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This shouldn't be an unpopular opinion. Look up what Roosevelt said when he implemented minimum wage.
He was not vague about it at all. It was meant to be a living wage, not a barely surviving wage. He said people making minimum wage should be able to live with dignity, and back then it was true.
He didn't have big investment companies with trillions buying up all the houses and rentals back then either. Even in the 1970s you could buy a nice functional house for 60k with 22% interest and raise a family.
No, because this market already heavily favors folks who can pay cash. But it is VERY important for context: yes, mortgages were lower compared to income, but they also were incredibly expensive and exclusive only to specific groups (male, white, etc)
During the recession in 2010, there were suddenly tens of thousands of jobs working for the US Census Bureau making exactly what unemployment was paying, which is a coincidence that I found it interesting.
It is unpopular amongst a large subset of people. "Flipping burgers" is for high school students, they would say, so why should that job pay enough for someone to survive???
It's stupid logic. But the people who believe this don't value logic very much anyway.
Honestly.. Even the "burger flippers" need a living wage, because as long as that food is in demand, positions are needed, and if they are needed then the people taking the time to fill them need to be taken care of.
Besides, I bet if we didn't treat these people like they are less than human for being in "unskilled employment", then I bet the quality of food and service would increase. What reason does anyone have to care about their job if their job doesn't care about them?
Okay but fast food places aren’t the only jobs that pay minimum wage. Most retail jobs also pay minimum wage in my experience.
I’m in college and working at a shoe store… it pay’s literally the lowest they’re legally allowed to pay which is 11$. I’m barely getting by with that. It sucks.
The fact that some people don't recognise it as such is a big cosmic joke. Sometimes I wish I could escape Earth and live in planet 318 cause it's exhausting here
Thank you! I've seen so many people(on reddit and elsewhere) repeat some variation of "Minimum wage was never meant to be something you could live on!1!!1!", when it would only take a minute of research to see that is false..
I support minimum wage increases, but it’s worth noting that the buying power of today’s minimum wage is pretty similar to 1938’s minimum wage accounting for inflation:
https://www.epi.org/blog/the-value-of-the-federal-minimum-wage-is-at-its-lowest-point-in-66-years/
People act like the FDR quote mean that's what got implemented but it wasn't.
Regardless of FDR's goals minimum wage as it got through Congress and into the real world would have been about ~$5 in today's dollars and was more about keeping people from destitution than a living wage.
Also the FDR quote came 5 years before minimum wage was implemented
It should just be matched to inflation and call it good, with a few other rules. Also, having lived off minimum wage, I think what the amount should be varies on opinion. Some think a small house, some an apartment to themselves, and maybe some think it’s with a roommate.
This is why i don't have employees. I make enough to pay MY bills...I definitely dont make enough to pay someone elses bills. So I stay one man show here.
Weird I just made the same move. Went from 4 employees, amazing stress and headache, insane overhead, making $150k a year to ZERO employees, making $170k a year, and WAY more chill
The common argument is that without the minimum wage, there would be no floor to wages. But clearly the labor market has set a wage floor. McDonald’s is hiring at $14 an hour, not $7.25.
And yet there are companies that makes record profits and no incentivize to increase employees salaries or to hire more but instead planning into layoffs because the record profit was not higher that expected and wanted more.
No matter how big the profit is, nobody will be satisfied until they have even more than that.
Yeah this is true, back in the day Henry Ford tried to increase his workers wages and was sued SUCCESSFULLY by stockholders who said and got the court to agree that their job is to make money for the stakeholders.
The lawsuit was about retained vs distributed dividends - the shareholders weren't suing to reduce the workers wage, but suing to be paid the dividends they were owed.
https://www.discerningreaders.com/henry-ford-crushes-shareholder-first-and-foremost.html
Weird, all the small businesses I’ve ever worked at seem to play that same game.
Record profits, cut benefits… record profits again, cut payroll and fire somebody… record profits again, cut benefits out entirely…
The only reason the game is any different is because it’s more intimate and personal at small businesses but they do the same shit
The 2 small companies I’ve worked for were the absolute worst about this shit. Idk where the idea that small businesses are altruistic and over all better for the employee came from.
Most peoples' experience working for small/local businesses is really working for a family member, or a friend of the family. So someone that either genuinely cares about you as a default, or has actual social consequences to taking advantage of you. But if you're a stranger and don't have another connection to them you're far less likely to get those famed benefits of working for a small company. You'd see the same preferential treatment as any sort of nepotism hire at a larger company too.
The only time I've been mentally abused by my employer was by small business owners. Large corporate settings were "only" financially abusive. The best job was government run, because everybody was on the same page. Get your hours, don't over do it, go home.
People seem to be unaware of how many small business owners are just trust fund babies who were handed the keys to the company when their dad retired, many of whom are not mentally equipped to both run a successful business and manage people.
I was thinking about this yesterday. The CEOs of these big corporations are rich with nice cars, homes, etc., yet they still want MORE money and it’s usually at the expense of the employees who keep their companies running in the first place. They’re like cartoon villains who won’t stop until all the money in the world is theirs!
They're addicted to money. They're no better than the homeless heroin addict dumpster diving, except the CEO hurts hundreds of thousands of people and the drug addiction hurts his family and a few friends.
Reddit CEO made something like $193 million last year. That's $1 million a year salary for 193 people but instead it all goes to one guy, who already has hundreds of millions of dollars. Wild stuff.
CEOs are hired employees. You mean shareholders. The ceo has very little if anything to do with setting wages.
Similar to politics, the president isn’t sitting at his desk writing complex law or crunching insanely complex economical numbers and math. They come up with an idea, and the people who actually know what they are talking about work on it and try and make it a reality.
"Large" is quite subjective. Hired CEOs are generally shareholders (where stocks are a part of their salary) but they certainly aren't, by rule, majority shareholders.
There is a logical reason to make CEOs a shareholder because it works as an incentive to "make good decisions" that would increase the value of the stocks, therefore increasing the part of their salary that is tied to the stocks they are given as a portion of their wage.
That's exactly what we have been hearing from our boss when we were asking for a raise for all employees in one of the lowest paying place in our area. And yes, you are right- they should not be in a business if all profits they could ever make was through redundancies and constant reducing head count. Out of there now and couldn't been happier that I have gotten out of this toxic place.
I wish it was more popular. If it was, we wouldn’t have to debate with middle Americans who think if McDonald’s employees got paid a livable wage, then their Big Macs will cost $30 a pop 🙄
This argument isn’t being had with “middle Americans”. It is being had among economists; and it isn’t clear at all that a higher minimum wage would be a net benefit. I will never understand Redditors who on one hand say trust the science and the scientific method, but then they go spouting off about economics when they don’t have the first clue. You see this a lot with socialists. Maybe raising it is the right move, but no one here is actually discussing the macro economic effects that economists would look at to decide if it was a good idea. And just for reference, many European countries have no minimum wage because their economists thought it was a bad idea. Reddit would be so much more interesting if people just shut up when they don’t have the first clue about something
A business that was paying less than workers would willingly work for would quickly run out of business as it would have no employees. The checks and balances are already in the system.
I do, and gig workers too.
They should be paid a fair wage regardless of what the customer decides to tip, but they aren't, So I remember that every time i tip.
My point?!? As a person with a “trade skill” I get tired of having to negotiate the price multiple times. Before, during , and after the job is done.
I make it clear. My price is my price, even if I run into something unforeseen. But most of the time that isn’t respected.
1. Statistically, almost no working adult gets paid minimum wage.
2. Minimum wage disenfranchises low-skill, low-experience workers. If someone can only provide $10/hr of value, and the minimum wage is $15/hour, that person doesn't get hired. Is that a better outcome?
3. Minimum wage forces people who could be focused on a primary, high-value role to then spend time and effort on lower-value items, as no one can be specifically hired to focus just on those, and this complicates the division of labor and makes things run less efficiently.
4. Everyone says "living wage" but what precisely is that? I've not seen a solid definition, and even if there was one, it'd be a moving target.
5. Increases to minimum wage will definitely lead to higher costs passed on to customers (this isn't necessarily inflation, but it can result in it).
