this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] -4 points 7 months ago

First of all, I agree with RBN. Most companies absolutely can pay their workers a higher wage with barely a dent in their profits. The payment is simply taken away from millionaires who spend it on luxury cruises and lobbying, or simply hoard it (which is even worse for the economy).

However, It seems you're using Twitter. I politely ask you never to post anything from that site here, because then people will need an account to respond. It isn't just the content on the site that is awful -- the website mechanics, like the removal of dislikes, blue checkmarks, and lack of characters, make it impossible to say what you mean. Tweeting your opinion is like trying to talk with clay in your mouth, or trying to write while your hands itch. As for me, Twitter does not constitute any valid information. All Tweets are useless prattle, and the massive presence of the site outside Twitter -- and the internet itself -- is a horrible thing. So, please, source your memes from somewhere else.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Minimum wage goes up slightly every year, but the cost of everything goes up slightly more.

It's just a brake on our decline.

Everyday life has gone from: single income 4 person family: no issues. All the way to: dual income, 2 person household: not enough money to buy the food required to keep doing your job.

Something needs to break, i can only hope it's all these planet ruining, greedy ass, underpaying and overcharging businesses.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Federal minimum wage hasn't gone up since 2009.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

It has for us over here. The world isn't America.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

OK but what about the price jumps prior when the minimum wage wasn't a factor?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Price increases without an increase to minimum wage: "That's just companies charging what the market has decided as a fair price"

Price increases along with an increase to minimum wage: "OMG! GREEDY WORKERS ARE BLEEDING US DRY!"

If we're going to have a system that's foundationally built off greed, then a workers "greed" of wanting a wage they can live off of is just as valid as a corporation's actual greed of wanting to maximize profits, except we should prioritize the "greed" that benefits actual human beings.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 7 months ago (4 children)

This is the wrong argument and I'm tired of it. The real argument here is - McDonald's et al don't need to raise prices because of the new wage law. They choose to raise prices rather than cut executive pay, or adjust profit margins, or make any other kind of internal adjustments.

This discussion needs to stop being "x raised prices because they had to and government bad" and start being "Billion-dollar-profit company is screwing over consumers because they can".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Also, the amount they raise the prices is much more than necessary to “break even”. This is what they always do.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

I wish there was a goddamn economic calculator. Revenue minus (operating costs + re-investment + R&D) then divide it amongst all employees. Let us rank companies based on how bad that number is vs what the employees are actually paid.

Not an economist.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago

Even worse, they have empirical proof that they are able to use good ingredients, pay a living wage, provide paid parental leave, and give retirement and medical while having lower prices than they charge here. It's called Denmark.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is like the housing shortage issue, the real issue is not that there are not enough houses and we need to build more, it's that wealthy people need to adjust their hoarding to leave enough for others to have a home.

We know of course wealthy people will not do this voluntarily, so that leaves two options -- we need more good people running for office to displace the psychopathic hoarder class (and people to vote for them, i.e. political reform) or some sort of revolution that eliminates that hoarder class.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

so that leaves two options – we need more good people running for office to displace the psychopathic hoarder class (and people to vote for them, i.e. political reform) or some sort of revolution that eliminates that hoarder class.

Well, you say two options, but I only see one restated two times with slightly different wordings. As in, it's gonna be more or less both of those things, to some extent.

the real issue is not that there are not enough houses and we need to build more, it’s that wealthy people need to adjust their hoarding to leave enough for others to have a home.

Yep. It's fucking insane that we're having to pretend like there's not enough to go around when there's just not enough to satiate a minuscule part of the population for whom nothing will ever be enough.

It's like a hospital pretending there's not enough supplies to give patients with terminal cancer and broken bones pain medication because 95% of meds are being shot up by some junkies on the roof, and everyone knows it and even curry favour from the junkies (who wouldn't mind stealing your grandmas cancer meds.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It’s like a hospital pretending there’s not enough supplies to give patients with terminal cancer and broken bones pain medication because 95% of meds are being shot up by some junkies on the roof, and everyone knows it and even curry favour from the junkies (who wouldn’t mind stealing your grandmas cancer meds.)

I love this analogy

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Well thank you. Now that I thought about where it came from, one guy who definitely helped me realise how many traits proper junkies and some hustle-life hedgies share. Sam Polk.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html

IN my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted.

Wealth addiction was described by the late sociologist and playwright Philip Slater in a 1980 book, but addiction researchers have paid the concept little attention. Like alcoholics driving drunk, wealth addiction imperils everyone. Wealth addicts are, more than anybody, specifically responsible for the ever widening rift that is tearing apart our once great country. Wealth addicts are responsible for the vast and toxic disparity between the rich and the poor and the annihilation of the middle class. Only a wealth addict would feel justified in receiving $14 million in compensation — including an $8.5 million bonus — as the McDonald’s C.E.O., Don Thompson, did in 2012, while his company then published a brochure for its work force on how to survive on their low wages. Only a wealth addict would earn hundreds of millions as a hedge-fund manager, and then lobby to maintain a tax loophole that gave him a lower tax rate than his secretary.

It's literally the worst addiction there is, because with money, you can get any other thing you might also be addicted to, and with enough money, you don't just start perceiving the world differently (like say when you're reeeaally high on certain substances), your world literally and actually changes, twists, as no-one around you wants to be honest with you and you end up fucked up and delusional like JKR or Elon Musk.

And that sort of thing happens with drug dealers as well, now that I think about it, actually. A lot of them, even minor ones, start thinking they're hot shit because they have some drooling junkies chasing then anywhere, chasing freebies.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 7 months ago (2 children)

So a 25% wage increase resulted in price rises of less than 4%. This is such a good trade off that you'd have to be extremely intellectually dishonest to be able to be against it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

Or extremely selfish. They see their wage stagnating while costs increase and think of lower-income earners as deserving of their place in squalor, rather than respected and dignified.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I think a lot of people here seem not to be aware In-N-Out has crazy good pay for their employees.

A store manager at In-N-Out makes $160,000 per year.

I don't think they even pay minimum wage for their newest and lowest tiered employees, having always paid at least a few dollars per hour more than minimum.

So it's an exceptionally bad example of a business impacted by a minimum wage increase despite being in the fast food category.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Coming from Europe. Those prices still look frighteningly low. I knew fast food was cheaper in the US but jeez.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don't know about that, it really depends on the quality and size. At McDonald's in Italy you can find the simple hamburger for around 1€ and the double cheeseburger for around 2,50€, but the quality is horrendous. Instead, you can go to a proper pub, and you can get a proper burger, with a thick fresh patty and fresh ingredients, but you'll probably pay 10-15€ for that.

It's all about the quality really, and I have no idea if this US joint is better in terms of quality than other similar chains. Also Europe means very little, the prices in Italy, Greece, England, Norway and Switzerland are wildly different, sometimes 2-3 times different.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Yes, fast food is dirt cheap here, mostly because we have a LOT of food available and the supply chain is very efficient.

But I ain't eating Mickey D's because it tastes really good. I eat it because it's fast, cheap, and filling and readily available everywhere when you need it.

If you really want the best of the worst, hit up the nearest convenience store and get a burger there. (Just don't eat the sushi - ever)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Compare to the prices of double cheeseburgers at Five Guys. $12 each.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Meanwhile I just spent 10 dollars and a tip on cold mozzarella sticks and a drink that was nearly all ice at large food chain in Central America

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The fast food workers there must be millionaires!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Probably stopped buying avocados and toast

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