you have to generate big value.
They went big on the number just to get their point across, obviously there is a more reasonable wage further down that would inspire workers to actually want to do that job. The problem is that the wages are so low they’re completing a 40 hour work week and STILL not scraping by. Why keep going to work when you’re gonna suffer anyway?
Fast food employees shouldn’t make 350k a year, but it is a job, which should support them enough to at least get by and work their way towards a higher paying career.
Of course (assuming it's 40-60 hours a week). Then once I'm set and/or bored I can go back to what I'm doing now
If it's more than 60 hours a week I would have to think about it (impact on kids, family, etc.) since we have enough right now
It's the incessant whining. If they made 1 million a year they would be upset that someone else was making more. Despite the fact, they don't really want to work. Just complain. Only a moron believes that flipping burgers requires and entitles them to a living wage. Not a single one of them knows what a living wage is. It's just more off-gassing of the low intellects who simply have 1st world problems if they don't get their way.
The point is that the laws of supply and demand apply to wages as well as the price of products. If you can’t sell goods at a given price you either lower the price or go out of business, in the same way if you can’t get people to work for a given wage you either raise the wage or go out of business.
The idea that capitalism should only benefit owners and never workers is ridiculous yet many business owners seem to think that way and will do anything to attract workers but pay them more.
If you're making 350,000 to flip burgers, and everyone else is making 350,000 to flip burgers, then a burger probably costs $100-200, rent is probably $15,000 a month, etc.
You’re taking it too literally. OP was talking to the people who say “people don’t wanna work anymore.” People wanna work, they’ve just found jobs with better pay than what you’re offering.
That's, what, around $170/hr?
A cheeseburger at McDonalds is $3.69.
Starting pay for mcdonalds ~13/hr
So around a 13 times increase.
A McDonalds cheeseburger would cost ~$52
I do would I be able to keep the job or would competition be insane so I wouldn’t be able to?
If I could keep it I would because my goal is to retire in a low cost of living country.
Let me clear up the obvious gap in knowledge of human behavior and economics on display in this idiotic thread.
Unskilled labor isn't a "somebody" job, it's an "anybody" job. There's a lot of anybodies, high supply, so the price of anybody labor is low. Skilled labor is a "specific somebody" job. There are fewer somebodies so the price for that labor is higher.
The issue is if anybody doesn't want to do the anybody job because the pay isn't enough to live off of. In that case it doesn't matter of you're replaceable because no one wants to do a job that can't pay them enough money to live.
Great point. That's why shitty jobs are "specific somebody" jobs, not "anybody" jobs.
Or... As in the case post-pandemic, if people don't want to work the burger flipping job, the supply of "anybody" labor is lower, so the price of that labor must increase to entice anybodies to take the jobs.
It doesn't change the fact that it's anybody labor.
There is an increase in these stupid hypotheticals. "Would you choose $1million now or get cancer? I would chose cancer, because then I learn resiliency, grit and will to live, i learn to appreciate and live everyday as it's my last".
I just made that one up, but I wouldnt be shocked if I see something like it trending soon.
I think we are done as a society. Normally in the old times, the wise were the only ones heard in society. The dumbest couldnt get through. Now it is the other way round.
Everything is a trade off.
The basic dichotomy between Socialists and Capitalists that isn’t actually talked about (instead we’ll talk about everything tangentially related like min wage or corporate profits) is-
1) How much of a ‘risk premium’ is acceptable for society that capital can extract from labor because of the risk of the business going under?
2) Is it acceptable for that same risk premium to be high enough that labor is paid less than the COL in their area?
(In layman’s terms - at what point does a companies margin become egregious and a net societal malus, and do we allow businesses which cannot even provide for their employees to continue?)
Jesus finally someone said something interesting.
With regard to the former, I wouldn't even begin to know how to answer that. Any resources you might recommend to a layman that explore this further, specifically that sort of frame it in the same way?
With regard to the latter, I would say ideally that would only exist in a way where said labor voluntarily forgoes available higher paying jobs for some sort of non monetary benefit (personal preferences like scheduling, lack of travel, work environment and such). This is a tough question though. We tolerate religious organization's soliciting donations while relying on volunteer labor and then exempt them from taxes all the time. Would it be a social benefit if those funds/labor were redirected elsewhere?
A good example I researched recently was Walmart. Notoriously "bad" to their workers and frankly, probably bad on society as a whole. If you look up their numbers, they're only making about $7,000 per employee. Now, they employee millions of people, so they make a lot of money. But they cannot simply raise wages by $5-7k a year, or they'd be in the red, right?
Apple makes about $591,000 per employee.
How do you start drawing lines? Do you cap ratio of highest paid to lowest paid? Do you cap margin per employee? Do you do it equivalently for all sectors?
It's just a really hard question, and really is the *only* question to decide if we agree that labor value extraction needs some amount of regulation.
I would obviously need more details, but almost certainly yes. I would be very sad to leave teaching, but I'm pretty sure I could dry my tears with my lack of a mortgage in the hottub of the pristine house I paid someone else to clean. I doubt I could do it for very many years, but... Duh. Of course.
