US Presidential Election XII

[BigMacPhisto]

I agree that it's not the ideal, just that it's a smarter option for the poor and uneducated than merely moving from place to place where the rent is cheap because that's just a poverty trap.

My girlfriend is an engineer and chose to switch jobs to work in San Francisco again recently. But me? I'm kind of in the same boat where the field I work in pays so much more in SF due to the high minimum wage being a starting point that it would be stupid to work anywhere else. Sitting on BART for both of us is pretty chill though since you don't have to do anything but sit.

The cost of living in San Francisco that BVS points out has nothing to do with the minimum wage. For one thing, I'd imagine the majority of workers earning the current SF minimum or close to it don't even live in the city (frankly, it would be too unaffordable for anyone on that sort of hourly wage). Secondly, the minimum wage has done nothing whatsoever to raise the cost of housing in the city. That has everything to do with high paying tech workers moving here in droves. The high rents would be the same if the minimum wage here were $7.25 or if it were $15, it's not going to make a difference.

 

[BigMacPhisto]

I worked so hard to get to 15 and to be honest if I could move back to Indiana and make 15 again working at the grocery store, I'd be tempted to. It would be a lot less stressful than my life is in Los Angeles making a little more than that was.

I think there would be a lot of shifting around that would happen, but I think people like you and me are in the minority. A lot of people really do care about being able to say they work in an office doing blah blah blah instead of serving in a restaurant, working in a grocery store, etc.

To me, it is an equation that makes little sense. Like why on earth would you want the stress? I can guarantee now that a lot of office workers in Kansas are making the same or just a bit more than me (and they have way more expenses - kids, car payments, go out to eat more, etc.) and are stressed to the max while I sit in a chair a few days a week and do nothing. I certainly know which is preferable...

I also think there's been a seismic shift in culture where the idea of working in a certain industry might make you a better catch for the opposite sex has gone out the window...I absolutely don't think that matters anymore in the modern world. The good looking surfer bus boy who makes $12 an hour after tips is in a better position than the socially awkward engineer who makes $100,000 a year, especially if both are looking to date women that could care less about their partners earnings.

But again, even when the social advantage is near meaningless, I do think millions of Americans still care and would rather make half the hourly rate working in something "respectable" than if they were a garbageman.

 

[martha]

You should probably investigate housing costs in Kansas compared to SF before you generalize like that.

 

[Diemen]

In election news, Hillary gave a very strong speech last night in Reno on the danger of Donald Trump's rhetoric.

 

[BVS]

The cost of living in San Francisco that BVS points out has nothing to do with the minimum wage. For one thing, I'd imagine the majority of workers earning the current SF minimum or close to it don't even live in the city (frankly, it would be too unaffordable for anyone on that sort of hourly wage). Secondly, the minimum wage has done nothing whatsoever to raise the cost of housing in the city. That has everything to do with high paying tech workers moving here in droves. The high rents would be the same if the minimum wage here were $7.25 or if it were $15, it's not going to make a difference.

THIS has absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue we were discussing. The issue we were discussing is your preposterous claim that a raise in minimum wage wouldn't effect cost of product.

If you have a coffee shop in smaller city in TX and there's an increase in the minimum wage than that coffee shop's overhead goes up tremendously, so in order to meet those needs you will have to raise the cost of your product.

Now the same size coffee shop in SF will not be effected as much because the overhead increase will not be as much.

You can get away with paying a barista the current minimum wage in small town TX, but in order to be competitive in high cost of living markets you are more than likely already paying baristas above the current minimum wage.


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[womanfish]

Sure, but I don't really understand the problem here. If you're making $20 an hour at an office job and now the guy at Burger King is suddenly making $15 an hour, you're still making more money at that office job. Getting a raise will depend on how your employer feels about the situation.

If there actually is a lack of people wanting to work because they're suddenly barely making more than the burger flipper, then the employer will raise the wages. But that's unlikely given how things actually work in our economy. So, you can either keep what you're earning or let somebody else take your place which is how the world works with expendable workers and an unemployment level constantly at 5% and an underemployment level that is beyond woeful.

On a personal level, I do think your average American cares about prestige. They don't want to buy a used car that's dented, for example, even if there's a nice discount. So if stressing the fuck out for two dollars more an hour than the burger flipper is an option, I think most of these people will still do it. It's kind of a soulless way to live your life and depressing, but there's no doubt in my mind that's what could happen. Again, nobody is forcing you to work a certain job.

