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This post reminds me of BULLSHIT JOBS by David Graeber! The crux of the book is that UBI can tip the scale in power dynamics between employers and employees (which currently heavily favors employers in this age of decreasing unionization and little to no antitrust oversight) so that workers can take more risks with the career decisions and refuse to work "bullshit jobs."
I was wasting away at a "bullshit job" for years and quit right before the pandemic started. I somehow fortuitously qualified for unemployment benefits, and the checks were were more than what I made at the old job. Because of the benefits, I didn't take the next available job that paid just as badly and drained my soul. Instead, I took my time and eventually (10 months no less!) found a job that fits my skills and interests. More importantly, this new job pays me a living wage! I know I'm probably an outlier, but even with the stress that comes with being unemployed during the pandemic, this past year was truly a blessing in disguise for me. I think something like UBI in the after times would allow others to do the same and find work that they find meaningful and fulfilling. As always, thank you for your great insights!
this is a real story of how lots of people got a break from panic planing their lives... to having choices anyone who thinks this is bad is just evil with no soul...
I've been thinking a lot about this issue, as I watch businesses in our town struggle to hire staff. Interestingly, the employers that took care of their staff during Covid-19 (making environments as safe as they could, mandating masks, shutting down their businesses when there were Covid-19 outbreaks while staying paying people, etc.) are not having trouble hiring. I agree with your take that many are taking their time looking for work and looking for work that fits their particular needs. I live in Flagstaff which is tourism driven, and is also a college town. The lack of college labor, with students doing remote school has also been an issue. We have a $15 minimum wage, but we lack affordable housing. All of these factors are contributing to the struggles with finding help.
Personally, I work in healthcare as a behavioral health therapist. I worked in a hospital setting, and worked throughout the first year of Covid. I just quit my job because I'm emotionally exhausted. It's not the people I work with, it's not the patients...its administration that continues to try to solve new problems with old tools, the lack of support, and the complete disrespect and disregard of the community at large in the face of Covid-19. Flagstaff is fairly progressive and was really ahead of the game with regard to safety precautions, but the toxic political climate and the plethora of "muh rights" anti-maskers, just wore me out. I'm taking a year off to travel and decide what next steps are. I'm going to be 60 this year, and I know whatever I decide, it's going to suit my needs and work style, not someone else's.
Work for yourself, self employed therapist. The transition can be a challenge, but the rewards of commanding one's own work are substantial. Just est a workable business of one model, set a good rate and stick to it and you'll do ok
It's the same up here in Iowa City. If you were a crappy store before, you are still. If you shut down and ran an entirely different business during the shutdown, you're probably still staffed. But if you stayed the stereotypical entitled boomer owner or manager, you're swimming against a strong current.
"If it’s too expensive for businesses to provide healthcare for their workers, maybe we need to decouple it from employment?"
Yes, absolutely! I'm a decently paid remote gig worker, but cost of health insurance plus rent would force me to submit to the will of some corporate overlord (or, even worse, Dale) if I remained in the U.S. Fortunately, my wife is a foreign national from a less developed country and we moved back to her native country 5 years ago, after I quit my job due to largely stress-induced chronic health problems requiring regular hospitalizations.
I now pay around $200/month for international health insurance (accepted literally anywhere in the world except for the U.S.) for my family and about $700/month in rent for a house in a decent neighborhood. At the same time, the reduction in stress has greatly reduced my healthcare needs.
I love many things about America, but simply will not move back home unless and until there is universal affordable healthcare decoupled from employment. The existing system of employer-provided healthcare is blackmail - you sacrifice your sanity, your physical and mental health, and the majority of your waking hours as a precondition to affordable healthcare (and in many instances you still don't even get that). I just can't. YOLO.
Unemployment will run out eventually, and if you willingly quit your job, you're usually not eligible for unemployment. I quit my salaried WFH job last fall (for a "meaningful" nonprofit) partly because it was making me miserable pre-pandemic and became unbearable during the pandemic. I'm going back to school this fall, but in the meantime, I'm working retail to pay the bills and make up for the lost months of wages. The company purports to be an ethical employer, and they're better than most, but they're putting the sales pressure on us to make up for last year's lack of profits. Meanwhile, their president made $3 million last year. All the big retailers and restaurants around me are hiring, but no one is offering hazard pay or good benefits. I assume they're trying to calculate how little they can improve conditions before unemployment benefits end.
I think there is a general conflation of yuppies who are taking a little woo mental health break and low-paid workers whose leverage is contingent on unemployment benefits. Would Roose's white-collar friends be taking a break if they didn't think they could find equally overpaid work when they feel like returning from their screenplays? Will there really be a push for better wages and working conditions once people have to return to their shitty jobs to get by, or will they/we instead be pushed onward to the resurgent economy?
I can’t seem to get enough of these stories of the mystery of why food service and bar work is no longer attractive. There is a guy in Boise who owns 3 bars in downtown Boise. He can’t find enough workers and he complains.
He’s had COVID twice, possibly three times but he wasn’t hospitalized the first time. On his last hospital visit (lasting 9 days and time on a ventilator) he was featured in the paper admitting, “COVID is real. I didn’t believe it but now I do.”