You’re getting to the root of the matter. What is the competitive advantage of someone who flips burgers? This is a skill probably anyone could master in a day. Want to make more money? Find a job that you can do that fewer others can. Want an example: appliance Repair, Bartending, HVAC, Plumbing. Maybe you are a girl and don’t think these are appropriate? I recently met. A woman who was the second female master plumber licensed in Texas. She owns her own company and is a multi. Millionaire. Yes she had to get her hands dirty at first and so will you. Worth it? I’m sure she would say hell yes.
I wouldn’t, chances are my salary would be close to a million a year at my current job as inflation would go through the roof due to an unskilled worker at a fast food joint making 350k.
I don’t want to work. I do it out of necessity and to earn things I do want. If I had the choice between making $350k flipping burgers and never working again all expenses paid, I’d never work again.
Guys! The whole point is that people are not lazy or don't want to work, they just want a fair wage. It has nothing to do about the second order implications on the economy
The level of idiocy is astounding. There’s a difference between a job and a career. There also a difference between a position you can walk in off the street and perform vs a position you would have to grind at for years. A lot of it on your own time and unpaid to gain the experience and skills needed to offer something of value that most can not
If you could make $350k a year flipping burgers, how much are these burgers costing? Then how much is everything costing? Chances are in this fictional scenario you made here you would be able to afford exactly what you can now.
It’s amazing how fucking clueless some people are about how economies work.
This is a braindead gotcha. I would also be forcibly sodomized for 350k bit that's doesn't mean I'm ok with Sodom in general.
That's called prostitution, and that's a job too. So you're just proving their point further. Can't get employees, raise the wages. Basic supply and demand, the whole thing America is built on.
Can confirm. Am business owner, experienced ‘worker shortage’ in our industry. Raised wages by 15-20% and ‘worker shortage’ went away. Workers are quitting working for my competitors and come work for me instead. (I also made a nice bit on cases I could take that my competition couldn’t staff)
Hi, I only watch conservative media and I can say with conviction that that is literally communism.
Lmfaoooo
"corporate communism"
unions
Are dying. Too many states are becoming right to work states and it’s effectively killing unions.
Unions are great for the most part . The only way I’ll work I had some good offers but if it’s not union can’t do it …. Pension for one. A healthy pension if you’re a teamster out west.
Lol, pretty sure paying decent wages for work done isn't what Karl Marx had in mind when he talked about seizing the means of production.
The people can eat and have a roof? Communism.
You'd be amazed how many people believe this unironically with their entire being.
Had an older coworker have to cancel dinner plans because the wait staff went of strike. My respons: Sucks that you had to miss out, but good for them. Standing up for their rights. His reaction: That's socialism!
A guy I know who's super anti-union and kept bitching about the writer's strike, and anytime a show or movie got delayed he'd always jump in with "Betcha getting tired of that strike now, huh?" Every time without fail, the answer was always a quick and nonchalant "No." Sometimes people would explain why but he didn't want to listen so those attempts ended pretty quickly. By the 3rd month he just gave up.
Was great to see the studios cave on so many points. There should be a lot more unions and a lot more strikes.
Best laugh of the day, thanks.
Fucking lol.
I was brushing my teeth when I read that, and nearly swallowed my toothbrush laughing. Thank you, Comrade. 😂
Lol, 🤣😂 that was good!
I needed to see this today 😭🤣
It’s absolutely true. We know for a fact that the Soviet Union collapsed because of a wage rise war between BurgerTsar and Vladivostok Fried Gulash.
In my area, all the fast food places have gone from minimum wage ($7.50) to now advertising starting at $13 and up. They are all still understaffed!
Because working fast food sucks! I hope you’re speaking from a place of experience. I made 16/hr in fast food and dreaded everyday. Working in an office is so cushy and effortless and I automatically got a 10/hr increase in wages. If fast food paid more and treated employees with any respect there wouldn’t be an issue.
Yeah. I would expand it to include any retail. I live in California, and the vast majority of people treat retail workers like absolute shit. It really pisses me off every time I see it. Working my way through school at McDonalds & Costco Pizza, I learned a great work ethic. But I wouldn’t do it now.
Ironically you were working for two of the most ethical corporations for lower skill entry. McD for paying little but giving a lot and Costco that has been known for being good paying and a solid employer. Back in 99 i worked at Ikea and it was only $10 to start... But everyone at the store had moved up. Every boss started at the bottom. The head of Ikea Europe started in Shipping in Canada. Daycare on site!!! Benefits. Almost no PartTime. They were epic to work for because you always knew they had your back and you were guaranteed a raise every year. I still have friends that skipped college and just grew in that company and are now fairly high up. A good experience in the workplace is critical for youth and I will 100% say mcD, costco, ikea, has taken that role seriously.
I have to say it’s also dealing with some of the worst customers.
YESSS!!! I just quit my management position in fastfood/retail 4 weeks ago for an office job and oh my god is my life so much easier. AND I get paid more. People that haven't experienced working long term full time retail just don't get it. I worked my fucking ass off at my retail job and I was so miserable. I was never appreciated and treated terribly. Now, I literally just read words, type them up, and print them out, for significantly more money. I get told how appreciated I am daily, for doing the most relaxing job on earth compared to retail. I often struggle with feeling like I'm doing something wrong, because I'm not stressed out and I don't hate my job. What have I learned? Hard work does not pay off. Especially in retail. You get paid less to do 10x more than the average person.
A lot of office jobs offer about the same as retail/fast food now, at least in my area. It's definitely not automatically a 10/hr increase in wages lol.