I personally think the problem has lied at the bottom of the pyramid in terms of compensation and the people at wages below $15 or those hovering just above it are the ones that will get a boost from all of this. If you're making $40 an hour, you shouldn't expect jack shit from your boss just because the federal minimum is now $15. You're well compensated already and the problem isn't that everybody isn't being compensated fairly or that you need to always have the same amount of money more than whatever the federal minimum happens to be. Honestly, that's a shitty way to live your life to start whining that you need even more than $40 an hour because you're annoyed that the burger flipper now gets $15. People seem perfectly fine in Socialist-leaning European countries with a smaller divide between rich and poor and they hypothetically do have a much closer gap between their entry level jobs and careers.

If flipping burgers for the same or less were really more appealing, then we'll start seeing people jump ship. I don't think that will actually happen. San Francisco office workers will probably be expected to get $20 starting everywhere by the time $15 minimum rolls around in 2018, etc.. Plus a lot of places would have a bunch of extra income flow thanks to the higher minimum wage floor which in turn could lift wages.

I don't think that he means, if you're making 20 bucks an hour in an office and a burger flipper starts making 15, you want more. It's If you started at 13 bucks an hour at your office job 4 years ago, and you had a Bachelors degree with student debt, and now you're making 16.50/hr after 4 years, and you're doing a job that requires some education and skill.
Then a person comes in with a high school education filing papers, and is making 15 bucks an hour off the bat.
I think it does make for a sticky situation for those types of situations.

To be honest, i bet most fast food managers make about 16-17 bucks an hour. Imagine when their whole crew of cashiers and grill cooks are upped to 15? Companies may account for this and want to boost everyone up a bit, to avoid issues within the workplace. But then you run into cost limitations.

I know that this would all be phased in gradually, and that would most likely be the saving grace. That hopefully all pay would gradually rise at a faster rate, as the minimum wage was inching up.

I'm hoping for at least a boost to 12 at the federal level, phased in over 4 years of so and then indexed

 

[Irvine511]

In election news, Hillary gave a very strong speech last night in Reno on the danger of Donald Trump's rhetoric.

and this is why i'm glad she's the nominee.

yes, she's more to the left of Sanders on economics and foreign policy, however that makes her actual policies more acceptable to middle-of-the-road Republicans, and even some of the Chamber of Commerce Crowd. it's because of the mainstream nature of these positions that enables her to shift the discussion to be about Trump's unacceptableness -- that he's literally courting the darkest elements in American society that no mainstream American, conservative or liberal, would ever want to be associated with. she's able to tie him to the fringe because her other positions are mainstream and thus the differences between her and mainstream Republican thought are moot in comparison to the differences between Trump and mainstream Republicans on race, religion, etc. this is why her lead is huge in places like Virginia and Colorado.

if it were Sanders, we'd be discussing his economic policies and lack of interest in foreign policy -- because Sanders' positions on these topics are less acceptable to the mainstream. it's a fight for the center, as these things always are, and the more Trump is tied to these alt-right barbarians, the more she peels away even the center-right. or they just stay home.

 

[iron yuppie]

THIS has absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue we were discussing. The issue we were discussing is your preposterous claim that a raise in minimum wage wouldn't effect cost of product.

If you have a coffee shop in smaller city in TX and there's an increase in the minimum wage than that coffee shop's overhead goes up tremendously, so in order to meet those needs you will have to raise the cost of your product.

Now the same size coffee shop in SF will not be effected as much because the overhead increase will not be as much.

You can get away with paying a barista the current minimum wage in small town TX, but in order to be competitive in high cost of living markets you are more than likely already paying baristas above the current minimum wage.

The general points you are making here are something of an argument against mandated minimum wage increase, I think, in that the affordability of many service-industry products, like coffee or fast food or cell phone service, is what drives a lot of employment in the US. If a small coffee at Dunkin Donuts suddenly cost $3 instead of $1.50 or whatever based on minimum wage increases, I think you would see a rise in unemployment rates as some of those jobs were consolidated or eliminated.

The relentless consumer pressure to drive prices down on commodities is a real hurdle to wage rises, ironically so because the people who expect lower prices are often the same ones working in jobs where wages would benefit from slightly higher prices.

 

[iron yuppie]

if it were Sanders, we'd be discussing his economic policies and lack of interest in foreign policy -- because Sanders' positions on these topics are less acceptable to the mainstream. it's a fight for the center, as these things always are, and the more Trump is tied to these alt-right barbarians, the more she peels away even the center-right. or they just stay home.

This is a genuine question: what does the political "mainstream" mean to you? I wonder if that term has much usefulness in a political climate that is statistically polarized and becoming more so with each passing day.

 

[BVS]

The general points you are making here are something of an argument against mandated minimum wage increase, I think, in that the affordability of many service-industry products, like coffee or fast food or cell phone service, is what drives a lot of employment in the US. If a small coffee at Dunkin Donuts suddenly cost $3 instead of $1.50 or whatever based on minimum wage increases, I think you would see a rise in unemployment rates as some of those jobs were consolidated or eliminated.