Masks of course are not a serious requirement in his bars, still. A man of libertarian values. This story is not unique in conservative Idaho.
This one is tough. Because once we pay worjers, especially service workers, what they deserve (at least a living wage), and the prices of goods and services rise in tandem, then those with money to spend can’t afford as much. Boo-hoo, right? I definitely think that. And then I order tacos, which I couldn’t afford if they cost more than they do now. But I want the people making them to make more. I make a decent living, but I’m a single parent, sooooo...I guess I don’t get tacos? I don’t even know. I’m exhausted and everything seems wound up in terrible.
If they Cant afford those vacations, the restaurant meals, the movie tickets, etc. they (the middle class) will see rising wages as both a threat and a punishment. With a middle class that’s consistently panicked about their status, they see any gains to the lower as a loss of footing.
Because as much as it’s about lack of government support and infrastructure, it’s really about wealth hoarding at the top, and using that wealth to control government policy.
In N Out pay starts at $18 an hour for full-time. Their burgers are no more expensive than their competition. The owners just have a different set of ethics. The idea that a price must increase as worker pay increases is reliant on owners making the same or more profit. That is the broken part.
For years I owned a record store in Toronto. Minimum wage was about $10 an hour. I paid $16 an hour. My prices were the same as my competitors. How did I do this? I simply took a little less home each week for myself. It's really not that difficult.
Your assumption is based on a falsehood. We don't pay anyone what they deserve. We pay exactly what we can get away with, and not one penny more. Are you paid what you - deserve-? I know I have never been. I've saved companies millions and then watched as my team and I got laid off because someone with an MBA decided that "Outsourcing" was a better choice. Cheaper yes, but never better. I'm not aware of any company that has outsourced IT and the supported workers like it better.
I made a smart comment before about if you can't afford to pay a living wage, but in a way it's true. If your taco company cannot produce enough profit to cover your owner's living wage and their employees, you probably shouldn't exist. Building something on the backs of slave wages and undervalued labor may be how America works, but it's not what makes us great, or even good.
My assumption is that the middle class will see rising wages as a threat to their precarious lifestyle. Please identify the falsehood there. Many *owners* of small companies don't make a wage the first few years. Again, the problem isn't with small business-it's with government and wealth-hoarding at the top. It's with our failure to tax the HELL out of the mega rich. Our failure to keep production 'in-house' so to speak.
Sure, but most owners aren't really making that much of a net profit. They are still beholden to much larger 'owners' of capital, and a lot are living a lifestyle that is precarious. Most wealth as we know it is generational-and sequestered. I don't think the guy that owns three bars is the issue, asshole that he may be. He's still freaking out about the loss of his own Horatio Alger narrative and blaming it on people who 'don't want to work,' while they're all simultaneously being eaten alive by Jeff Bezos et al.
To use some ancient rhetorical language, the petite bourgeois think the interests of the wealthy are their interests, but it's false consciousness, stemming from their attachment to their precarious position 4 steps up in the social hierarchy.
In our town, the bars and resturaunts that took care of their staff when the outbreak happened, are all fully staffed. Most of them even have benefits too. But when the Fast Fooders opened again, there's not a one that isn't hiring. No one wants to hang out over a grease pit for a job. Especially for minimum.
In 1986 I got paid $6.75 and hour to work at fast food. (minimum was $3.35, but no one would work at a Long John Silver's for less than $6.00)
Now, my old LJS? Gone. The one in my now home? Gone. How many are left, dunno, but unless you pay over $15 an hour here, you're not getting quality people at all.
Some businesses are going to fail because of this, and I'm okay with it. If you don't make enough profit to support a living wage, bye.
What's wild is when I sit down and talk with journalists about something or another, and they legitimately don't understand that they're missing most of the story when they only pay attention to the management's position. There are a million structural reasons for that disparity, obviously, but it's just a point-of-view that isn't even acknowledged.
Totally - - It reminds me of Ann Patchett who wrote about realising as she was opening her indie bookshop, that if she told journalists that indie bookshops were a trend, they would write an article about how it was a trend... but in this case, it's skyscraper owners looking at empty spaces, imploring leaseholders that their workers are universally itching to come back.
I've also become attuned in the last year to the various articles of the "workers can't wait to get back to the office" type that inevitably feature assorted quotes and anecdotal evidence from the person who is basically the owner of all of those skyscrapers. There was a push here in the London at the end of last summer (I think? it blurs) where tons of headlines were like, "it's time to get back to the office!" and it all seemed to be backed by commercial property owners and officials clinging to outdated ideas that everyone working from home is skiving. Meanwhile, the workers themselves were like, how do I cram onto public transit? how long do I have to wait for an elevator where I can socially distance? why am I going to an office to still talk to faces on a screen? (this quickly fizzled as Covid cases spiked back then, but I'm so fascinated to see how places adapt to new modes vs try to revert to the old ways)
To use a metaphor, we are all trying to speak our future into existence, but when you have money for advertising and lobbyists and social capital for non-paid media (or the old "you advertise here and we'll get you some press" aspect of journalism that doesn't get talked about) it turns out that (1) your voice is louder than others and (2) that voice gets believed.