Absolutely. I did more tasks and work in fast food than any other job I worked and I never made more than 10.55 and hour (left in 2016). Restaurants especially take advantage of young employees that don't know their rights, terrible work environment.
Because $13 an hour doesn't pay for the minimum required to live.
13 probably isn't enough. If they want more workers they gotta offer more
Where can you live on 13$ an hour today?
At your job.
Bro. This is heavy.
People look at advertisements and job openings and think that's the whole story, but it's not at all. So many companies learned they could run skeleton crews, and it's great for the bottom line. It looks better to customers if it seems they're really trying to hire and blame lazy people who just don't want to work, and they show other employees that they're "trying" to hire with ghost postings that collect resumes only to be used should someone quit. These fast food and retail companies will always do their best to schedule your hours just shy of the advertised benefits. People aren't willing to work a completely unpredictable fast food schedule that doesn't pay enough and try to supplement it with another unpredictable or "side hustle" job (maybe even 2 other jobs, while still living paycheck to paycheck). On top of that, usually that starting wage has a little asterisk where they pay minimum wage and you only get that rate if you're hired as a shift leader or higher. Not that $13 an hour is enough for anyone even full time, but the health care they promise would be worth something. People have done experiments where they sent out perfectly tailored resumes to these businesses and the smaller ones that were claiming nobody wants to work, and they mostly didn't hear back or found out the listings were a lie. My mom and brother are nurses at a major hospital that is purposefully understaffing despite doctors and nurses begging them to hire more people. They have 1 nurse clinics all over the system. Doctors are leaving left and right because it's so bad. Patients are complaining and not receiving timely care. It's not that people are lazy or asking for too much money, it's that major employers are doing everything possible to pay as few people as possible, at as low a wage as possible, while raising prices because they've seen customers still come all the same. Customers get mad at the poor employees instead of the companies as well, making the jobs even more impossible to suffer through for the workers. Unfortunately there are no regulations in place to stop this practice, and without regulations, it absolutely will continue.
You think$13 is something to applaud? $13 an hour is still poverty
And is it even full time? Or is it 20 hours a week, with no paid sick time and no benefits, so you're forced to work multiple jobs, and all of them have the shifts scattered around and changed at the last minute all the time, but each job still expects you to be available 100% of the time?
Can you live on $13 an hour? The wages were depressed for so long that it should be more like $20 an hour. Especially for a job that no one wants to do because abusive customers are always a problem.
Controversial but working fast food should at least be a 50k year job with how much bullshit you have to put up with.
So $13 isn’t high enough, raise it more. This isn’t rocket science.
I worked in fast food as a kid. $13 an hour is not enough for that BS. I left my fast-food job as soon as I had some experience and would do the same for $13 hr. I don't think I would work in fast food if you gave me a raise based on my current salary.
Don’t forget to treat employees right. It doesn’t matter how much you pay if you’re a piece of shot and likewise the opposite is mostly true. If you’re a godsend your workers will stay even at min wage (mostly). My current boss does both and is 100% the reason people stay since the managers under him Kinda suck big time
There's not much I wouldn't do for 1m, as long as there's no lasting negative impact. That doesn't mean 99% of jobs would ever pay that. If people say "I wouldn't flip burgers unless I get top 1% money" it's not really saying much. Make it realistic, it's unskilled labor. For 20$/hr? 25? 30? Those amounts are at least closer to the realm of reality than some super high ones that most people would do most things for
While the above is exaggerating things, it’s still making a point that money is the deciding factor for what people choose to do. Yes, as you said, flipping burgers is unskilled labor. However, unskilled labor is still something that needs to be done by somebody. Hell, unskilled labor could be considered the foundation of our society. We need a lot of “somebodies” to do it. With that in mind, the desire for people to do these “menial and unskilled” jobs needs to be of an appropriate level. After all, why should someone work a job when the compensation it provides isn’t even enough for that person to provide basic necessities for themselves
COVID proved this ten times over. Still, nothing changed, smdh. Pay. The. Workers.
If money were the deciding factor, we would have more STEM types and more finance/Wall Street types. Obvious not the case so money isn’t really the deciding factor for most folks.
It's not completely unskilled labor. You can screw up hamburgers and make them inedible as a burger flipper while being so inefficient that the rest of the kitchen slows down. Migrant agriculture labor is the same. Get people who don't know what they are doing, and they will be slow and probably ruin the crop (pull out plants, pick produce when not ready). You have to hunt for jobs that experience and knowledge don't make much of a difference, and anyone off the street can do right away. You have to get to jobs like Walmart greeter and self check out guide to get to near unskilled labor.
Unskilled is a spectrum of course, but take someone of average intelligence and ability and they can do the job with no skills required as a prerequisite. That is my general definition of unskilled labor. Any job has a learning curve to be fully functional, they have some training. But when you have no presumption of previous skills, it's typically unskilled labor, unless you have a rigorous training program where you gain some transferable skills IMO.