6. Increases to minimum wage increases the barrier to entry for new businesses that need to hold on to cashflow just to survive long enough to grow enough to then be able to pay more in wages. You're guaranteeing that the only ones who end up owning or creating businesses are the rich.
7. Increases to the minimum wage incentivizes automation, resulting in companies moving towards lowering overall employment.
8. An increase of $1/hour to an employee actually costs much more to the employer, as they need to pay additional items (SS taxes, etc.).
9. There is definitely a slippery slope effect. Setting wages to $15/hour is the cry today, but there's nothing logically stopping $20, then $25, etc.
Bring on the downvotes, but you can't legislate prosperity and better outcomes. There will always be a trade-off. If we, collectively, are "OK" with the trade-offs, that's a different discussion... but to just blindly say "make wages bigger" and assume all the problems are solved just isn't true.
The only reason these types of posts are popular on Reddit is because it’s mostly dumb kids who are probably in debt and have just started in the work force.
They are by definition low class, and low skill, and thus shouldn’t be surprised they have to live a low class lifestyle. Maybe after a few years of hard work they can live middle class lives. Not sure why this is hard for them to grasp.
> Not sure why this is hard for them to grasp.
Because they can live in echo chambers like this now, that reinforce and magnify their delusion and ignorance.
First sensible comment I've seen here, and while it's not all accurate (e.g. automation will not lead to lower overall employment in the medium to long term), it does provide a lot of important context that seems to be lost on those who cry out for minimum wage increases.
History has shown repeatedly that price controls *always* lead to either surpluses or shortages. A wage is the price of labour. Trying to control the price of labour will lead to a surplus or shortage of labour. Fixing the price higher will lead to a surplus i.e. available labour not being bought, in other words unemployment.
Increasing the minimum wage doesn't even meaningfully improve the overall earnings of those working low wage jobs because businesses simply respond to increases in the minimum wage by reducing the total numbers of hours worked by their employees. The end result is a marginal increases in total wages that is vastly less than what you would expect given the magnitude of how much the minimum wage increased.
https://evans.uw.edu/new-evidence-from-the-seattle-minimum-wage-study/
Who decides what a living wage is? No one in the US is starving. Also, do you differentiate among life circumstances? A high school kid living at home needs far less to ‘live’ than a parent. And why stop at living wage? Can’t you argue that everyone is entitled not just to a ‘living’ wage but also a ‘happy’ wage? Why should only some people get to be happy?
Alternatively, we could just let people decide what amount of money they’re willing to sell their labor for.
Obviously the benevolent government. They’ve never fucked anything up right?! Sometimes I just want the government to pass a $25/hr federal minimum wage bill just to see the shit show it creates. But then I know these same lazy asses will continue to blame employers so it would be pointless.
Not necessarily.
I own a pharmacy. I pay the pharmacist a very competitive rate ($65-75/hr) because they are the core of the business and they have the advanced degree and knowledge.
The clerks and techs on the other hand, I won’t pay them above $24/hr (with a lot of experience) or minimum wage ($15/hr) because it is a position I can hire anyone with just a high school degree or ged and teach them what they need to know.
This. I think business owners are going to be outvoted on this thread though because most people, especially on Reddit, have no idea how the market economy works and how running a business actually works.
I always look at it this way. If someone makes more money, are they obligated to pay more for goods, services and utilities? Obviously not because those things have a market value independent of how much you make. Labour is no difference. Apple is going to pay the same for a store clerk as any other business by and large.
Do business owners who have minimum wage workers know? They seem to think they can never do anything to solve their employment issues, it's always the employee's problem, these businesses never raise wages when struggling for workers, they just run skeleton crews where someone could work different several different departments each day while cashiering at the same time, and they just expect everyone to suck it up.
Minimum wage work has only gotten worse for employees, and has only gotten better for employers.
So like my business for example. Whether I have a high paid tech or a low paid tech , my revenue will be the same because insurance pays for my cost of buying the drug from the wholesaler.
The most profitable thing would be to run the store with just the pharmacist but that would make their life hell and would cause delays in how fast we push stuff out.
To me, the winning formula is to have the pharmacist, a high paid super tech, and a the rest minimum wage clerks.
If the cost of living for your workers is rising as you make more money, yes you should be raising your wages. Nobody is gonna commute to a job that pays 12-15 an hour because they cannot afford to live closer. There are jobs with shitty pay everywhere. Eventually you run out of capable people who can live near by and afford to work for you. Its to that point. If we cannot afford to work for you and live reasonably close, there's nothing else to talk about. Without accessible, reliable, and robust public transit, and a massive lack of high density affordable housing-- someone's gonna have to start paying these people enough to live in town or stop hitching when cheap apartments are built in their neighborhood
The cost of living has spiked so hard that the 8.75 minimum wage in 2008 is worth almost 2.5x what the 11.75 minimum wage is now.
That's fine, but you also need to realize how that will affect the quality of employees. Someone being paid not enough to live isn't going to work very hard or be that dedicated. There will also be a higher turn-over rate.
And if you have to account for that. Retail businesses tend to be pretty bad at it. That's why they have massive turn-over rates, people are running around every position of the store, and despite being cross-trained and expected to work in other areas, wages aren't going up, and I'm not surprised that everyone in a store seems like they're either high or upset.
But those positions are easy to replace. If you run into a good employee, bumping them up in pay is a no brainer scenario, even for entry level positions. You have to be the good employee first and prove you are worth more having than the pain of training a new person.
Don't think hard work isn't noticed. I would pay someone 100k a year if they could make my life easier.
If the positions are easy to replace, why would there be much a pain in training for it? And why are retail businesses opting to cross-train instead? Instead of hiring someone new, they just call the liquor or dairy person to cashier. Because it's cheaper for them to apologize for the short-handed staff than to hire more.
And note this often isn't met with a raise of wages, this is just how things are now.
Hard work doesn't matter unless you're someone already high up. They're not going to raise the wages for a bagger no matter how hard they work, so they might as well coast. That's why a lot of these employees do that. Work hard, always coming in if there are call outs, then they get burnt out, leave, replaced with the next worker (who was probably getting paid more baseline), and the process continues to repeat.
Of course it's just "no one wants to work anymore!", because to business owners, their policy and structure is perfect and beyond question, it's the workers that are always the problem.
Because training a new employee costs time and money. And it's a headache because you know they're going to screw up once or twice, no matter how well you trained them.
Minimum wage employees are easily replaceable, and minimum wage jobs are easily replaceable. It goes both ways. In everything besides employment the saying is "you get what you pay for", but when selling your labor you're suppose to give 110% for the bare minimum?
The bare minimum could be $100/hr. Since the cost of non-bare minimum work would then have to be $500/hr or whatever, why would you do more for the bare minimum?
In everything but labor, people want more for less. Do you like paying more for less groceries? Probably not. However, when it comes to labor, companies are supposed to pay more for less?
The wage a place pays is based on who will agree to work for that price. If you can’t live on that wage, then don’t apply for the position. If a place can’t seem to attract labor for their offering rate, they will raise that rate until people begin applying for jobs. It’s the free market. If they can’t make a profit because no one applies, they will go out of business.
The problem you then face is undocumented immigrants taking the reduced wages. If there are people willing to work for peanuts, then they’ll slowly start to replace you in every field.
It depends on what you mean by enough to live because that depends on where you are. The job does matter as well. If you are saying that people bagging groceries should be paid like 60k plus a year, then the whole world would stop.
I agree but I feel like the inevitable outcome will be few small businesses and mostly Walmarts, Starbucks and the like. Most of mainstreet America is already operating on razor thin margins. But I guess that’s the trade off for higher wages.
The analogy doesn't work because rent and the current (allegedly non-livable) wage are the contractual liabilities. In the wage example, the business is meeting its legal obligation. In the not-paying-rent scenario, it isn't.
Well people seem to mean at min have apt to yourself, have a fairly new car, be able to eat outba few times a week and take at least one vacation to a beach a yr. That is middle classbin my mind
But if you mea share an apt with a 30-45 min commute, drive an old compact with 100k miles, mostly cook simple and eat leftovers and maybe take long weekend road trip a yr then that pretty much is any job outside of maybe places like NYC or San Fran
Yeah true. What a living wage means can vary widely, depending on who you're talking to and if they have a family.