See, I didn't even see through that! I've worked from home for almost 20 years, so have been out of the office loop for a long time, but I remember reading those articles and wondering, "Do they want to get back? I guess so" and not seeing past the framing of the articles. Even The Guardian had some of those. And I can't remember any of those articles also grappling with the fact that many people still had kids remote schooling.
It's so wild to me that it's like that. If you have a business that you're reporting on, and the business is owned by one person and there are 4 people who work there, you're missing like 80% of the impact when you only talk to the business owner. Obviously, there are social reasons for that owner-centric focus (our greed, our equating money to worth, our lionization for the American entrepreneur, and on and on and on until I throw up on my Vans), but we have such blinders to the people carrying the actual load. It's almost unbelievable.
On the Media just had an episode about how the media changed their reporting on labor issues from focusing on the workers and the work itself to the interests of "consumers," e.g. the white collar worker who is delayed because of a train strike. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/how-mainstream-media-abandoned-working-class-on-the-media After listening to that, it got me to think how much it says about the priorities in this country (as set by the overlords) that the actual experience of work, as well as the workers well-being, is so disregarded.
It *is* and yet literally until it was pointed out to me I didn't see it. I ask myself why didn't I see it, and it's just this endless process of stripping away how we've been taught to see the world. Every time I think I've finally got some clarity, it happens again.
It's particularly amazing, though, that it doesn't occur to many that a lot of people don't want to work in the service industry anymore because they've just spent a year dealing with anti-maskers, etc., and all but being told that their lives are worth less than that of customers.
Are you trying to tell me that a business owner would close their small business and destroy their livelihood because a journalist got the point of view of some necessary stakeholders about matters that involved them intimately?
Not at all. Only that the point of view of the owner is a more important point of view because it's their assets at risk and if he's tired of the return he's getting for his time and risk, *I* am out of a job. All that my dissatisfaction means is *I* quit.
Also "destroy their livelihood"? All my personal friends who have started businesses have lost money, and that's by far the biggest likelihood. (They all now have steady jobs working for others and are happier for it.) Certainly I'm far too sensible to ever start a business, which makes me appreciate the jobs I've had because someone else took the risk of creating the business that hired me.
The flaw in any system ends up being the selfishness, lack of compassion, and ego-driven tunnel-vision of people. Democracy and especially capitalism need to evolve, and I hope that's what happens here, instead of a new group of foolish and corrupt elite leading us down a worse path of ruin with righteous anger and cool-sounding ideals.
You could have been reading my mind with this today. Some days I have been so close to quitting. For now, I am holding onto my public sector job until FedLoan processes my PSLF paperwork.
This is the power of Basic Income. Workers workers wouldn't have to put up with being treated like a disposable resource. Companies are angry because people have a *choice* to work for them now or not; they're not desperate for any old job just so they can survive.
I work for a company that has great benefits which start on day 1 of employment, starts any employee at $15.00 an hour, has a dozen jobs at $18.00 + an hour and we have had ZERO applicants who can pass a basic drug test and background check. This is in a sustainable manufacturing setting not food, retail or other dead end jobs.
So why drug test people. Most the people I know smoke pot and they don't want their employers telling them how to live their lives. I'm now 66 and retired. I will not take a drug test because it makes me feel like a criminal when all I want is a decent job. So now I only work part time and will not waste my time working for anyone who wants to tell me what to do with my own body. And as luck would have it, I don't have to work.
by the way $15 an hour is shit too, try adding up healthcare, rent car and food for a month then add taxes and another 20% to make it worth staying and tell us all here what that adds up to, are you offering that, No, then you are an ass, try starting at 25 an hour you commie!!!
Let’s see, $15 an hour—that’s about $30,000 a year. Not exactly a living wage even in most small Midwestern towns. I’d like to see a budget for a wage of $30,000 (or $36,000, for the lucky pups getting one of those $18/hr jobs) that allows for rent, food, car payment & insurance, clothes, medical insurance plus co-pays & deductibles, life insurance for those with families, clothing & sundries, maybe a week’s vacation once a year, and saving for retirement. I worked in a factory for a little over a year before covid shut it down and medical issues kept me from going back, and I met many people who had been there for a couple of decades and weren’t even close to making $15/hr. Most of the jobs were absolutely dead-end, given the ratio of workers on the floor to office positions, let alone to actual management positions. And if you were injured on the job, good luck getting compensation and adequate medical care in this state.
Yeah, so hard to understand why people aren’t just flocking to those jobs if they can possibly manage any other way.
When people say “Cut those benefits and they’ll go back to work, all right,” what they’re really saying is that to fill jobs in America, we rely on the abject desperation of millions of permanently underclass workers with little or no real hope of ever raising themselves and their families out of poverty. That may be your idea of a great America, but it’s not mine.