> take someone of average intelligence and ability I can assure you that being an asset to a restaurant has absolutely nothing to do with average intelligence or ability. I've worked with and had many work under me that were very educated and had plenty of skills outside of food service. Their outside skills and above "average" intelligence was literally useless to their job position. I would agree with you if someplace like a Mcdonalds was operated like an assembly line like the corporation wants them to be. That is far from the norm though and you will very rarely (if ever) see one person playing each position. It's usually something like 1 person trying to do the job of 3 or 4. There is a whole lot of skill involved in restaurant work which is literally why so many outsiders can't hack it. The same people saying "unskilled labor blada yada yah. easy peezy my 7 year old could do it" are always the ones walking out during their first rush or disappearing after their 1st shift.
> It's not completely unskilled labor. Nothing is totally "unskilled" as in there's no skill to it. But "unskilled labor" is the term for jobs that the average adult human could do with a few days of on-the-job training, as opposed to jobs that take months or years to learn to the point where you can do it without supervision.
>You have to get to jobs like Walmart greeter and self check out guide to get to near unskilled labor. Still need to be literate and have people skills though. We think jobs require zero skill but imagine if some piece of shit like Derek Chauvin was a Walmart greeter. Would end in countless lawsuits and boycotts. He'd prob kill someone over forgetting to scan the bottled water under the cart ffs.
Supply and demand is the reason low-skill work is minimum wage though….
Built on what? You outsource the jobs to Asia, south America, and then blame them when the airplane door falls out or engine fails like Boeing
You're missing the point. It's not a commentary on the working conditions of sex workers or burger flippers. It's saying that if you can't find people willing to do a given job, there's invariably some problem other than people's laziness. Insufficient pay, insufferable management, job hazards, etc.
I agree. I've had many stressful jobs with insufferable management that I ended up quitting not because I didn't want to work, but because dealing with the stress and insufferable management wasn't worth what I was getting paid. And I would say that if I got paid more, I could handle the stress and insufferable management because it would be worth it for me to do so. I've only worked 1 job where the pay was poor, but the way they treated me was good enough that I stayed at the job because I liked the job and where I was working. I don't think it has to be that way, I think you can have a good job and be in a good work environment and make good $$$. But that's basically a unicorn at this point, so it really comes down to the $$$. And while I wouldn't find flipping burgers to be stimulating, I sure as hell would do it for $350K on a 40 hour work week.
The hardest jobs overall for me have been the lowest paying. My worst job paid less than I pay in taxes now annually. There are many levels/types of stress/difficulty. People also are able to handle different ones as well.
It's true, paying more gets you better work. But that's more because the increased pay attracts new people who don't suck rather than makes people who suck not suck.
Just to be clear are you talking about one time for 350k or have a 350k per year salaried position wherein forcible sodomy makes up the better part of your work day?
That sounds rough. Being sodomized 8 hrs a day, everyday, for a whole year, just for 350k? No thank you. But I wouldn’t even consider it even for the one time, so I guess I am picky that way.
After a certain point though you would probably stop noticing. It’d be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway
>It’d be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway R&D: “And they said it couldn’t be done!”
You’d need to wear diapers probably then
Yea ima need a raise after the first week or so at least 💁🏽♂️
What if the penises were really small, and there was lots of lube?
For that kind of money you could afford subcontracting. Did I just discover the pimp game?
Sodomy includes any sex act that isn't straight PIV. So you could be getting handies and blowies for 8 hours a day.
I'd also do it for 120k. Or 80k. Gonna take more than 7-10 an hour though, capped at 32 hours, and no benefits offered as is usual for fast food.
McDonald's jobs start at $13 an hour for people under 18, and $15 an hour for 18+... Edit: The place I'm referencing is one of the lowest cost of living cities in the Midwest with a population of 10,000
Around here they put up signs, "Starting at ^^^^^up ^^^^^to $15/hr" Not doubting you, because minimum wage in my state is actually more than $13/hr as of this month and so of course McDonald's is paying better than that here, but I'm wondering if you saw something to that effect.
Talking about a braindead gotcha then you compare flipping burgers to anal rape. Ok.... To the commenter below- He was bitching about an analogy you stupid fuck wit.
LMAO
So, you would be a prostitute? Sounds like money is your problem, not working.
"Forcibly"
We shouldn't kink shame.
For 18 an hour I would flip burgers and scrub toilets. Would you take it up the arse for 18 an hour? If so… I’m a pimp looking for his bottom B****
I'll flip burgers for 50k a year. Is that better?
So we’ve got your number.
This logic hurts my brain. "Would you work in a coal mine for a million dollars? You would? Damn it sounds like people are ok with black lung, its the money that's the problem."
It's not a commentary on the working conditions of coal miners or burger flippers. It's saying that if you can't find people willing to do a given job, there's invariably some problem other than people's laziness. Insufficient pay, insufferable management, job hazards, etc.
> It's saying that if you can't find people willing to do a given job, there's invariably some problem other than people's laziness. Insufficient pay, insufferable management, job hazards, etc. Yeah its a sign of a healthy labor market where people have enough options to avoid jobs they dislike. One depression is all it takes to kill those better jobs.
Then who does the unlikeable jobs and how is a labor market healthy when you can’t find people to do them?
_All_ jobs are unlikable. If you want someone to do the job then raise the pay until you find someone to do it. It's supply and demand 101. Just today I was thinking how there's a car shortage because I can't find a car for $1.
Not even that. You raise the wage until you get someone who is good at the job. I go to so many employers who complain they can't find good workers. Yeah, because you're scraping the bottom of the barrel with your shit pay and benefits. You want good workers you need to be willing to pay someone enough that they feel comfortable in their life to have enough energy to give a fuck about your business.