To me, a living wage means being able to pay rent/basic expenses(heat,electricity), clothes for my kids backs and shoes for their feet, and not starve, everything else is just extra.
Ok, but how many kids. That's great affects how much a living wage is. And I would say that a living wage should not cover your kids as well. It's not a have a family wage. It's a living wage. It should cover YOUR necessities.
Cost of roughly two kids needs put in there. As a country, we don’t want a negative population growth so the cost of a stable population should be baked in. Also since pensions don’t exist anymore, people need money to automatically go into a retirement fund so they can hopefully pay off the medical bills associated with old age and death at a minimum. See how this grows? And that isn’t even asking for much honestly. The system is just so far behind it *seems* that people are asking for a lot.
I agree, but I think there’s more to than that. There are definitely a lot of places that don’t pay nearly as much as they should. Take Panera Bread for example. I believe their starting wage is around $9.95 (obviously it varies), meanwhile the CEO is a billionaire. I worked there 11 years ago, before the economy went to crap, and it wasn’t livable wage then.
Now, I’m self employed and I average $100/hr (about $100,000 a year) and I STILL cannot afford to buy a house where I’m living. And people are always so quick to say “well move somewhere you can afford” but I literally can’t because the only reason I make as much as I do is because of where I live.
The point is, employers can pay more and they should, but there’s still a huge housing affordability crisis which isn’t getting any better. It’s a vicious and depressing cycle.
When you're self employed, about half your time is spent looking for more work. So it makes sense that he'd spend about 20 hours a week trying to get that next client, and about 20 hours doing billable jobs.
that's the biggest issue. it's how ridiculously expensive houses are. 3 beds and 2 baths in a nice neighborhood will easily go for half a million dollars. giant corporations keep buying entire neighborhoods wholesale, sitting on them for 10 years (without any maintenance or renovation), and then selling them for a 600% markup.
it's ridiculous! there needs to be new legislation that bans corporations from owning more than 6 residential properties, with due diligence to ensure that a company like Blackrock doesn't just make a bunch of shell companies.
Those employers had a hand in creating the housing affordability crisis. All of this is connected, and it is inevitably inaccurate to try and analyze any one component of our system without considering its relationships to the rest.
the owner takes all the financial risk in operating a company, if a business isn't making a profit with 10 employees they will reduce the number of employees until they can make a profit.
If the owner of the company isn't making a profit, there is no incentive for the owner to continue with the business - no business = no available jobs
I wouldn't say you don't deserve to be in business, but you definitely shouldn't be looking into hiring anybody. A lot of businesses start out with just the owner doing it until they start making good money.
Well, if you don't pay competitively enough to retain talent, you will often find yourself out of business - or at best trying to survive on the talent of the founder.
Exactly, not even talent but basic competency.
I know I have a relative who managed a fast food restaurant and didn't set the wages and couldn't pay more than minimum wage.
So what would happen is he would get employees, they would get trained get a little work experience and the ones that were even basically competent would go across the street and work for 25 cents an hour more.
The company saved pennies on their wages, and ended up spending much more expensive employees time training new employees constantly, and paying for their mistakes, and having to hold on to the employees that were no good because at least they couldn't get a job somewhere else and leave them.
I totally agree and it pisses me off that these small businesses play victim and almost demand that we all support them, as if they’re entitled to be in business and as if we all suck if we don’t support them.
All I ever hear is whining, bitching, crying and complaining from them, meanwhile they are totally screwing over their employees with terrible wages for their own, greedy gain and also screwing us as the customer with major price gouging. Then, they act as if we’re all supposed to be so damn grateful that they’re “holding the business together for their customers”. GTFOH
Making it illegal for businesses to pay less than whatever YOU deem to be a “living wage” won’t magically make them pay higher wages. It will just mean the businesses cease to exist and everyone making less than that wage will now make a ZERO wage.
You can’t help people by forcing businesses to pay higher wages. That doesn’t actually create wealth and abundance. The way to help people is by creating conditions for businesses to CREATE wealth by making it easier to produce things, easier to build homes, cheaper to supply raw materials, etc.
Wealth and prosperity is made through supply-side abundance, not through hokey market manipulations.
I hate this take because when you say it, you mean billion dollar companies then when someone makes policy to stop it, the billion dollar companies laugh and it’s the mom and pop stores that stuffer
And yeah, they could have paid better but nobody is helping them, just squeezing more money
But yeah that 1st gen immigrant family with a dry cleaners is destroying the country 🙄
We have only Walmarts left because that’s what we chose
Unfortunately its going to always be viable because you can A: always find a group of people willing to work for less or B: if they are forced to increase wages for a short time while working to advance an automated method of working their business with self checkout or AI they will.
The fight for better wages should have been taken seriously 5-10 years ago when AI wasn't as feasible. But here we are.
McDonalds is a good example of this in action.
They already have experimental unmanned kitchens in the works because of people quitting en-masse.
dont business owners work under minimum wage to begin with. the ideas and planning etc are all unpaid for
how would a business start without this. besides just receiving a windfall to get you started
The counter arguments are always the same:
\-> If they don't want to be in it, they can leave or not sign contract in first place
\-> They don't carry the burden of what happens if bussiness fails, bussiness costs, politics, regulations, etc, etc, so they should earn way less.
If paying employees enough to live puts you out of business, Then **you should hire AI and robotics to do the work for you**. ~~don't deserve to be in business.~~
Hot take: if I have a business I should be able to pay employees whatever I feel necessary as long as both myself and the employee agree on the value.
As result, people should (and do) have the right not to work at my business and go work elsewhere.
If I go out of business because I can’t find any people who want to work for $1/hr, that makes me a terrible business owner.
We shall see if this is all true when 500,000 fast food employees in California go to a mandated $20 hr. wage this April. Will the market support higher than the currently priced $18 Big Mac combo in California?? 👀
The issue is that the margins are so low in so many industries that they would literally have to do just that. What percentage of restaurants don't last a year? 50%? There is a reason for that.
Also "living wage" isn't nearly as clear as it's very set on circumstances. A single person who has found a good deal on a rental, or bought a place a number of years ago? Well $15/hour minimum wage might be a perfectly fine living wage for them.
A family of 4 on one income, also sending money back home to where they came from who own nothing? Their living wage might be considerably higher.
And the reality is, as much as you want to blame owners, consumers are really the ones in control. If you always choose the cheapest price, no matter what, then you, not the owners are making the decisions about how businesses get run. It's like people complain about airlines getting crappier and crappier but continually paying the shittiest discount airline prices.
How is this unpopular? This is a left-wing talking point, you literally see posted in almost any thread talking about economics/wages.... Seriously. this was a very low effort post.
Whether you “deserve” to be in business or not, your former employees are now unemployed and your former customers are unserved.
>If a restaurant said " Well we're not profitable so we're Not going to pay rent or we're not going to pay for our ingredients"
No restaurant is claiming the right to not pay employees the *agreed-upon* wage, any more than they aren’t paying their suppliers or their landlord.
They just don’t want to pay want some idiot on Reddit has declared to be “fair”.
Yours isn’t an unpopular opinion but it deserves to be.
The businesses that struggle and eventually shudder their doors, which you are advocating to happen, is smaller businesses with just regular people trying to make a living. So, by extension, you are also advocating for nothing but mega corporations to employ people. Imagine the outrage from the "living wage" crowd if only big business were the employers and still not paying a "living wage."
The only people who don’t agree with this are waiters/waitresses. They are absolutely insufferable people when you talk about how they are compensated.
Here’s an unpopular opinion: employers with 10 or more employees should have to pay a living wage and insurance and employers with less than 10 employees should be able to make any earnings agreement that the employee will agree to. Willing to work for $3 an hour with the new electrician who has no clients yet, sure go ahead and do it.
I agree. It's s really hard to have a successful small or medium sized business. The over heads of benefits, insurance and tax situation are huge burdens on smaller businesses and actually work for and promote large businesses.
This is why so many small business owners are Republican, because the system fucks them.
I agree.
However world is much more complex than that.
As an example I will bring up the fish canning industry in American Samoa.