I don’t know about where you live, but around here, the manufacturing business model is predicated on an endless supply of healthy young people whose bodies (not to mention minds) haven’t yet been wrecked. Virtually every listing for factory work states “Must be able to stand for 10-12 hrs a day (mandatory overtime) and lift 50# repeatedly throughout the day and occasionally 75#.” A prescription for a middle and old age plagued by degenerative arthritis and other
I'm reading more and more content like this, and although it could be because I'm more tuned to the idea of "controlling your own work" á la Noam Chomsky, it seems there's a bit of a movement here. That's a good thing. Here's a good clip from him on the topic from a few years ago... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wudZzIuhKoc
I agree that if Walmart and Target, etc can't pay a living wage they should not be in business. However, that will drive them to additional automation cause self serve checkout kiosks and robot pallet unloaders are cheaper and easier than people. So what happens to those people who cannot work in entrepreneur or knowledge jobs? Basic income? And programs to help them do some valued work in their community? Not sure.
Capitalism isn’t broken. The labor market is simply exercising its power to determine its own worth (unfortunately, it has been quite awhile since hiring firms have had to cater to that market). Firms need to keep up with that demand if they want to remain competitive.
As a leader of a nonprofit preschool that employs a lot of low-wage workers, I really struggle with this. We are a non-profit so there's no reduction in the profit to make. We've survived the pandemic but not intact, and still struggling. For years we have provided paid vacation and sick leave, paid holidays (3 weeks/yr), health insurance, and we have regular business hours and no weekends. So we aren't (IMO) a "crappy job" but we admittedly pay poorly. What is a "livable wage" when it also comes with those benefits? It is a continually-moving target.
That said, I feel strongly that our particular issue will only be solved with government intervention - either by offering/providing health insurance for all, and/or supporting early education in a way that allows us to professionalize the workforce and provide livable wages in a sustainable way. We can't raise tuition 15%/yr - no one's income is rising to meet costs in that way.
This is the dumbest article I have ever read. Capitalism is broken? At what point have we been in a capitalist economy? Get out of here. This is socialism and basic income ruining our economy. The fact that you didn't mention any of this is crazy. We haven't had a capitalist economy for a long time. Write a balanced article that actually has some facts.
The idea that America is a socialist nation has always been the most laughable, most ignorant statement conservatives can make. America has always been the most hyper-capitalist of all nations, (You have obviously never been to Europe or Canada---travel Bob, it broadens a person), the nation with the smallest social safety net of all nations on earth, no universal health care, no mandatory vacation, absurdly low federal (and often state) minimum wage, no help with daycare costs, no mandatory family leave, fewer and fewer labor unions, a government that says corporations are people and can dictate who our elected officials are with their millions of dollars, etc, etc. Recently we have begun a rabid privatization of the public sector, whether that is the military contractors, private prisons, Space X, toll roads, etc. You know nothing. Nothing. Turn off the TV and travel, but don't be an annoying American tourist when you do.
The world believes that the USA is a Capitalist economy, perhaps they are wrong? Facts and history show otherwise. A lesson to the nternational community, unchecked Capitalism leads to revolution, which is where the USA is heading
What is socialism providing? Health care? Nope. Child care? Nope. A guaranteed living wage? Again no. How about job training or free education for more advanced jobs? Still not seeing it. If you work 40 hours (or more) a week but can’t afford to live in the city where you work and can’t afford safe reliable childcare, and can’t afford the education you would need to get a better job, find me the socialism in that.
The piece mentions UI several times, and you're misreading the premise: if the economy can be "broken," why not have a better approach which is less likely to break? Can you explain why you think the economy is not capitalist?
That's not what I said-we're talking about Bob's claims that the US has never had a capitalist economy. Please stay on subject, if you are able to have a thoughtful conversation regarding Bob's blatant misrepresentation of economic theory.
You're equating irrational logic with truth. We're about as capitalist as we can get, and it's killing America. We need to go back to the late 40's when we taxed the shit out of the rich and companies and had active labor. America for Americans not for Corporatists.
How much will you pay me to do it? You want capitalism, walk the talk. BTW, how much are you being paid to throw bombs here? And if you're not being paid, aren't you a traitor to capitalism to be doing it?
This post reminds me of BULLSHIT JOBS by David Graeber! The crux of the book is that UBI can tip the scale in power dynamics between employers and employees (which currently heavily favors employers in this age of decreasing unionization and little to no antitrust oversight) so that workers can take more risks with the career decisions and refuse to work "bullshit jobs."
I was wasting away at a "bullshit job" for years and quit right before the pandemic started. I somehow fortuitously qualified for unemployment benefits, and the checks were were more than what I made at the old job. Because of the benefits, I didn't take the next available job that paid just as badly and drained my soul. Instead, I took my time and eventually (10 months no less!) found a job that fits my skills and interests. More importantly, this new job pays me a living wage! I know I'm probably an outlier, but even with the stress that comes with being unemployed during the pandemic, this past year was truly a blessing in disguise for me. I think something like UBI in the after times would allow others to do the same and find work that they find meaningful and fulfilling. As always, thank you for your great insights!
this is a real story of how lots of people got a break from panic planing their lives... to having choices anyone who thinks this is bad is just evil with no soul...