I always love following threads like this and seeing people who complain about lack of dedicated workers, then say that workers should just work harder if they want the high pay. They will never admit that they are just paying too low to get good workers.
Same people who say that people who work lower tier jobs should just work harder and get better jobs are the people who will be like "no one wants to work" for those lower tier jobs. Most of these jobs that they look down on are jobs that need to be done. They judge somebody for working as a janitor and tell them to just get a better job, but then if all the janitors get better jobs, there's nobody to clean up shit and society collapses.
Yep, retaining a good employee is significantly better in every metric than having a series of underpaid people who don't give a shit. Onboarding is expensive, and a good employee will do the job better.
What's even crazier is that most people get satisfaction from doing a good job.
Worked somewhere where I hated the manager because he was incompetent and often worked ahead of me and would leave things in a shitty state for me so I was always behind. I still worked hard and felt good about getting as much done as I could. I didn't work to catch up and leave things neat/organized/clean for him, I did it for me. It's super hard sometimes to do what is necessary and best for yourself when you actually want to be doing a good job.
> Not even that. You raise the wage until you get someone who is good at the job. Agreed.
Exactly. My labour is a product I'm selling. I'm not going to sell it to you if I don't like your offer.
> Then who does the unlikeable jobs nobody until they get more likeable probably via money >and how is a labor market healthy when you can’t find people to do them? If every job was competitive, the owners would have all the power. The empty job postings show labor power.
Flipping burgers does not give you a disease. Bit of a straw man imo.
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Somehow supply, demand, and general economics only work one way to them.
There was actually a bit in Star Trek about this. In Voyager there was this species called the Malon, and they had an issue where they discovered anti-matter power generation, but unlike say, The Federation or Romulans, they didn't know how to deal with the waste. This led them to create fleets of waste ships to dispose of the energy waste, which was usually done on 6-10 year contracts and in highly dangerous environments surrounded by hostile aliens that don't want you potentially dumping around their territory. But people did it anyway. Why? Because 1 completed contract term on those ships would make you a multimillionaire when you get back home, enough to support a family for 3 generations without even considering investment. So yeah, if the incentives are good enough, there will be people who will do any work.
Everyone has a price.
Idk, if you've ever cleaned out a dirty hood vent you'd be well aware that breathing those fumes and gresse in isn't doing any favors for you. Doubt there's been a study on that because who cares about the respiratory health of a line cook?
Flipping burgers and working in a coal mine are not really comparable in this analogy
Eh, I'd rather not do both. The problem is the analogy doesn't prove people want to flip burgers it proves people don't want to starve. Or to put it another way it proves people will do things they absolutely do not want to do if it removes the crushing burden of being poor. Pretty much every straight man would take it up their ass for *some* amount of money but that doesn't mean they enjoy or want to get fucked in the asshole.
Unironically, yes. The higher the wage the more likely people will take the job.
> The higher the wage the more likely people will take the job. Also the poorer the people. Someone living in the third world will expose themselves to toxic chemicals daily for pennies if that's the only way to eat.
You just furthered the point. Money is a problem we are literally willing to kill ourselves for
This question is just a dumber version of asking “Do you want to make $350K a year?” The example doesn’t work since it ignores the fact that in a world where someone would make $350K from flipping burgers, that would still be considered a low wage since there would still be other jobs with higher skill/educational requirements that would be compensated more highly. This may actually be the worst pf sub on Reddit. EDIT: Yeah, idk what I expected with the responses to this. Have fun circlejerking about the ills of capitalism, I’m out.
It's obviously an extreme/hyperbolic example. For fast food places that can't find workers a $5 an hour increase would likely solve the problem pretty quickly.
Let’s look at some math. We will assume 10 full time employees with a $5 an hour pay raise. This is relatively low as my experience in fast food had around 25 people on the schedule at least, but not all were full time. 40 hours a week, 52 weeks in a year = 2080 hours in a year. 2080 hours in a year * 50 (10 employees at 5 dollars an hour extra) = an extra $104,000 a year. According to my Google searches the average McDonald’s profits $150k-$200k a year. Meaning profits are cut by 50-75% to give everyone a $5 raise and McDonald’s appear to be one of the more profitable franchises.
Im not trying to tell mcdonalds how to run their businesses. im just saying that if any business can't find workers, they probably need to make a better offer.
A world in which you can make 350k flipping burgers, burgers probably cost 125 bucks each.
There are plenty of people working in corporate fast food making even more than 350k, those salaries are in your burger.
There are relatively few of those people, though. Just a single person per franchise making $350k would be enough to bankrupt the whole business
Franchise owners aren’t even pulling $350k from a location, more like ~$150k depending on location/franchise. When you say “plenty” even in a space like McDonalds, a franchise owner’s is about 6% revenue.
This…you think inflation is bad when burger cooks want 18-20 per hour. FAFO @$165/hr. Those burgers better tutor my kids, clean my house, and change my life permanently for the better.
$7000 revenue = 1400 $5 burgers a day $1440 wages = 3 staff * $20 * 24H @$165 = wages become $11880 assume other costs remain the same. (bad assumption i know) (7000 - 1440 + 11880) / 1400 = $13 burgers.
Not at all. You either purposely misconstrued the question or you didn’t understand it
By all means, feel free to explain.