The relentless consumer pressure to drive prices down on commodities is a real hurdle to wage rises, ironically so because the people who expect lower prices are often the same ones working in jobs where wages would benefit from slightly higher prices.

It's not a blanket argument against, because I think we're far behind where we should be. But we should expect price increases, to not understand that is to not understand this subject. Now there are other factors that come in play as well, but a blanket national increase to 15 may not be the magic fix they think it is.


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[iron yuppie]

It's not a blanket argument against, because I think we're far behind where we should be. But we should expect price increases, to not understand that is to not understand this subject. Now there are other factors that come in play as well, but a blanket national increase to 15 may not be the magic fix they think it is.

Well yes, of course inflation will happen. If wages don't correspond, that is symptomatic of some combination of consumer expectations and globalization pressures. I agree that a rapid, generalized increase in minimum wage is a problematic idea.

 

[BigMacPhisto]

I was never arguing that price increases wouldn't happen as they surely would, but that the value of the minimum wage never decreases as long as you tie it to the consumer price index. A $15 minimum wage will boost prices but then the next year you increase the $15 wage due to those price increases, so it is basically the same year-to-year.

Evidence of unemployment has shown that the minimum wage has no real effect and it actually increases employment and earnings for businesses that cater to these people, etc. I am in agreement that it hurts restaurants tremendously as the business model is literally just built on the simple model of wage and food costs versus what you're charging the customer. There's no way around the fact that many of these places would probably just have to shutter immediately although some of them would make up for a lot of the wage increases by customers being able to pay higher prices. But at the end of the day, it's not surprising because this sort of work is basically the least necessary in society (people don't need to eat out, per se) and is the first destination where automation is going to take over quickly for obvious reasons.

There's evidence that raising the minimum wage helps raise the wage floor for others, so the lower middle class in particular could expect a nice little boost. If they don't get one, they had better put up a stink or just switch to some easier job making nearly as much. That's kind of on the individual at that point.

For what it's worth, the federal minimum wage would have been over $11 an hour near the end of the sixties after you adjust for 2016 inflation. I think you could easily bump it up that high immediately and then stagger in the price increases on an annual basis. It's only the first major jump in these sort of things that really screws with the businesses that are built on cheap labor or barely getting by. After that, it's pretty nominal to go up a buck a year when you take into account inflation and the like.

 

[Dfit00]

If the tipping culture were to be eliminated, the entire restaurant industry would be wiped out in a second.

Restaurants literally force their customers to pay their wait staff based on a "service" that is paid based on performance, not choice. There is no way an average restaurant can secure a $15K-$30K annual average salary for every waiter they have working for them, apart from other staff and massive fixed and variable costs overhead.

Certainly the restaurant and all the service industry would be one of the most affected by a raise in the minimum wage but it does not encompass the entire raw effect to the economy as a whole. Some workers in different industries get benefited while others don't.

 

[Axver]

If the tipping culture were to be eliminated, the entire restaurant industry would be wiped out in a second.

Funny, we have no tipping culture in Australia and a thriving restaurant industry.

Tipping is seriously one of the worst aspects of the US. Fuck you, restaurant owner, pay your own goddamn employees.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Yeah that's an absurd statement. If tipping were eliminated, food item costs would rise and overall bill prices would remain the same. The additional 10-15% a restaurant would save from having to tip an employee is not what keeps them alive.

The only downfall is that you legitimately tend to get lesser service without people tipping. Mix that with the fact that higher end restaurants would fail to be lucrative 50k jobs for some employees... you'd definitely see prices go way up in order for restaurants to be able to uphold certain qualities of service. But, at the end of the day, the consumer's price doesn't change and that's what matters most for a business. How much cash is coming in the door.

 

[Axver]

The only downfall is that you legitimately tend to get lesser service without people tipping.

Some people say this in Australia, but I really don't agree with them. I actually wasn't entirely comfortable with some service in the US. Are you really being nice to me, or are you just faking it to extract a little bit extra out of my wallet? At least here if the wait staff are nice to me (which is almost always), I know it's because they're being genuine.

Mix that with the fact that higher end restaurants would fail to be lucrative 50k jobs for some employees...

Maybe to some extent, but although we have no expectation of tipping here, at high end restaurants it is not an unusual practice, especially not at those targeting an international clientele. Most people won't tip, but the few who do will leave something sizeable. I know a couple of people who worked in such establishments and made just as much or more from tips as from their wages (I don't recall what their hourly rate was, but it would've been well above our minimum wage of $17.70).

 

[LuckyNumber7]

The answer to your question... yes they're just being nice for your money. Or they were strangely welcoming because they adored your accent. Who knows. I think you were probably thinking about it too much.