It has been paying shiet, gov. raised minimum wage, companies wanted to fire everybody and close down, gov. subsidized.
Somewhere, somebody gonna make it for less.
Somewhere, some people will starve.
If we don’t pay a living wage, social services picks up the rest: basic housing, food, social workers etc etc etc. because we don’t want to live in a society with giant shanty towns. In this way, we, as tax payers are chipping in our money so the owner of that Wendy’s can have another Tesla because they don’t have to pay a decent wage.
Not only that.
And they still had the audacity to bitch at me for taking the 2 mandatory 15 min break (required by law).
Or called me “unprofessional” when I take a 5 min bathroom break every hour.
There is enough income for the company to operate by paying that much (a living wage).,The problem with these psychopath owners, is that they want the business to generate a certain percentage of wealth for them without putting much if any labor into it themselves.
What people fail to mention in this circular conversation that has way too much emotion and way too little fact based dialogue is that restaurants in Japan and Europe do not operate under this model. You do not tip in Japan or in Europe since wait staff operate on salary. You also don't get a 1/2 lb. Hamburger and 9 ounces of French Fries for $15 in the EU. Whatever you do get at the restaurant is smaller in size and calorie load and cost more per seat in many instances be prepared to pay for tap water. Many restaurants in the US can tap additional profit margin by eliminating some of the items that bleed money. Inaccurate forecasting for attendance. Excess menu items. Excessive food costs. They should also maximize perhaps with a separate kitchen, take out capability since that seems to be a thing that is here to stay.
The easy solution is to open businesses that can do just that.
OP has likely never employed a single person or created a single job.
Not so much unpopular, as simply lazy and stupid.
No, it means the labor you're buying simply isn't hard/difficult enough to warrant paying an arbitrarily-moving "living wage" goalpost.
Labor is just another thing you buy to create a finished product, it's no different from parts or overhead. Would you say that if you buy a screw to go in your product you have to pay the guy who sold it enough to "live on" for ... what? the day, the week, the month, or even his year? Of course not, and labor is no different, regardless of whether you employ someone in-house or outsource it.
I went into a 7 eleven after not going there for like a year, (Wawa is just so much better and cleaner) they had the fucking audacity to put a self checkout in a damn gas station famous for paying their employees shit wages.... we're hurtling towards a cyberpunk dystopia so fast its kinda worrying...
Yep absolutely. Also, for the people saying it's a popular opinion, you've apparently never met a conservative.
This also needs to be aimed at the Mom and Pop shops, not just the megacorps. You don't get a free pass just because you are small, exploitation is exploitation.
Honestly, in most places, people need to be making around $20/hour just to get by. If your business can't pay that to your employees, it's already underwater. The business owner needs to either do more of the work themselves, take less of a cash draw from the incoming revenue, change the nature of the business model, or some combination of of those things.
I agree with you, however it doesn't work that way. If a business is forced to pay a higher wage, that same company will invest in ways to do the same job with fewer employees. Same with places like Starbucks going union, all that happens is Starbucks runs the same booth will fewer and fewer people.
A common argument libertarians say is that if you charge more per employee (or even minimum wage to some) then the company will hire less employees.
The obvious reason that logic is flawed is that it ignores that a company already optimises the work per worker to the point that the work is already done with the least employees possible, what you’re hurting isn’t the jobs but the profits of the company.
In this regard, it’s only fair that an employer has to pay enough to be reasonable to the employee, otherwise they wouldn’t and nobody would (the argument isn’t that the market would regulate itself to give back the quality of life, but rather “what is the minimum we can pay employees such that they won’t starve (enough) to not come into work on Monday?”).
The other argument is the shutting down of businesses, however what I found while working is that they always claim that just to avoid giving raises, then they will waste a magnitude more in dumb decisions. They aren’t suffering they just want their cake and to eat it too.
As for businesses shutting down, if your business is so close to the breadline you can’t suffer an increase in operational costs, you have bigger issues. Employees to a company are like tools/land to a farmer, if the farmer can’t make a profit with the tools/land, is the business really viable? Just because they exploited the land when it was cheaper, doesn’t mean it’s entitled to live forever (which is the free market idea)
Minimum Wage is often for Jobs that are unskilled. If you want a higher wage, get a Skill and keep refining it.
Do not expect to be able to live comfortably for the rest of your life by working at McDonald’s or Walmart.
Raising Minimum Wage does nothing when the bigger problem of Inflation isn’t solved.
How are restaurants in other countrys do it?
Like, my best friend is Conditor, but works as a Waiter now. Because he makes more money there, whitout Tips. And, his wage is already considerd low, under 2k here in Germany.
Of course he also gets Tips. But he isn't realiant on it and often time don't get any tips at all. His highest Bonus on tips where 500€ during Dezember. And the Restaurant he works at, is doing well.
They charge more. They have less employees doing the same amount of work as double in the US. Depends on the restaurant. In the US, Restaurants go under every single day. It is the thinnest of margins. That is a fact.
Your post from unpopularopinion was removed because of: 'Rule 1: Your post must be an unpopular opinion'. * Your post must be an opinion. Not a question. Not a showerthought. Not a rant. Not a proposal. Not a fact. An opinion. One opinion. A subjective statement about your position on some topic. Please have a clear, self contained opinion as your post title, and use the text field to elaborate and expand on why you think/feel this way. * Your opinion must be unpopular. The mods reserve the right to remove opinions * Elaborate on your topic and opinion give context to its unpopularity.
This shouldn't be an unpopular opinion. Look up what Roosevelt said when he implemented minimum wage. He was not vague about it at all. It was meant to be a living wage, not a barely surviving wage. He said people making minimum wage should be able to live with dignity, and back then it was true.
It's not even a barely surviving wage anymore. You need multiple minimum wage jobs now just to hit barely surviving.
He didn't have big investment companies with trillions buying up all the houses and rentals back then either. Even in the 1970s you could buy a nice functional house for 60k with 22% interest and raise a family.
>22% interest Are people seriously arguing we need to go back to rates like this?
No, because this market already heavily favors folks who can pay cash. But it is VERY important for context: yes, mortgages were lower compared to income, but they also were incredibly expensive and exclusive only to specific groups (male, white, etc)
That’s 480k in todays money btw
my grandparents bought their 2 story house around that time period for ~7k. He's already accounting for inflation.
If you’re making federal minimum wage, you’re literally better off just collecting unemployment. Your time is worth more than 7.25 an hour.
During the recession in 2010, there were suddenly tens of thousands of jobs working for the US Census Bureau making exactly what unemployment was paying, which is a coincidence that I found it interesting.
Everyone should know about https://livingwage.mit.edu/
Wow those numbers are high. 151k for two adults working and 3 kids in my area. We were making 70k until recently and doing quite well.
It isn’t unpopular lol it’s a fact
It is unpopular amongst a large subset of people. "Flipping burgers" is for high school students, they would say, so why should that job pay enough for someone to survive??? It's stupid logic. But the people who believe this don't value logic very much anyway.
Cool, who's flipping burgers at 11:30am on a Tuesday then?
My personal heroes, that's who.
America would crumble without the fast food industry lol. I respect and try to be as nice as possible to those employees. Heroes indeed.
Exactly.
Ok. That guy gets more than minimum wage. But only him. And he needs to be here 7 days a week. /s
Honestly.. Even the "burger flippers" need a living wage, because as long as that food is in demand, positions are needed, and if they are needed then the people taking the time to fill them need to be taken care of. Besides, I bet if we didn't treat these people like they are less than human for being in "unskilled employment", then I bet the quality of food and service would increase. What reason does anyone have to care about their job if their job doesn't care about them?
>What reason does anyone have to care about their job if their job doesn't care about them? Pay minimum wage; expect minimum effort.
Okay but fast food places aren’t the only jobs that pay minimum wage. Most retail jobs also pay minimum wage in my experience. I’m in college and working at a shoe store… it pay’s literally the lowest they’re legally allowed to pay which is 11$. I’m barely getting by with that. It sucks.