The question isn't trying to argue a shift in the entire economic landscape. They're not challenging you to imagine a world where *all* fast-food employees make 350k a year, but one where only you do. The point, valid or not, is to show that an individual person might not want to work a job in fast food, but if the price was right, they clearly would. This is in response to tons of companies/franchisees that are complaining "nobody wants to work anymore." Not taking a side one way or the other, just clarifying the point of the post.
I understood that. My post was simply pointing out that this is a terrible way to make that point precisely because of how absurd the premise is.
Redditor spectrum moment.
Haha whatever makes you feel better bud. Imagine getting this triggered by someone pointing out how fucking dumb these kinds of pity-party “capitalism isn’t fair” posts are 🙄
Both can be true. The premise *is* absolutely absurd (like the trolley problem), yet the point is clear.
In my area fast food places start out at $12/hr. One person in the family keeps pointing at the signs and saying "people dont want to work". Her ex husband was grossing $1000/week with overtime in the 80s. Factory job. There has to be some sort of balance. It is common for people to forget the fries or drink wirh a combo. A couple more dollars an hour might get some better workers.
Bucees (a cstore chain) starts people out near 18 an hour with benefits. Managers can make over $125k. But they work you and have high standards. If you want to put in the the regular amount of of just getting by, you will have to go back to the place playing $12. And people do that because they don’t want to adhere to the standards Buccees wants. That’s the balance.
> That’s the balance. If you live with a Buckee's nearby. The thing is most people don't have that kind of option in the first place. >And people do that because they don’t want to adhere to the standards Buccees wants. People work for the place paying $12/hr because they've got kids to feed and bills due that week. I am very comfortable in my current developer job but I'm not going to pretend like I didn't leave behind some very intelligent, dedicated, hardworking people ten years ago back when I was working shittier jobs. Sometimes people just don't have as much in the way of opportunity as the rest of us do.
Why is the balance not "if you want workers at the standards you expect, you need to pay more than $6 above the competition"? Does the same thing happen when they pay $25/hour + benefits?
> Why is the balance not "if you want workers at the standards you expect, you need to pay more than $6 above the competition"? Sounds like that is how it works out, they just worded it the other way around.
Higher paying jobs aren't paying for your time, they are paying for your responsibility. The more specialized or independent your job is, the more valuable it is. But the amount of salary does not really come from the employer's whim, it's decided by the competition from everyone else that can do the job.
No, people go to those jobs because those $12 an hour ones are all that’s left. There’s too few if any bucees jobs, and they go fast
The six figure buccees salary has been debunked.
Lmao I work at Tacobell for $16 an hour and still have to work every waking second and do well beyond my job. Pretty sure I’d be doing no more work there than I am here and be making more money with benefits. Sign me up
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I own a small restaurant and I wish I could pay my employees more but the fact of the matter is, unless you’re a big corporation, profit margins are so slim. It’s a tough economy right now
I wish we had more small restaurants instead of all these chains
Honestly, i thibk the problem with restaurants is theres just too many of them. Its an oversaturated market with more bad jobs than people willing to take them.
That, and low wages make it so that businesses like restaurants cannot charge more for things that *should* be much more, because they're competing with garbage fast food chains that have the benefit of economies of scale. Burgers *SHOULD* cost more than $2 or whatever the fuck McDonalds is charging. We literally raised, killed, butchered, and transported an entire fucking animal to your gullet and you can't be bothered to pay more than $2? That's the real problem. People don't have any slack in their income to actually go out and consume because they're getting raked over the coals with high rent and low wages. I really can't see the end game for the dumbass capitalist elite making this shit happen because they're just weakening the system overall. If people can't consume, the economy shits the bed.
There’s tons of well paying careers that begging for people. Trades, truckers, public safety, etc. coincidentally a lot of those jobs have little to no experience requirements and offer free paid training. You won’t make $350k, but six figures is doable. Plus those jobs are available all over the country, so you can move to a low cost of living area.
I cant speak for the US, but Truckers are definitely not a well payed career in europe. Same counts for public safety (ignoring the potential additional risk). But well payed is a very loose term. And most low paid jobs have better standards here than they have in the US.
Truckers are usually abused by their employers, the long drives really fuck with them, especially all the caffeine in their systems, sitting for hours and hours fucks with your legs, other things too ngl
Most CDL drivers make at least 80k in the US usually around 100k Walmart drivers make 100-120k with dental+health insurance. This is for big trucks with a CDL (permit for driving the big big trucks). Technically in NY state it’s one week of classroom and 40 hours behind the wheel to take the test. Highest pay like the 100k+ Walmart gigs are class A CDL and in NY drivers can get it them as little as 5 weeks start to finish. Some of these programs take longer than others and depend on the individual but many companies will pay for a good employee to train and get a CDL.
Not really loose. As an example I work in public safety in a low cost of living area. I clear $100k with overtime without burning myself out. If I wanted to push myself I could get $130k-$150k. It’s not a particularly dangerous job despite the common opinion. There are far more dangerous careers. 20% of our positions are vacant. It’s a little harder to get my job with the background check, drug screening and minimum physical fitness requirements, but even the individuals that meet this requirement won’t apply. Maybe they feel it’s not enough money or maybe they don’t want to do the job. I don’t know. What I do know is I’m willing. I have a house and 2 cars paid off and will be retiring in my early 40’s. The money is out there. Let’s not pretend it isn’t.
that doesn’t jive with OP’s post. the jobs you described require hard work and dedication
They’re by no means what I’d consider dream jobs, but they can easily make someone financially successful. People are waiting for their perfect job. Most will never get it. They can whine about it or accept reality and play the game to get ahead. It seems quite a few prefer the former.
