Did someone get addicted to exploiting cheap labor?
What’s that? Restaurant owner wants handouts? Tough luck bud, it’s a free market and if you can’t compete that’s on you!
You want all the reward of being a capitalist with none of the risk. Come back to me when you’ve gotten over your entitlement!
“Business owners take risks that’s why they should be paid a lot of money”
“Of course minimum wage shouldn’t be higher, then the business owner can’t afford to run their business”
“Of course the business owner should be compensated! They couldn’t know the market would crash, it would be unfair to punish them for events of chance!”
It’s wild how people think it’s a divine right to own a business where you can underpay workers.
Economists are to capitalism what priests were to feudalism
I thought this was UlyssesT for a moment
That’s either a compliment or an insult and there’s no real way to know
Inside of you are two UylessesTs
this could get messy
I hate how these fuckers complain while poor people are suffering more than them.
“Waaaaaa I can’t use near slave labour to get rich off my shitty restaurant, waaaaaa”
Good. Fuck you.
Remember how the capitalist class kept blaming inflation on the meager COVID relief checks sent to individuals but conveniently overlooked the much larger amount given to small businesses? And how easy it was for them to fraudulently inflate the losses reported?
Damn, business owners will have to work instead of play golf and wrack up harassment lawsuits.
It’s fine, they can still golf all they want so long as they dial back on the harassment lawsuits by about 10%.
buckling up for Economy Crashed Because Wages Too High headlines in 2025
Salute to the glorious socialist state of CCCalifornia for literally executing the petty bourgeoise by creating a minimum wage that is almost enough to scrape by on
“My wage slaves! Curse them for wanting a better paycheck!”
$20 USD/hr is a pretty good wage gd. I’m sure you can’t afford to live in SF for that but I bet you’re probably able to gather some savings at least in a lot of the lesser towns with that.
national minimum wage would be like 25 if it kept pace with productivity since the 1970s
inflation pre-covid, no idea what the fuck it should be now. something like twice as much if it was on pace with executive plundering.Isn’t national minimum wage in the US $7.25? I don’t live in the US but I know y’all didn’t have 300% inflation in the past 4 years
They’re talking about the decoupling of productivity and wages in the late 70s. If wages had increased in line with productivity increases minimum wage would be like $28-30/hr. The highest minimum wage (adjusted for inflation) was in 1968 and would be about $15/hr today. The real theft is that we produce so much more surplus value than 40 years ago and receive none of it in compensation.
yeah, productivity. that’s what i get for posting tired
It’s been 7.25 since 2009. From a quick google it says rent increases (what actually matters to minimum wage employees, not CPI) have outpaced inflation at about 9% increase per year. So, going with that, 7.25(1.09)^15 is about $26.41.
You need to add that 9% to the average rate of inflation, so this should actually be higher.
Edit: 7.25(1 + .02 + .09)^15 = 30.28 Edit: Misread
It was set at 7.25 in 2009 and was way under what it should’ve been at that time
Yes but practically speaking for most wage work in CA workers have made a lot more than that (but not $20/hr) for many years. CA has a state minimum wage that is usually much higher than the federal.
The federal minimum wage represents a legal floor but it’s so low and never changes that it’s functionally meaningless.
20$ isn’t enough if we’re being honest
I didn’t say it was enough, but for a neoliberal hellhole it’s way higher than I would have imagined. A $20 USD/hr wage where I live would be a huge win for the left wing, and our cost of living isn’t appreciably different.
I have a $21/hr guarantee at my job in rural Ohio and it isn’t enough to cover my rent, student loans, car payments, and general living expenses. No idea how anyone is supposed to cut in on $20/hr in California.
I live in SoCal and make just under $20 and I can’t afford an apartment within 100 miles of my workplace
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I barely make rent at 20
I made 26 an hour my first year working as an RN at a hospital, beyond the fact that I’ve been blacklisted at my local hospitals because the first one was a transphobic piece of shit, I don’t even want to go back anymore, I can work at a nursing home with less interstaff drama, less stress, and less risk to my own health while making more than the hospitals pay even after they had to jump pay up 10+ an hour just to get some nurses back.
Is it true that the big chains are mass firing people in response to the raise?
I can’t recall the last time I saw more than like 2-3 people working at a fast food restaurant at the same time. A lot of restaurants are getting rid of kids play places since that requires a lot of labor to clean (or just letting them get disgusting). There’s no more labor that can be cut.
At this point if you find a place in retail or food that isn’t running on a skeleton crew to barely run the place then it’s probably an accident of scheduling. Because about 15 years ago all the business managers decided that quality experiences in stores is expensive and what are customers gonna do? Shop elsewhere? No, you do the bare minimum, keep the employees miserable and try to force them to quit with terrible work environments so you never need to give them a raise because they all quit within a year. The suckers who stick around get promoted to supervisor and given a pittance of like 40k a year to abuse the shit out others so they will continue to quit within the first year. It’s the cycle of retail hell.
Who cares? Franchisees are not restauranteurs. They are businesspeople who want to skim six figures off the top of a restaurant simply because they own it. They do this by exploiting workers and making shittier food at incresasingly smaller portions. They will fire people and shittify their product until they eventually go out of business - and because they are participating in the capitalist ideal, they would do this eventually even without California’s help - or hasn’t anyone noticed that fast food does nothing but get more and more shit.
This will ultimately drive the market back to owners who are restauranteurs - who care about their place of business, their product and their workers. These people too may make six figures in the running of the restaurant, but they are actively involved in running it and they add enough value to it to justify taking that money from it. The franchise model of American food service has been nothing but a disaster for this country - for workers and for the health of the general public - and I for one am glad to see it crippled in any capacity.
Edit: to say nothing of the CEOs of these companies and their obscene pay that the franchisees empower.
Restaurateurs are businesspeople too, they’re just worse at it
Fast food already runs a skeleton crew, I don’t see how they can do it without opening later or closing earlier
Some franchisees are for sure but I don’t see how they can when they’re already all so understaffed
Too fucking bad, you don’t get to have people support your “dreams” of owning a restaurant by working for you on poverty wages you greedy fuck
“I support the free market.” … “No, not like that.”
“Good news, sir! Ever since the pandemic the value of everything has gone up…”
“…including the value of labor”
As it should be. When I graduated college, min wage was $8 and rent was like 1k a month to live in a really rough area in one of the shittier cities.