Such a good book. I can also recommend this excellent article by Mark Slouka, "Quitting the Paint Factory."
http://www.molvray.com/ebooks/Quitting_the_Paint_Factory_Mark_Slouka.html
I've been thinking a lot about this issue, as I watch businesses in our town struggle to hire staff. Interestingly, the employers that took care of their staff during Covid-19 (making environments as safe as they could, mandating masks, shutting down their businesses when there were Covid-19 outbreaks while staying paying people, etc.) are not having trouble hiring. I agree with your take that many are taking their time looking for work and looking for work that fits their particular needs. I live in Flagstaff which is tourism driven, and is also a college town. The lack of college labor, with students doing remote school has also been an issue. We have a $15 minimum wage, but we lack affordable housing. All of these factors are contributing to the struggles with finding help.
Personally, I work in healthcare as a behavioral health therapist. I worked in a hospital setting, and worked throughout the first year of Covid. I just quit my job because I'm emotionally exhausted. It's not the people I work with, it's not the patients...its administration that continues to try to solve new problems with old tools, the lack of support, and the complete disrespect and disregard of the community at large in the face of Covid-19. Flagstaff is fairly progressive and was really ahead of the game with regard to safety precautions, but the toxic political climate and the plethora of "muh rights" anti-maskers, just wore me out. I'm taking a year off to travel and decide what next steps are. I'm going to be 60 this year, and I know whatever I decide, it's going to suit my needs and work style, not someone else's.
Work for yourself, self employed therapist. The transition can be a challenge, but the rewards of commanding one's own work are substantial. Just est a workable business of one model, set a good rate and stick to it and you'll do ok
It's the same up here in Iowa City. If you were a crappy store before, you are still. If you shut down and ran an entirely different business during the shutdown, you're probably still staffed. But if you stayed the stereotypical entitled boomer owner or manager, you're swimming against a strong current.
"If it’s too expensive for businesses to provide healthcare for their workers, maybe we need to decouple it from employment?"
Yes, absolutely! I'm a decently paid remote gig worker, but cost of health insurance plus rent would force me to submit to the will of some corporate overlord (or, even worse, Dale) if I remained in the U.S. Fortunately, my wife is a foreign national from a less developed country and we moved back to her native country 5 years ago, after I quit my job due to largely stress-induced chronic health problems requiring regular hospitalizations.
I now pay around $200/month for international health insurance (accepted literally anywhere in the world except for the U.S.) for my family and about $700/month in rent for a house in a decent neighborhood. At the same time, the reduction in stress has greatly reduced my healthcare needs.
I love many things about America, but simply will not move back home unless and until there is universal affordable healthcare decoupled from employment. The existing system of employer-provided healthcare is blackmail - you sacrifice your sanity, your physical and mental health, and the majority of your waking hours as a precondition to affordable healthcare (and in many instances you still don't even get that). I just can't. YOLO.
The fact that we don't is insanity
Unemployment will run out eventually, and if you willingly quit your job, you're usually not eligible for unemployment. I quit my salaried WFH job last fall (for a "meaningful" nonprofit) partly because it was making me miserable pre-pandemic and became unbearable during the pandemic. I'm going back to school this fall, but in the meantime, I'm working retail to pay the bills and make up for the lost months of wages. The company purports to be an ethical employer, and they're better than most, but they're putting the sales pressure on us to make up for last year's lack of profits. Meanwhile, their president made $3 million last year. All the big retailers and restaurants around me are hiring, but no one is offering hazard pay or good benefits. I assume they're trying to calculate how little they can improve conditions before unemployment benefits end.
I think there is a general conflation of yuppies who are taking a little woo mental health break and low-paid workers whose leverage is contingent on unemployment benefits. Would Roose's white-collar friends be taking a break if they didn't think they could find equally overpaid work when they feel like returning from their screenplays? Will there really be a push for better wages and working conditions once people have to return to their shitty jobs to get by, or will they/we instead be pushed onward to the resurgent economy?
Target is usually pretty good for retail
I can’t seem to get enough of these stories of the mystery of why food service and bar work is no longer attractive. There is a guy in Boise who owns 3 bars in downtown Boise. He can’t find enough workers and he complains.
He’s had COVID twice, possibly three times but he wasn’t hospitalized the first time. On his last hospital visit (lasting 9 days and time on a ventilator) he was featured in the paper admitting, “COVID is real. I didn’t believe it but now I do.”
Masks of course are not a serious requirement in his bars, still. A man of libertarian values. This story is not unique in conservative Idaho.
This one is tough. Because once we pay worjers, especially service workers, what they deserve (at least a living wage), and the prices of goods and services rise in tandem, then those with money to spend can’t afford as much. Boo-hoo, right? I definitely think that. And then I order tacos, which I couldn’t afford if they cost more than they do now. But I want the people making them to make more. I make a decent living, but I’m a single parent, sooooo...I guess I don’t get tacos? I don’t even know. I’m exhausted and everything seems wound up in terrible.
If they Cant afford those vacations, the restaurant meals, the movie tickets, etc. they (the middle class) will see rising wages as both a threat and a punishment. With a middle class that’s consistently panicked about their status, they see any gains to the lower as a loss of footing.
Because as much as it’s about lack of government support and infrastructure, it’s really about wealth hoarding at the top, and using that wealth to control government policy.