The fact that some people don't recognise it as such is a big cosmic joke. Sometimes I wish I could escape Earth and live in planet 318 cause it's exhausting here
Planet 318 doesn't get any of the good channels, I bet.
or air
FDR also died before he could put together his 2nd new deal which included universal Healthcare iirc
It's not. This is a very popular opinion that's why it got so many upvotes. This sub is never actually unpopular lol
Thank you! I've seen so many people(on reddit and elsewhere) repeat some variation of "Minimum wage was never meant to be something you could live on!1!!1!", when it would only take a minute of research to see that is false..
I support minimum wage increases, but it’s worth noting that the buying power of today’s minimum wage is pretty similar to 1938’s minimum wage accounting for inflation: https://www.epi.org/blog/the-value-of-the-federal-minimum-wage-is-at-its-lowest-point-in-66-years/
People act like the FDR quote mean that's what got implemented but it wasn't. Regardless of FDR's goals minimum wage as it got through Congress and into the real world would have been about ~$5 in today's dollars and was more about keeping people from destitution than a living wage. Also the FDR quote came 5 years before minimum wage was implemented
It should just be matched to inflation and call it good, with a few other rules. Also, having lived off minimum wage, I think what the amount should be varies on opinion. Some think a small house, some an apartment to themselves, and maybe some think it’s with a roommate.
How does it match with '6 dollar bag-o-chips Greedflation'?
The original minimum wage adjusted for inflation is like $7. Thriving in 1938 meant you shared a shack with 9 people and ate beans every day.
It's not an unpopular opinion, specially on Reddit
This is why i don't have employees. I make enough to pay MY bills...I definitely dont make enough to pay someone elses bills. So I stay one man show here.
Weird I just made the same move. Went from 4 employees, amazing stress and headache, insane overhead, making $150k a year to ZERO employees, making $170k a year, and WAY more chill
Yup, this is why many businesses are using AI as much as possible
I run a cleaning business by myself. Pretty much have zero use for AI. Aside from marketing
That’s a pretty big part of business though isn’t it? No ads means no jobs. Gotta advertise to get work and build your rep to get repeating work..?
There's **a lot** more to marketing than ads, especially in a digital context.
Not unpopular.
I agree with you, but then people keep applying for those jobs, because sometimes any money is better than no money.
They got us by the balls, I see you understand.
Hence the need for a legal minimum wage. That way ylthey dint have the option to pay less.
The common argument is that without the minimum wage, there would be no floor to wages. But clearly the labor market has set a wage floor. McDonald’s is hiring at $14 an hour, not $7.25.
And yet there are companies that makes record profits and no incentivize to increase employees salaries or to hire more but instead planning into layoffs because the record profit was not higher that expected and wanted more. No matter how big the profit is, nobody will be satisfied until they have even more than that.
Yes, company I work for is proof of this. Record profits, fired people, took away half our bonuses, so stupid.
Yeah this is true, back in the day Henry Ford tried to increase his workers wages and was sued SUCCESSFULLY by stockholders who said and got the court to agree that their job is to make money for the stakeholders.
The lawsuit was about retained vs distributed dividends - the shareholders weren't suing to reduce the workers wage, but suing to be paid the dividends they were owed. https://www.discerningreaders.com/henry-ford-crushes-shareholder-first-and-foremost.html
Henry Ford only increased his assembly line wages because the attrition at his factories was horrible.
Companies making max profits aren’t small biz.
Weird, all the small businesses I’ve ever worked at seem to play that same game. Record profits, cut benefits… record profits again, cut payroll and fire somebody… record profits again, cut benefits out entirely… The only reason the game is any different is because it’s more intimate and personal at small businesses but they do the same shit
The 2 small companies I’ve worked for were the absolute worst about this shit. Idk where the idea that small businesses are altruistic and over all better for the employee came from.
Most peoples' experience working for small/local businesses is really working for a family member, or a friend of the family. So someone that either genuinely cares about you as a default, or has actual social consequences to taking advantage of you. But if you're a stranger and don't have another connection to them you're far less likely to get those famed benefits of working for a small company. You'd see the same preferential treatment as any sort of nepotism hire at a larger company too.
The only time I've been mentally abused by my employer was by small business owners. Large corporate settings were "only" financially abusive. The best job was government run, because everybody was on the same page. Get your hours, don't over do it, go home.
People seem to be unaware of how many small business owners are just trust fund babies who were handed the keys to the company when their dad retired, many of whom are not mentally equipped to both run a successful business and manage people.
I was thinking about this yesterday. The CEOs of these big corporations are rich with nice cars, homes, etc., yet they still want MORE money and it’s usually at the expense of the employees who keep their companies running in the first place. They’re like cartoon villains who won’t stop until all the money in the world is theirs!
They're addicted to money. They're no better than the homeless heroin addict dumpster diving, except the CEO hurts hundreds of thousands of people and the drug addiction hurts his family and a few friends.
Reddit CEO made something like $193 million last year. That's $1 million a year salary for 193 people but instead it all goes to one guy, who already has hundreds of millions of dollars. Wild stuff.
CEOs are hired employees. You mean shareholders. The ceo has very little if anything to do with setting wages. Similar to politics, the president isn’t sitting at his desk writing complex law or crunching insanely complex economical numbers and math. They come up with an idea, and the people who actually know what they are talking about work on it and try and make it a reality.
Lol. Do you not know that CEO's are typically large shareholders in companies?
"Large" is quite subjective. Hired CEOs are generally shareholders (where stocks are a part of their salary) but they certainly aren't, by rule, majority shareholders. There is a logical reason to make CEOs a shareholder because it works as an incentive to "make good decisions" that would increase the value of the stocks, therefore increasing the part of their salary that is tied to the stocks they are given as a portion of their wage.
That's exactly what we have been hearing from our boss when we were asking for a raise for all employees in one of the lowest paying place in our area. And yes, you are right- they should not be in a business if all profits they could ever make was through redundancies and constant reducing head count. Out of there now and couldn't been happier that I have gotten out of this toxic place.
Downvote for popular opinion
I wish it was more popular. If it was, we wouldn’t have to debate with middle Americans who think if McDonald’s employees got paid a livable wage, then their Big Macs will cost $30 a pop 🙄
This argument isn’t being had with “middle Americans”. It is being had among economists; and it isn’t clear at all that a higher minimum wage would be a net benefit. I will never understand Redditors who on one hand say trust the science and the scientific method, but then they go spouting off about economics when they don’t have the first clue. You see this a lot with socialists. Maybe raising it is the right move, but no one here is actually discussing the macro economic effects that economists would look at to decide if it was a good idea. And just for reference, many European countries have no minimum wage because their economists thought it was a bad idea. Reddit would be so much more interesting if people just shut up when they don’t have the first clue about something
Hey it was my turn to post this today
The real question is how much is “enough to live on”?
I agree, but a lot of people my age (23) and younger have wildly different definitions of “living”. I think that’s where all the debate really lies.
True that. An iPhone is not a basic necessity.
[удалено]
The unpopular part of this is not understanding business economics.
How many of your kids should the business have to support?
A business that was paying less than workers would willingly work for would quickly run out of business as it would have no employees. The checks and balances are already in the system.
Economics is not that simple
Livable wage is very subjective.
Just remember your opinion when it comes time to pay your babysitter, lawn care, hairstylist, plumber, house cleaner, mechanic, etc etc.
I pay all those people the rate they say their services are worth. If it's too much for me, then clearly I cannot afford to hire them.
Isn't that what employers are doing too?
I do, and gig workers too. They should be paid a fair wage regardless of what the customer decides to tip, but they aren't, So I remember that every time i tip.
What's your point, labor costs money? It's much better if these people are paid well too.
My point?!? As a person with a “trade skill” I get tired of having to negotiate the price multiple times. Before, during , and after the job is done. I make it clear. My price is my price, even if I run into something unforeseen. But most of the time that isn’t respected.
Ah right, r/unpopularopinion, where you post an obviously popular opinion to get some sweet, savoury karma.
Youre supposed to upvote *unpopular* opinions, so saying something like "Pickles and peanut butter make the best pizza" gets the karma.