Having lived in both the US and the UK and also having done my fair bits of travel here or there, I can definitely attest to the overall dining experience being more attentive and efficient in the US. I certainly do think that equipping the consumer with some buying power changes not only how a waiting staff behaves, but also it changes the type of individual who maintains a waiting staff position. People in the US have careers waiting tables. More often in the UK I've noticed it's a summer job or part time position for someone young.

 

[Caleb8844]

Everyone in customer service jobs is being only being nice to you for your money (or their job security - same thing), tips or not. Not only do they not actually like us, they probably actively hate us


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[Headache in a Suitcase]

If you've ever worked in customer service you'd understand why. People are the worst

 

[mikal]

If you've ever worked in customer service you'd understand why. People are the worst

Yep. I was once called a n*gger over the phone once. I politely told him that using that word is inappropriate and that I'm also white. He said "I don't care. You're still a n*gger".


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[DaveC]

i was once called the same thing over the phone by a redneck from arizona because i was only authorized to remove $600 of data and text overages off his daughter's phone, and not the full $2400 she racked up in one month, as he demanded. this was after i had spent 10 minutes arguing with my boss to try to get any amount i could authorized for the guy. you're welcome, bud.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

That's charming .

If you've ever worked in customer service you'd understand why. People are the worst

Yep. My whole family has worked retail at some point, and my sister worked in fast food. We've all got our own horror stories of dealing with customers. When we lived in Colorado, my mom had to deal with two rich women who came into the Pier 1 store she worked at right at closing time, and from the way they were wandering around the store it was clear they weren't doing the whole, "Pop in real quick, look around, and leave" thing, that they were actually planning on staying there and properly shopping.

My mom kept trying to tell them the store was closing and get them to leave, and they started yelling at her and going on about how rich they were and how they had the right to go wherever they wanted, and they were going to call the manager (who wasn't there) and complain and so on.

My mom actually missed her first bus home because of them, and got home really late as a result, and by the time she did she was about in tears because of how nasty they were to her.

And when I worked at our local bookstore, I had the creepiest customer ever come in one day. He was clearly mentally off, so on the one hand I felt kind of bad for him, but...the way he was behaving just REALLY unsettled me, and I was so grateful when he left the store. I would be very scared if he ever got his hands on a gun, let's just put it that way.

I've had a few nice customers when working retail, mind, so it's not all nightmare stories. But yes, there are some really entitled, obnoxious people out there that can make that sort of work very dehumanizing very quickly.

On that note, for anyone who has worked in the customer service industry, there's a great book out there called, "The Customer is NOT Always Right" that's worth reading. I remember one story from that book about a woman who tried to return a used toothbrush to a store...and that wasn't the weirdest part of that story.

Spoiler

Turns out she somehow thought it was a pregnancy test that wasn't working right. Yeeeeeeeah.

 

[BEAL]

Yep. I was once called a n*gger over the phone once. I politely told him that using that word is inappropriate and that I'm also white. He said "I don't care. You're still a n*gger".


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That would have been the best day of my life.


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[Oregoropa]

Found the guy who called you

https://youtu.be/PnO6ai0Ktro


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[iron yuppie]

Are you really being nice to me, or are you just faking it to extract a little bit extra out of my wallet? At least here if the wait staff are nice to me (which is almost always), I know it's because they're being genuine.

I don't see what the motivation for being courteous could possibly matter. It's just an hour in a restaurant, not choosing a life partner or something.

 

[Diemen]

Found the guy who called you

https://youtu.be/PnO6ai0Ktro


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It's cute how the right is trying to dodge Trump's ongoing ties with racists by bringing up Byrd.

 

[Irvine511]

Funny, we have no tipping culture in Australia and a thriving restaurant industry.



Tipping is seriously one of the worst aspects of the US. Fuck you, restaurant owner, pay your own goddamn employees.

I loved my month in Australia, but I didn't love the general indifference of servers in restaurants. I find the over-friendliness of a family chain restaurant to be unseemly, but on the whole, I find much better, attentive, and even knowledgable service in the US.

What grates waiters over here is when they get a table of internationals who feign ignorance of the tipping culture here. Like they've never read a guide book. My friend still talks about a big table of Icelandic women who ran up a $790 bill and left $800.

 

[Oregoropa]

It's cute how the right is trying to dodge Trump's ongoing ties with racists by bringing up Byrd.

On the subject of dodging you never responded to my comments on Trumps speech on page 20. Where you claimed the only policy presented in Trumps Wisconsin speech was increased law enforcement.

The Byrd video was a coincidental choice because in the video he says white n*ggers twice. Thought it was fitting for the phone call the poster received


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[corianderstem]

Ugh, a tipping conversation.

 

[DaveC]

well such a thing does tend to follow from a minimum wage conversation usually.