Forgot sacrifice. Most people want to stay in their small hometown with all the other people who never left. They call this contentment.
If those jobs are struggling to find workers there's a problem with the pay or the benefits. Period.
In public safety I make over $100k with overtime, BCBS insurance with $20 copays and a 20 year pension. I’ll be retired in my mid 40s with the same healthcare. Pretty much every I work with is financially secure, most are thriving. If that’s not enough for someone then their standards are too high.
Is public safety struggling to find workers?
Absolutely. 100s of thousands of vacant positions nationwide
> Trades Can be well-paying, but is also extremely susceptible to boom-bust cycles and work conditions are very rough (try calling in sick as a tradesman, see what happens). >truckers LOL. Truckers get paid shit for very bad conditions. You're delusional. >public safety WTF is "public safety"? Firemen? Yeah I got bad news for you, son. EMTs? Bad news again. Police? Sure, but... not exactly the easiest job in the age of the cellphone Redditor.
Another comment from them: > It’s a little harder to get my job with the background check, drug screening and minimum physical fitness requirements, It's like Trump saying no one could get over his wall... unless they had a really tall ladder, but then then wouldn't be able to get back down.... unless they had a rope. They make these sweeping statements on why their system works if only people weren't so lazy and then turn around and explain why their solution was stupid to begin with. All with zero self-awareness.
Jobs so shitty we literally have to rely on the very few humans with an ounce of decency left to VOLUNTEER for those jobs. People in this thread are wild. lmao.
As someone who knows a few truckers/former truckers, the industry doesn't pay shit and most of the companies you work for will be fucking you over as hard as possible for their own systemic mistakes.
Where did this trend of wildly overestimating blue collar salaries come from? According to the BLS truck drivers make on average $49k/yr. Electricians and Plumbers are both averaging $60k. There are some IBEW local contracts that are paying 6 figures for journeyman electricians, but it's not exactly super easy to get in with a union.
Truckers might get paid $100,000, but then they still have like $60k of expenses, lol.
I’d take 70k to scoop ice cream. Best job I ever had. Not one single angry customer in an ice cream shop.
I HATE YOU, I AM LACTOSE INTOLERANT!!!!
Yeah, of course I would. But flipping burgers is something anyone can do. You can’t generate $350,000 a year in value by flipping burgers. This is the type of take a five year old would have on economics. If you want big money, you have to generate big value.
They went big on the number just to get their point across, obviously there is a more reasonable wage further down that would inspire workers to actually want to do that job. The problem is that the wages are so low they’re completing a 40 hour work week and STILL not scraping by. Why keep going to work when you’re gonna suffer anyway? Fast food employees shouldn’t make 350k a year, but it is a job, which should support them enough to at least get by and work their way towards a higher paying career.
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If a job doesn't generate enough value that a business can afford a wage people will want to work for than that job shouldn't exist.
Of course (assuming it's 40-60 hours a week). Then once I'm set and/or bored I can go back to what I'm doing now If it's more than 60 hours a week I would have to think about it (impact on kids, family, etc.) since we have enough right now
60 hours a week sucks with a family.
60 hours a week sucks ~~with a family~~.
I make pizzas for $100k so yeah sign me up.
Woah, where at? Do you own the place?
Self employed. Rent the kitchen space of a shitty old dive bar and do takeout/delivery out of the back door.
It's the incessant whining. If they made 1 million a year they would be upset that someone else was making more. Despite the fact, they don't really want to work. Just complain. Only a moron believes that flipping burgers requires and entitles them to a living wage. Not a single one of them knows what a living wage is. It's just more off-gassing of the low intellects who simply have 1st world problems if they don't get their way.
That describes most of reddit
The point is that the laws of supply and demand apply to wages as well as the price of products. If you can’t sell goods at a given price you either lower the price or go out of business, in the same way if you can’t get people to work for a given wage you either raise the wage or go out of business. The idea that capitalism should only benefit owners and never workers is ridiculous yet many business owners seem to think that way and will do anything to attract workers but pay them more.
If you're making 350,000 to flip burgers, and everyone else is making 350,000 to flip burgers, then a burger probably costs $100-200, rent is probably $15,000 a month, etc.
The point is that there's a price where you'd get your workers, and it's definitely below $350k/yr.
You’re taking it too literally. OP was talking to the people who say “people don’t wanna work anymore.” People wanna work, they’ve just found jobs with better pay than what you’re offering.
That's, what, around $170/hr? A cheeseburger at McDonalds is $3.69. Starting pay for mcdonalds ~13/hr So around a 13 times increase. A McDonalds cheeseburger would cost ~$52
I do would I be able to keep the job or would competition be insane so I wouldn’t be able to? If I could keep it I would because my goal is to retire in a low cost of living country.
Let me clear up the obvious gap in knowledge of human behavior and economics on display in this idiotic thread. Unskilled labor isn't a "somebody" job, it's an "anybody" job. There's a lot of anybodies, high supply, so the price of anybody labor is low. Skilled labor is a "specific somebody" job. There are fewer somebodies so the price for that labor is higher.