In N Out pay starts at $18 an hour for full-time. Their burgers are no more expensive than their competition. The owners just have a different set of ethics. The idea that a price must increase as worker pay increases is reliant on owners making the same or more profit. That is the broken part.
For years I owned a record store in Toronto. Minimum wage was about $10 an hour. I paid $16 an hour. My prices were the same as my competitors. How did I do this? I simply took a little less home each week for myself. It's really not that difficult.
Your assumption is based on a falsehood. We don't pay anyone what they deserve. We pay exactly what we can get away with, and not one penny more. Are you paid what you - deserve-? I know I have never been. I've saved companies millions and then watched as my team and I got laid off because someone with an MBA decided that "Outsourcing" was a better choice. Cheaper yes, but never better. I'm not aware of any company that has outsourced IT and the supported workers like it better.
I made a smart comment before about if you can't afford to pay a living wage, but in a way it's true. If your taco company cannot produce enough profit to cover your owner's living wage and their employees, you probably shouldn't exist. Building something on the backs of slave wages and undervalued labor may be how America works, but it's not what makes us great, or even good.
My assumption is that the middle class will see rising wages as a threat to their precarious lifestyle. Please identify the falsehood there. Many *owners* of small companies don't make a wage the first few years. Again, the problem isn't with small business-it's with government and wealth-hoarding at the top. It's with our failure to tax the HELL out of the mega rich. Our failure to keep production 'in-house' so to speak.
The kike sucking Zionist ass-whores need more babies for their war machine.
This assumes that there should be no change to the net profit realized by the owner. Maybe that is the element that is out of whack here.
Sure, but most owners aren't really making that much of a net profit. They are still beholden to much larger 'owners' of capital, and a lot are living a lifestyle that is precarious. Most wealth as we know it is generational-and sequestered. I don't think the guy that owns three bars is the issue, asshole that he may be. He's still freaking out about the loss of his own Horatio Alger narrative and blaming it on people who 'don't want to work,' while they're all simultaneously being eaten alive by Jeff Bezos et al.
To use some ancient rhetorical language, the petite bourgeois think the interests of the wealthy are their interests, but it's false consciousness, stemming from their attachment to their precarious position 4 steps up in the social hierarchy.
In our town, the bars and resturaunts that took care of their staff when the outbreak happened, are all fully staffed. Most of them even have benefits too. But when the Fast Fooders opened again, there's not a one that isn't hiring. No one wants to hang out over a grease pit for a job. Especially for minimum.
In 1986 I got paid $6.75 and hour to work at fast food. (minimum was $3.35, but no one would work at a Long John Silver's for less than $6.00)
Now, my old LJS? Gone. The one in my now home? Gone. How many are left, dunno, but unless you pay over $15 an hour here, you're not getting quality people at all.
Some businesses are going to fail because of this, and I'm okay with it. If you don't make enough profit to support a living wage, bye.
I should have suggested you interview my sister! The Jessie Farnes in this article: https://flatheadbeacon.com/2021/04/21/now-hiring-2/
Great, great piece. Yours is almost the only thing I've read that focuses on the needs of workers rather than employers.
What's wild is when I sit down and talk with journalists about something or another, and they legitimately don't understand that they're missing most of the story when they only pay attention to the management's position. There are a million structural reasons for that disparity, obviously, but it's just a point-of-view that isn't even acknowledged.
Totally - - It reminds me of Ann Patchett who wrote about realising as she was opening her indie bookshop, that if she told journalists that indie bookshops were a trend, they would write an article about how it was a trend... but in this case, it's skyscraper owners looking at empty spaces, imploring leaseholders that their workers are universally itching to come back.
I've also become attuned in the last year to the various articles of the "workers can't wait to get back to the office" type that inevitably feature assorted quotes and anecdotal evidence from the person who is basically the owner of all of those skyscrapers. There was a push here in the London at the end of last summer (I think? it blurs) where tons of headlines were like, "it's time to get back to the office!" and it all seemed to be backed by commercial property owners and officials clinging to outdated ideas that everyone working from home is skiving. Meanwhile, the workers themselves were like, how do I cram onto public transit? how long do I have to wait for an elevator where I can socially distance? why am I going to an office to still talk to faces on a screen? (this quickly fizzled as Covid cases spiked back then, but I'm so fascinated to see how places adapt to new modes vs try to revert to the old ways)
To use a metaphor, we are all trying to speak our future into existence, but when you have money for advertising and lobbyists and social capital for non-paid media (or the old "you advertise here and we'll get you some press" aspect of journalism that doesn't get talked about) it turns out that (1) your voice is louder than others and (2) that voice gets believed.
See, I didn't even see through that! I've worked from home for almost 20 years, so have been out of the office loop for a long time, but I remember reading those articles and wondering, "Do they want to get back? I guess so" and not seeing past the framing of the articles. Even The Guardian had some of those. And I can't remember any of those articles also grappling with the fact that many people still had kids remote schooling.
It’s really interesting that it’s one of those massive blind spots that we all have but aren’t aware of.