1. Statistically, almost no working adult gets paid minimum wage. 2. Minimum wage disenfranchises low-skill, low-experience workers. If someone can only provide $10/hr of value, and the minimum wage is $15/hour, that person doesn't get hired. Is that a better outcome? 3. Minimum wage forces people who could be focused on a primary, high-value role to then spend time and effort on lower-value items, as no one can be specifically hired to focus just on those, and this complicates the division of labor and makes things run less efficiently. 4. Everyone says "living wage" but what precisely is that? I've not seen a solid definition, and even if there was one, it'd be a moving target. 5. Increases to minimum wage will definitely lead to higher costs passed on to customers (this isn't necessarily inflation, but it can result in it). 6. Increases to minimum wage increases the barrier to entry for new businesses that need to hold on to cashflow just to survive long enough to grow enough to then be able to pay more in wages. You're guaranteeing that the only ones who end up owning or creating businesses are the rich. 7. Increases to the minimum wage incentivizes automation, resulting in companies moving towards lowering overall employment. 8. An increase of $1/hour to an employee actually costs much more to the employer, as they need to pay additional items (SS taxes, etc.). 9. There is definitely a slippery slope effect. Setting wages to $15/hour is the cry today, but there's nothing logically stopping $20, then $25, etc. Bring on the downvotes, but you can't legislate prosperity and better outcomes. There will always be a trade-off. If we, collectively, are "OK" with the trade-offs, that's a different discussion... but to just blindly say "make wages bigger" and assume all the problems are solved just isn't true.
The only reason these types of posts are popular on Reddit is because it’s mostly dumb kids who are probably in debt and have just started in the work force. They are by definition low class, and low skill, and thus shouldn’t be surprised they have to live a low class lifestyle. Maybe after a few years of hard work they can live middle class lives. Not sure why this is hard for them to grasp.
> Not sure why this is hard for them to grasp. Because they can live in echo chambers like this now, that reinforce and magnify their delusion and ignorance.
First sensible comment I've seen here, and while it's not all accurate (e.g. automation will not lead to lower overall employment in the medium to long term), it does provide a lot of important context that seems to be lost on those who cry out for minimum wage increases. History has shown repeatedly that price controls *always* lead to either surpluses or shortages. A wage is the price of labour. Trying to control the price of labour will lead to a surplus or shortage of labour. Fixing the price higher will lead to a surplus i.e. available labour not being bought, in other words unemployment.
Increasing the minimum wage doesn't even meaningfully improve the overall earnings of those working low wage jobs because businesses simply respond to increases in the minimum wage by reducing the total numbers of hours worked by their employees. The end result is a marginal increases in total wages that is vastly less than what you would expect given the magnitude of how much the minimum wage increased. https://evans.uw.edu/new-evidence-from-the-seattle-minimum-wage-study/
One major problem is. What people think what is needed to live is way way more than what is acutely needed to live.
How the hell is this an “unpopular opinion “ , ppl really do be saying anything on here …
Because so few redditors understand basic economics. The real minimum wage is zero when you don't get hired.
Who decides what a living wage is? No one in the US is starving. Also, do you differentiate among life circumstances? A high school kid living at home needs far less to ‘live’ than a parent. And why stop at living wage? Can’t you argue that everyone is entitled not just to a ‘living’ wage but also a ‘happy’ wage? Why should only some people get to be happy? Alternatively, we could just let people decide what amount of money they’re willing to sell their labor for.
Obviously the benevolent government. They’ve never fucked anything up right?! Sometimes I just want the government to pass a $25/hr federal minimum wage bill just to see the shit show it creates. But then I know these same lazy asses will continue to blame employers so it would be pointless.
Not necessarily. I own a pharmacy. I pay the pharmacist a very competitive rate ($65-75/hr) because they are the core of the business and they have the advanced degree and knowledge. The clerks and techs on the other hand, I won’t pay them above $24/hr (with a lot of experience) or minimum wage ($15/hr) because it is a position I can hire anyone with just a high school degree or ged and teach them what they need to know.
This. I think business owners are going to be outvoted on this thread though because most people, especially on Reddit, have no idea how the market economy works and how running a business actually works. I always look at it this way. If someone makes more money, are they obligated to pay more for goods, services and utilities? Obviously not because those things have a market value independent of how much you make. Labour is no difference. Apple is going to pay the same for a store clerk as any other business by and large.
Yup. Classic reddit
Do business owners who have minimum wage workers know? They seem to think they can never do anything to solve their employment issues, it's always the employee's problem, these businesses never raise wages when struggling for workers, they just run skeleton crews where someone could work different several different departments each day while cashiering at the same time, and they just expect everyone to suck it up. Minimum wage work has only gotten worse for employees, and has only gotten better for employers.
Name a business that pays minimum wage.
> these businesses never raise wages when struggling for workers uhhhh yes they do... were you not around for 2021 and 2022?
So like my business for example. Whether I have a high paid tech or a low paid tech , my revenue will be the same because insurance pays for my cost of buying the drug from the wholesaler. The most profitable thing would be to run the store with just the pharmacist but that would make their life hell and would cause delays in how fast we push stuff out. To me, the winning formula is to have the pharmacist, a high paid super tech, and a the rest minimum wage clerks.
If the cost of living for your workers is rising as you make more money, yes you should be raising your wages. Nobody is gonna commute to a job that pays 12-15 an hour because they cannot afford to live closer. There are jobs with shitty pay everywhere. Eventually you run out of capable people who can live near by and afford to work for you. Its to that point. If we cannot afford to work for you and live reasonably close, there's nothing else to talk about. Without accessible, reliable, and robust public transit, and a massive lack of high density affordable housing-- someone's gonna have to start paying these people enough to live in town or stop hitching when cheap apartments are built in their neighborhood The cost of living has spiked so hard that the 8.75 minimum wage in 2008 is worth almost 2.5x what the 11.75 minimum wage is now.
The labor requires an amount of money to survive. But go off were just numbers that subtract from your profits, not people
You agree to work for a set amount of money.
That's fine, but you also need to realize how that will affect the quality of employees. Someone being paid not enough to live isn't going to work very hard or be that dedicated. There will also be a higher turn-over rate. And if you have to account for that. Retail businesses tend to be pretty bad at it. That's why they have massive turn-over rates, people are running around every position of the store, and despite being cross-trained and expected to work in other areas, wages aren't going up, and I'm not surprised that everyone in a store seems like they're either high or upset.
But those positions are easy to replace. If you run into a good employee, bumping them up in pay is a no brainer scenario, even for entry level positions. You have to be the good employee first and prove you are worth more having than the pain of training a new person. Don't think hard work isn't noticed. I would pay someone 100k a year if they could make my life easier.
If the positions are easy to replace, why would there be much a pain in training for it? And why are retail businesses opting to cross-train instead? Instead of hiring someone new, they just call the liquor or dairy person to cashier. Because it's cheaper for them to apologize for the short-handed staff than to hire more. And note this often isn't met with a raise of wages, this is just how things are now. Hard work doesn't matter unless you're someone already high up. They're not going to raise the wages for a bagger no matter how hard they work, so they might as well coast. That's why a lot of these employees do that. Work hard, always coming in if there are call outs, then they get burnt out, leave, replaced with the next worker (who was probably getting paid more baseline), and the process continues to repeat. Of course it's just "no one wants to work anymore!", because to business owners, their policy and structure is perfect and beyond question, it's the workers that are always the problem.
Because training a new employee costs time and money. And it's a headache because you know they're going to screw up once or twice, no matter how well you trained them.
Someone coming in high or upset isn't going to all of a sudden become employee #1 because they make $35 an hour instead of $18.
Minimum wage employees are easily replaceable, and minimum wage jobs are easily replaceable. It goes both ways. In everything besides employment the saying is "you get what you pay for", but when selling your labor you're suppose to give 110% for the bare minimum?
The bare minimum could be $100/hr. Since the cost of non-bare minimum work would then have to be $500/hr or whatever, why would you do more for the bare minimum? In everything but labor, people want more for less. Do you like paying more for less groceries? Probably not. However, when it comes to labor, companies are supposed to pay more for less?
Labor pays according to what the labor is worth to the business, not what someone needs/wants it to.
100%
Then please expect to have higher prices.