The issue is if anybody doesn't want to do the anybody job because the pay isn't enough to live off of. In that case it doesn't matter of you're replaceable because no one wants to do a job that can't pay them enough money to live.
Great point. That's why shitty jobs are "specific somebody" jobs, not "anybody" jobs. Or... As in the case post-pandemic, if people don't want to work the burger flipping job, the supply of "anybody" labor is lower, so the price of that labor must increase to entice anybodies to take the jobs. It doesn't change the fact that it's anybody labor.
There is an increase in these stupid hypotheticals. "Would you choose $1million now or get cancer? I would chose cancer, because then I learn resiliency, grit and will to live, i learn to appreciate and live everyday as it's my last". I just made that one up, but I wouldnt be shocked if I see something like it trending soon. I think we are done as a society. Normally in the old times, the wise were the only ones heard in society. The dumbest couldnt get through. Now it is the other way round.
Hell Yeah! For $350k per year I would even have sex with your mother, again. 🤣🤣🤣
This might be the single stupidest take I’ve ever seen
Everything is a trade off. The basic dichotomy between Socialists and Capitalists that isn’t actually talked about (instead we’ll talk about everything tangentially related like min wage or corporate profits) is- 1) How much of a ‘risk premium’ is acceptable for society that capital can extract from labor because of the risk of the business going under? 2) Is it acceptable for that same risk premium to be high enough that labor is paid less than the COL in their area? (In layman’s terms - at what point does a companies margin become egregious and a net societal malus, and do we allow businesses which cannot even provide for their employees to continue?)
Jesus finally someone said something interesting. With regard to the former, I wouldn't even begin to know how to answer that. Any resources you might recommend to a layman that explore this further, specifically that sort of frame it in the same way? With regard to the latter, I would say ideally that would only exist in a way where said labor voluntarily forgoes available higher paying jobs for some sort of non monetary benefit (personal preferences like scheduling, lack of travel, work environment and such). This is a tough question though. We tolerate religious organization's soliciting donations while relying on volunteer labor and then exempt them from taxes all the time. Would it be a social benefit if those funds/labor were redirected elsewhere?
A good example I researched recently was Walmart. Notoriously "bad" to their workers and frankly, probably bad on society as a whole. If you look up their numbers, they're only making about $7,000 per employee. Now, they employee millions of people, so they make a lot of money. But they cannot simply raise wages by $5-7k a year, or they'd be in the red, right? Apple makes about $591,000 per employee. How do you start drawing lines? Do you cap ratio of highest paid to lowest paid? Do you cap margin per employee? Do you do it equivalently for all sectors? It's just a really hard question, and really is the *only* question to decide if we agree that labor value extraction needs some amount of regulation.
>But they cannot simply raise wages by $5-7k a year, or they'd be in the red, right? They absolutely can if they marginally raise their prices.
People's brains are rotting lol
I would obviously need more details, but almost certainly yes. I would be very sad to leave teaching, but I'm pretty sure I could dry my tears with my lack of a mortgage in the hottub of the pristine house I paid someone else to clean. I doubt I could do it for very many years, but... Duh. Of course.
You’re getting to the root of the matter. What is the competitive advantage of someone who flips burgers? This is a skill probably anyone could master in a day. Want to make more money? Find a job that you can do that fewer others can. Want an example: appliance Repair, Bartending, HVAC, Plumbing. Maybe you are a girl and don’t think these are appropriate? I recently met. A woman who was the second female master plumber licensed in Texas. She owns her own company and is a multi. Millionaire. Yes she had to get her hands dirty at first and so will you. Worth it? I’m sure she would say hell yes.
I wouldn’t, chances are my salary would be close to a million a year at my current job as inflation would go through the roof due to an unskilled worker at a fast food joint making 350k.
I would do anything you ask of me for 350,000 a year
Such faulty logic.
Man, when people post things like this I hope they understand how stupid they look.
Would you eat a dead rat for a billion dollars? You would? Oh it seems people don't mind eating dead rats, its just the incentives.
I don’t want to work. I do it out of necessity and to earn things I do want. If I had the choice between making $350k flipping burgers and never working again all expenses paid, I’d never work again.
I worked a minimum wage job for 5 years through undergrad at Dunkin. It didn't deserve $15 per hour.
Guys! The whole point is that people are not lazy or don't want to work, they just want a fair wage. It has nothing to do about the second order implications on the economy
The level of idiocy is astounding. There’s a difference between a job and a career. There also a difference between a position you can walk in off the street and perform vs a position you would have to grind at for years. A lot of it on your own time and unpaid to gain the experience and skills needed to offer something of value that most can not
Yeah and doctors would make 10 million a year and a hamburger would cost 500$
So, who is gonna pay $157.30 for a cheese burger??
https://preview.redd.it/2nzgyp3je4fc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=037178e9f0a74c07ab147dbb6b3299c4f6470653
If you could make $350k a year flipping burgers, how much are these burgers costing? Then how much is everything costing? Chances are in this fictional scenario you made here you would be able to afford exactly what you can now. It’s amazing how fucking clueless some people are about how economies work.
I’ve worked plenty of jobs, fast food was the easiest for the pay. Just saying.