It's so wild to me that it's like that. If you have a business that you're reporting on, and the business is owned by one person and there are 4 people who work there, you're missing like 80% of the impact when you only talk to the business owner. Obviously, there are social reasons for that owner-centric focus (our greed, our equating money to worth, our lionization for the American entrepreneur, and on and on and on until I throw up on my Vans), but we have such blinders to the people carrying the actual load. It's almost unbelievable.
On the Media just had an episode about how the media changed their reporting on labor issues from focusing on the workers and the work itself to the interests of "consumers," e.g. the white collar worker who is delayed because of a train strike. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/how-mainstream-media-abandoned-working-class-on-the-media After listening to that, it got me to think how much it says about the priorities in this country (as set by the overlords) that the actual experience of work, as well as the workers well-being, is so disregarded.
Wow, that sounds like something I need to make time to listen to.
It *is* and yet literally until it was pointed out to me I didn't see it. I ask myself why didn't I see it, and it's just this endless process of stripping away how we've been taught to see the world. Every time I think I've finally got some clarity, it happens again.
It's particularly amazing, though, that it doesn't occur to many that a lot of people don't want to work in the service industry anymore because they've just spent a year dealing with anti-maskers, etc., and all but being told that their lives are worth less than that of customers.
I have so many thoughts about this and no time to write them. Such is life.
I have to say the one outlet that does a great job of is is High Country News, but their reach isn't enormous like, say, WaPo or NYT.
> You're missing like 80% of the impact when you only talk to the business owner.
True, but if the owner quits, the opinion of the other 80% about their job satisfaction are irrelevant.
If you can't pay a living salary, perhaps you need to work harder alone until you can.
Are you trying to tell me that a business owner would close their small business and destroy their livelihood because a journalist got the point of view of some necessary stakeholders about matters that involved them intimately?
Not at all. Only that the point of view of the owner is a more important point of view because it's their assets at risk and if he's tired of the return he's getting for his time and risk, *I* am out of a job. All that my dissatisfaction means is *I* quit.
Also "destroy their livelihood"? All my personal friends who have started businesses have lost money, and that's by far the biggest likelihood. (They all now have steady jobs working for others and are happier for it.) Certainly I'm far too sensible to ever start a business, which makes me appreciate the jobs I've had because someone else took the risk of creating the business that hired me.
"How are we preparing for the summer to come while caring for our employees?” Your sister sounds like a compassionate boss. I wish her the best.
I should say the company itself is pretty great. I mean, a small-town coffee roaster that offers health insurance is not a common thing.
She’s pretty amazing but this year has definitely stretched capacity to breaking point.
The flaw in any system ends up being the selfishness, lack of compassion, and ego-driven tunnel-vision of people. Democracy and especially capitalism need to evolve, and I hope that's what happens here, instead of a new group of foolish and corrupt elite leading us down a worse path of ruin with righteous anger and cool-sounding ideals.
You could have been reading my mind with this today. Some days I have been so close to quitting. For now, I am holding onto my public sector job until FedLoan processes my PSLF paperwork.
This is the power of Basic Income. Workers workers wouldn't have to put up with being treated like a disposable resource. Companies are angry because people have a *choice* to work for them now or not; they're not desperate for any old job just so they can survive.
I work for a company that has great benefits which start on day 1 of employment, starts any employee at $15.00 an hour, has a dozen jobs at $18.00 + an hour and we have had ZERO applicants who can pass a basic drug test and background check. This is in a sustainable manufacturing setting not food, retail or other dead end jobs.
So why drug test people. Most the people I know smoke pot and they don't want their employers telling them how to live their lives. I'm now 66 and retired. I will not take a drug test because it makes me feel like a criminal when all I want is a decent job. So now I only work part time and will not waste my time working for anyone who wants to tell me what to do with my own body. And as luck would have it, I don't have to work.
what you call drugs we call medication, stop your fascist old-world tell me how to live my life overlord policies, and you might attract humans...
by the way $15 an hour is shit too, try adding up healthcare, rent car and food for a month then add taxes and another 20% to make it worth staying and tell us all here what that adds up to, are you offering that, No, then you are an ass, try starting at 25 an hour you commie!!!
$15 sucks. Why are you drug testing? Do you operate machinery?
Let’s see, $15 an hour—that’s about $30,000 a year. Not exactly a living wage even in most small Midwestern towns. I’d like to see a budget for a wage of $30,000 (or $36,000, for the lucky pups getting one of those $18/hr jobs) that allows for rent, food, car payment & insurance, clothes, medical insurance plus co-pays & deductibles, life insurance for those with families, clothing & sundries, maybe a week’s vacation once a year, and saving for retirement. I worked in a factory for a little over a year before covid shut it down and medical issues kept me from going back, and I met many people who had been there for a couple of decades and weren’t even close to making $15/hr. Most of the jobs were absolutely dead-end, given the ratio of workers on the floor to office positions, let alone to actual management positions. And if you were injured on the job, good luck getting compensation and adequate medical care in this state.
Yeah, so hard to understand why people aren’t just flocking to those jobs if they can possibly manage any other way.