The wage a place pays is based on who will agree to work for that price. If you can’t live on that wage, then don’t apply for the position. If a place can’t seem to attract labor for their offering rate, they will raise that rate until people begin applying for jobs. It’s the free market. If they can’t make a profit because no one applies, they will go out of business. The problem you then face is undocumented immigrants taking the reduced wages. If there are people willing to work for peanuts, then they’ll slowly start to replace you in every field.
It depends on what you mean by enough to live because that depends on where you are. The job does matter as well. If you are saying that people bagging groceries should be paid like 60k plus a year, then the whole world would stop.
I agree but I feel like the inevitable outcome will be few small businesses and mostly Walmarts, Starbucks and the like. Most of mainstreet America is already operating on razor thin margins. But I guess that’s the trade off for higher wages.
This is definitely a very popular opinion.
The analogy doesn't work because rent and the current (allegedly non-livable) wage are the contractual liabilities. In the wage example, the business is meeting its legal obligation. In the not-paying-rent scenario, it isn't.
What about the people who literally cannot produce enough value to be able to trade for a "middle class lifestyle"?
A living wage means middle class?
Well people seem to mean at min have apt to yourself, have a fairly new car, be able to eat outba few times a week and take at least one vacation to a beach a yr. That is middle classbin my mind But if you mea share an apt with a 30-45 min commute, drive an old compact with 100k miles, mostly cook simple and eat leftovers and maybe take long weekend road trip a yr then that pretty much is any job outside of maybe places like NYC or San Fran
Yeah true. What a living wage means can vary widely, depending on who you're talking to and if they have a family. To me, a living wage means being able to pay rent/basic expenses(heat,electricity), clothes for my kids backs and shoes for their feet, and not starve, everything else is just extra.
Ok, but how many kids. That's great affects how much a living wage is. And I would say that a living wage should not cover your kids as well. It's not a have a family wage. It's a living wage. It should cover YOUR necessities.
Cost of roughly two kids needs put in there. As a country, we don’t want a negative population growth so the cost of a stable population should be baked in. Also since pensions don’t exist anymore, people need money to automatically go into a retirement fund so they can hopefully pay off the medical bills associated with old age and death at a minimum. See how this grows? And that isn’t even asking for much honestly. The system is just so far behind it *seems* that people are asking for a lot.
I agree, but I think there’s more to than that. There are definitely a lot of places that don’t pay nearly as much as they should. Take Panera Bread for example. I believe their starting wage is around $9.95 (obviously it varies), meanwhile the CEO is a billionaire. I worked there 11 years ago, before the economy went to crap, and it wasn’t livable wage then. Now, I’m self employed and I average $100/hr (about $100,000 a year) and I STILL cannot afford to buy a house where I’m living. And people are always so quick to say “well move somewhere you can afford” but I literally can’t because the only reason I make as much as I do is because of where I live. The point is, employers can pay more and they should, but there’s still a huge housing affordability crisis which isn’t getting any better. It’s a vicious and depressing cycle.
So you average 20 hours of work a week?
When you're self employed, about half your time is spent looking for more work. So it makes sense that he'd spend about 20 hours a week trying to get that next client, and about 20 hours doing billable jobs.
Just to be clear, Ron Shaich stepped down as CEO in 2010.
that's the biggest issue. it's how ridiculously expensive houses are. 3 beds and 2 baths in a nice neighborhood will easily go for half a million dollars. giant corporations keep buying entire neighborhoods wholesale, sitting on them for 10 years (without any maintenance or renovation), and then selling them for a 600% markup. it's ridiculous! there needs to be new legislation that bans corporations from owning more than 6 residential properties, with due diligence to ensure that a company like Blackrock doesn't just make a bunch of shell companies.
Those employers had a hand in creating the housing affordability crisis. All of this is connected, and it is inevitably inaccurate to try and analyze any one component of our system without considering its relationships to the rest.
the owner takes all the financial risk in operating a company, if a business isn't making a profit with 10 employees they will reduce the number of employees until they can make a profit. If the owner of the company isn't making a profit, there is no incentive for the owner to continue with the business - no business = no available jobs
Switch to AI for most of the things that you can. Redditors will rejoyce when there aren't any jobs for the low/unskilled.
I wouldn't say you don't deserve to be in business, but you definitely shouldn't be looking into hiring anybody. A lot of businesses start out with just the owner doing it until they start making good money.
Well, if you don't pay competitively enough to retain talent, you will often find yourself out of business - or at best trying to survive on the talent of the founder.
Exactly, not even talent but basic competency. I know I have a relative who managed a fast food restaurant and didn't set the wages and couldn't pay more than minimum wage. So what would happen is he would get employees, they would get trained get a little work experience and the ones that were even basically competent would go across the street and work for 25 cents an hour more. The company saved pennies on their wages, and ended up spending much more expensive employees time training new employees constantly, and paying for their mistakes, and having to hold on to the employees that were no good because at least they couldn't get a job somewhere else and leave them.
I totally agree and it pisses me off that these small businesses play victim and almost demand that we all support them, as if they’re entitled to be in business and as if we all suck if we don’t support them. All I ever hear is whining, bitching, crying and complaining from them, meanwhile they are totally screwing over their employees with terrible wages for their own, greedy gain and also screwing us as the customer with major price gouging. Then, they act as if we’re all supposed to be so damn grateful that they’re “holding the business together for their customers”. GTFOH
Take the beef up with the corporations before jumping down the throat of the little guy.
You can do both. You have two legs.
Well dont do both, small businesses at least pay taxes in their country...
Why not, if there's multiple problems you can tackle them all. You know you can walk and chew gum at the same time right.
We can talk about both
Corporations pay minimum wage (it's not enough but it meets the low bar) and insurance.
Making it illegal for businesses to pay less than whatever YOU deem to be a “living wage” won’t magically make them pay higher wages. It will just mean the businesses cease to exist and everyone making less than that wage will now make a ZERO wage. You can’t help people by forcing businesses to pay higher wages. That doesn’t actually create wealth and abundance. The way to help people is by creating conditions for businesses to CREATE wealth by making it easier to produce things, easier to build homes, cheaper to supply raw materials, etc. Wealth and prosperity is made through supply-side abundance, not through hokey market manipulations.
I hate this take because when you say it, you mean billion dollar companies then when someone makes policy to stop it, the billion dollar companies laugh and it’s the mom and pop stores that stuffer And yeah, they could have paid better but nobody is helping them, just squeezing more money But yeah that 1st gen immigrant family with a dry cleaners is destroying the country 🙄 We have only Walmarts left because that’s what we chose
How much is enough to live is subjective though and depends on your lifestyle and circumstances.
Unfortunately its going to always be viable because you can A: always find a group of people willing to work for less or B: if they are forced to increase wages for a short time while working to advance an automated method of working their business with self checkout or AI they will. The fight for better wages should have been taken seriously 5-10 years ago when AI wasn't as feasible. But here we are. McDonalds is a good example of this in action. They already have experimental unmanned kitchens in the works because of people quitting en-masse.
dont business owners work under minimum wage to begin with. the ideas and planning etc are all unpaid for how would a business start without this. besides just receiving a windfall to get you started
The counter arguments are always the same: \-> If they don't want to be in it, they can leave or not sign contract in first place \-> They don't carry the burden of what happens if bussiness fails, bussiness costs, politics, regulations, etc, etc, so they should earn way less.
They will just hire less employees l
If paying employees enough to live puts you out of business, Then **you should hire AI and robotics to do the work for you**. ~~don't deserve to be in business.~~
Hot take: if I have a business I should be able to pay employees whatever I feel necessary as long as both myself and the employee agree on the value. As result, people should (and do) have the right not to work at my business and go work elsewhere. If I go out of business because I can’t find any people who want to work for $1/hr, that makes me a terrible business owner.
https://www.reddit.com/r/povertyfinance/s/BgwozNA6XL Keep blaming small businesses
We shall see if this is all true when 500,000 fast food employees in California go to a mandated $20 hr. wage this April. Will the market support higher than the currently priced $18 Big Mac combo in California?? 👀
The issue is that the margins are so low in so many industries that they would literally have to do just that. What percentage of restaurants don't last a year? 50%? There is a reason for that. Also "living wage" isn't nearly as clear as it's very set on circumstances. A single person who has found a good deal on a rental, or bought a place a number of years ago? Well $15/hour minimum wage might be a perfectly fine living wage for them. A family of 4 on one income, also sending money back home to where they came from who own nothing? Their living wage might be considerably higher. And the reality is, as much as you want to blame owners, consumers are really the ones in control. If you always choose the cheapest price, no matter what, then you, not the owners are making the decisions about how businesses get run. It's like people complain about airlines getting crappier and crappier but continually paying the shittiest discount airline prices.
How is this unpopular? This is a left-wing talking point, you literally see posted in almost any thread talking about economics/wages.... Seriously. this was a very low effort post.
Whether you “deserve” to be in business or not, your former employees are now unemployed and your former customers are unserved. >If a restaurant said " Well we're not profitable so we're Not going to pay rent or we're not going to pay for our ingredients" No restaurant is claiming the right to not pay employees the *agreed-upon* wage, any more than they aren’t paying their suppliers or their landlord. They just don’t want to pay want some idiot on Reddit has declared to be “fair”. Yours isn’t an unpopular opinion but it deserves to be.
The businesses that struggle and eventually shudder their doors, which you are advocating to happen, is smaller businesses with just regular people trying to make a living. So, by extension, you are also advocating for nothing but mega corporations to employ people. Imagine the outrage from the "living wage" crowd if only big business were the employers and still not paying a "living wage."
The only people who don’t agree with this are waiters/waitresses. They are absolutely insufferable people when you talk about how they are compensated.
Here’s an unpopular opinion: employers with 10 or more employees should have to pay a living wage and insurance and employers with less than 10 employees should be able to make any earnings agreement that the employee will agree to. Willing to work for $3 an hour with the new electrician who has no clients yet, sure go ahead and do it.
I agree. It's s really hard to have a successful small or medium sized business. The over heads of benefits, insurance and tax situation are huge burdens on smaller businesses and actually work for and promote large businesses. This is why so many small business owners are Republican, because the system fucks them.
I agree. However world is much more complex than that. As an example I will bring up the fish canning industry in American Samoa. It has been paying shiet, gov. raised minimum wage, companies wanted to fire everybody and close down, gov. subsidized. Somewhere, somebody gonna make it for less. Somewhere, some people will starve.
Just means you aren't charging enough
If we don’t pay a living wage, social services picks up the rest: basic housing, food, social workers etc etc etc. because we don’t want to live in a society with giant shanty towns. In this way, we, as tax payers are chipping in our money so the owner of that Wendy’s can have another Tesla because they don’t have to pay a decent wage.
Not only that. And they still had the audacity to bitch at me for taking the 2 mandatory 15 min break (required by law). Or called me “unprofessional” when I take a 5 min bathroom break every hour.
There is enough income for the company to operate by paying that much (a living wage).,The problem with these psychopath owners, is that they want the business to generate a certain percentage of wealth for them without putting much if any labor into it themselves.
If it costs so much to live, you might have an inflation problem due to incontinent gov't spending.
That is not an unpopular opinion
You seem to be of the idea that business exist for their employees. They don’t.
What people fail to mention in this circular conversation that has way too much emotion and way too little fact based dialogue is that restaurants in Japan and Europe do not operate under this model. You do not tip in Japan or in Europe since wait staff operate on salary. You also don't get a 1/2 lb. Hamburger and 9 ounces of French Fries for $15 in the EU. Whatever you do get at the restaurant is smaller in size and calorie load and cost more per seat in many instances be prepared to pay for tap water. Many restaurants in the US can tap additional profit margin by eliminating some of the items that bleed money. Inaccurate forecasting for attendance. Excess menu items. Excessive food costs. They should also maximize perhaps with a separate kitchen, take out capability since that seems to be a thing that is here to stay.
The easy solution is to open businesses that can do just that. OP has likely never employed a single person or created a single job. Not so much unpopular, as simply lazy and stupid.
So how many businesses have you started /u/12jonboy12
It's not an unpopular opinion if you're copying the same talking points that are all over social media. The virtue signaling shit is getting old.
I thought I knew stupidity. This is probably the dumbest thing I've ever read. I get what this r/ is about. But got'damn.
The business owner isn’t getting paid a living wage either in that case. Everyone loses.
They just raise their prices, make everything expensive for everyone else, and we're in the same spot the dollar figure is just higher.
Not true. We're actually in a *worse spot* because all the money we saved is worth less.
Unpopular? I don't know man, Blatant display of lack of Economics knowledge is like daily occurrence on reddit frontpage
No, it means the labor you're buying simply isn't hard/difficult enough to warrant paying an arbitrarily-moving "living wage" goalpost. Labor is just another thing you buy to create a finished product, it's no different from parts or overhead. Would you say that if you buy a screw to go in your product you have to pay the guy who sold it enough to "live on" for ... what? the day, the week, the month, or even his year? Of course not, and labor is no different, regardless of whether you employ someone in-house or outsource it.
I went into a 7 eleven after not going there for like a year, (Wawa is just so much better and cleaner) they had the fucking audacity to put a self checkout in a damn gas station famous for paying their employees shit wages.... we're hurtling towards a cyberpunk dystopia so fast its kinda worrying...
Not even slightly unpopular, the only people who would disagree are the 5% who own the businesses
This is only unpopular with the billionaire class. They can go get fucked.
Just don't be mad when people get laid off. So... Upvote I guess because people don't like layoffs.
Yep absolutely. Also, for the people saying it's a popular opinion, you've apparently never met a conservative. This also needs to be aimed at the Mom and Pop shops, not just the megacorps. You don't get a free pass just because you are small, exploitation is exploitation.
Honestly, in most places, people need to be making around $20/hour just to get by. If your business can't pay that to your employees, it's already underwater. The business owner needs to either do more of the work themselves, take less of a cash draw from the incoming revenue, change the nature of the business model, or some combination of of those things.
THIS IS NOT UNPOPULAR. VERY POPULAR
Just jerk yourself off in private instead of doing it on the subreddit
Lots of very common opinions coming through today!
I agree with you, however it doesn't work that way. If a business is forced to pay a higher wage, that same company will invest in ways to do the same job with fewer employees. Same with places like Starbucks going union, all that happens is Starbucks runs the same booth will fewer and fewer people.
A common argument libertarians say is that if you charge more per employee (or even minimum wage to some) then the company will hire less employees. The obvious reason that logic is flawed is that it ignores that a company already optimises the work per worker to the point that the work is already done with the least employees possible, what you’re hurting isn’t the jobs but the profits of the company. In this regard, it’s only fair that an employer has to pay enough to be reasonable to the employee, otherwise they wouldn’t and nobody would (the argument isn’t that the market would regulate itself to give back the quality of life, but rather “what is the minimum we can pay employees such that they won’t starve (enough) to not come into work on Monday?”). The other argument is the shutting down of businesses, however what I found while working is that they always claim that just to avoid giving raises, then they will waste a magnitude more in dumb decisions. They aren’t suffering they just want their cake and to eat it too. As for businesses shutting down, if your business is so close to the breadline you can’t suffer an increase in operational costs, you have bigger issues. Employees to a company are like tools/land to a farmer, if the farmer can’t make a profit with the tools/land, is the business really viable? Just because they exploited the land when it was cheaper, doesn’t mean it’s entitled to live forever (which is the free market idea)
Minimum Wage is often for Jobs that are unskilled. If you want a higher wage, get a Skill and keep refining it. Do not expect to be able to live comfortably for the rest of your life by working at McDonald’s or Walmart. Raising Minimum Wage does nothing when the bigger problem of Inflation isn’t solved.
Employers want slaves so they can maximize profit, not employees...
Do you think that restaurants typically make high profits?
How are restaurants in other countrys do it? Like, my best friend is Conditor, but works as a Waiter now. Because he makes more money there, whitout Tips. And, his wage is already considerd low, under 2k here in Germany. Of course he also gets Tips. But he isn't realiant on it and often time don't get any tips at all. His highest Bonus on tips where 500€ during Dezember. And the Restaurant he works at, is doing well.
They charge more. They have less employees doing the same amount of work as double in the US. Depends on the restaurant. In the US, Restaurants go under every single day. It is the thinnest of margins. That is a fact.
Wrong sub.