When people say “Cut those benefits and they’ll go back to work, all right,” what they’re really saying is that to fill jobs in America, we rely on the abject desperation of millions of permanently underclass workers with little or no real hope of ever raising themselves and their families out of poverty. That may be your idea of a great America, but it’s not mine.
I don’t know about where you live, but around here, the manufacturing business model is predicated on an endless supply of healthy young people whose bodies (not to mention minds) haven’t yet been wrecked. Virtually every listing for factory work states “Must be able to stand for 10-12 hrs a day (mandatory overtime) and lift 50# repeatedly throughout the day and occasionally 75#.” A prescription for a middle and old age plagued by degenerative arthritis and other
Listen people, you are not entitled. The 70% of low-income workers who come from $100,000 households are not entitled. Life is not fair Get over it.
That also applies to owners not being entitled to employees
Oh, Manufacturing is by definition dead end. Please tell me where you can go from the bottom.
I'm reading more and more content like this, and although it could be because I'm more tuned to the idea of "controlling your own work" á la Noam Chomsky, it seems there's a bit of a movement here. That's a good thing. Here's a good clip from him on the topic from a few years ago... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wudZzIuhKoc
I agree that if Walmart and Target, etc can't pay a living wage they should not be in business. However, that will drive them to additional automation cause self serve checkout kiosks and robot pallet unloaders are cheaper and easier than people. So what happens to those people who cannot work in entrepreneur or knowledge jobs? Basic income? And programs to help them do some valued work in their community? Not sure.
Capitalism isn’t broken. The labor market is simply exercising its power to determine its own worth (unfortunately, it has been quite awhile since hiring firms have had to cater to that market). Firms need to keep up with that demand if they want to remain competitive.
As a leader of a nonprofit preschool that employs a lot of low-wage workers, I really struggle with this. We are a non-profit so there's no reduction in the profit to make. We've survived the pandemic but not intact, and still struggling. For years we have provided paid vacation and sick leave, paid holidays (3 weeks/yr), health insurance, and we have regular business hours and no weekends. So we aren't (IMO) a "crappy job" but we admittedly pay poorly. What is a "livable wage" when it also comes with those benefits? It is a continually-moving target.
That said, I feel strongly that our particular issue will only be solved with government intervention - either by offering/providing health insurance for all, and/or supporting early education in a way that allows us to professionalize the workforce and provide livable wages in a sustainable way. We can't raise tuition 15%/yr - no one's income is rising to meet costs in that way.
This is the dumbest article I have ever read. Capitalism is broken? At what point have we been in a capitalist economy? Get out of here. This is socialism and basic income ruining our economy. The fact that you didn't mention any of this is crazy. We haven't had a capitalist economy for a long time. Write a balanced article that actually has some facts.
LMFAO ok Boomer
Wow that never gets old 🥴
It's in response to one of the boomerest comments I've ever seen, so an appropriate use of the phrase.
What do you think socialism is? We have capitalism with a very paltry welfare state
I Have a feeling that this guy thinks we've been a socialist country since FDR.
The idea that America is a socialist nation has always been the most laughable, most ignorant statement conservatives can make. America has always been the most hyper-capitalist of all nations, (You have obviously never been to Europe or Canada---travel Bob, it broadens a person), the nation with the smallest social safety net of all nations on earth, no universal health care, no mandatory vacation, absurdly low federal (and often state) minimum wage, no help with daycare costs, no mandatory family leave, fewer and fewer labor unions, a government that says corporations are people and can dictate who our elected officials are with their millions of dollars, etc, etc. Recently we have begun a rabid privatization of the public sector, whether that is the military contractors, private prisons, Space X, toll roads, etc. You know nothing. Nothing. Turn off the TV and travel, but don't be an annoying American tourist when you do.
Capitalism isn't broken because it never worked for most people anyway. The sooner it dies out the better.
Shut up bob
The world believes that the USA is a Capitalist economy, perhaps they are wrong? Facts and history show otherwise. A lesson to the nternational community, unchecked Capitalism leads to revolution, which is where the USA is heading
What is socialism providing? Health care? Nope. Child care? Nope. A guaranteed living wage? Again no. How about job training or free education for more advanced jobs? Still not seeing it. If you work 40 hours (or more) a week but can’t afford to live in the city where you work and can’t afford safe reliable childcare, and can’t afford the education you would need to get a better job, find me the socialism in that.
The piece mentions UI several times, and you're misreading the premise: if the economy can be "broken," why not have a better approach which is less likely to break? Can you explain why you think the economy is not capitalist?
That's not what I said-we're talking about Bob's claims that the US has never had a capitalist economy. Please stay on subject, if you are able to have a thoughtful conversation regarding Bob's blatant misrepresentation of economic theory.
You're equating irrational logic with truth. We're about as capitalist as we can get, and it's killing America. We need to go back to the late 40's when we taxed the shit out of the rich and companies and had active labor. America for Americans not for Corporatists.
How much will you pay me to do it? You want capitalism, walk the talk. BTW, how much are you being paid to throw bombs here? And if you're not being paid, aren't you a traitor to capitalism to be doing it?
Move. Thats what your people do. White Flight. Or man up and take back your own neighborhood snowflake
Far out, another useless whackjob.