Fast Food Worker Strikes!

[Seth]

So you're saying McDonald's should take over Somalia if the minimum wage goes up?

Show us the numbers on that. I'm thinking kiosks might be cheaper.

Complete non sequitur.

What happens is, when you raise the minimum wage, the unskilled, new entry-level teenage workers can't get jobs because more experienced, older, more reliable and more manageable unemployed adults take the jobs from them....

That's fucking ridiculous. Were that true, McDonald's would pay enough to attract experienced older reliable manageable adults in the first place.

Wrong. They hire the older adults at the same wage they pay the newbies, and the adults are glad to have a job in a tight job market and a lousy economy. The choice for the employer is a) hire a pimply-faced teenager with no work experience and no track record of reliability and spend a great deal of time training and supervising them to make them productive; or b) hire an unemployed adult with a work history who understands how retail works and is more interested in getting a paycheck and keeping the customers and boss happy so they can put food on the table than they are in texting their high-school buddies, gossiping, taking baths in the dish sink when the boss isn't around and hocking lugis in customer's food because they hate their job, hate the customers, and get pissed off when a customer actually makes them work.

What employer is going to put up with that if he doesn't have to? An incredibly stupid one perhaps, but he'll be out of business soon enough if he doesn't think about his bottom line and his customer's satisfaction ahead of his employees whining about low pay.

The whole reason you get pimply-faced burger-flippers who dis the customers and spit in the food when the economy is good is because nobody else wants to do the job and they can all find higher-paying and more satisfactory jobs elsewhere. Fast food is, and has always been an entry-level unskilled position suitable for high school kids looking for some extra pocket money. It's not and never has been a good career choice for an adult.

Nor should it be. We need some industries where new workers can stretch and exercise their working wings and learn how business actually functions and where they can be taught a good work ethic, otherwise the incompetence just works its way up the employment chain, to the detriment of the economy and the customer. And we need an industry that can be a screener for the rest of the business world that will weed out the perpetual slackers and idlers early on so the economy doesn't waste unnecessary resources trying to train the untrainable.

If you don't like the fast-food wages, then for fuck's sake go find another job and leave the burger-flipping to somebody who appreciates having a job at all.

A rising tide raises all boats. Deal with it.

The economic tide does not rise when the government imposes minimum wage laws, it just tilts the bowl. Every dime of increased minimum wage comes out of the pocket of somebody else and is transferred to the worker, and all the other negative consequences are just magnified.

[klr]

Is there any point even trying to respond to a ridiculous rant like that? Did you just sit down and compose that, or grab it from somewhere else?

Those who only interpret (or see) history through the lenses of their own extreme standpoint are doomed to failure ... or at least disappointment.

Good grief. Do you really live your life thinking about this sort of thing?

Well, as someone who knows human nature pretty well, Seth is absolutely correct in his entire "rant."

Instead of just calling it "ridiculous" why don't you explain why and how Seth is wrong?

Because from where I am sitting, Seth is absolutely right about human nature and that's why socialism doesn't work.

You agreeing with Seth doesn't make him right. It just means that the two of you think the same way.

As for rebutting it in detail: During my time on the Internet, I've paid my dues on that score, and then some. I've been in many lengthy and convoluted debates in my time. But I also know full that it's a waste of time to try and argue with someone who has time and time again shown that they are not interested in any argument, viewpoint or evidence that might contradict any idée fixe that they cherish. When the only response is the same tired old broken record, why bother?

Not with me. Not here. And not about Marxism. You're just evading the debate like every other Marxist I've ever met anywhere on the planet.

...

See? There's the end of any possibility of any reasoned discussion. By your definition, anyone to the left of you is a Marxist. And that would be pretty much anyone on the political/economic spectrum who does not occupy the space that you do, because I don't see anyone at all to the right of you. Since there is not even the remotest hope of finding any sort of common ground where one could agree to disagree and compare perspectives, any debate is useless. Others have tried, and ended up completely frustrated.

Your posts will, however, make perfect material for an "Extreme libertarian quote generator" some day ...

[Seth]

Is there any point even trying to respond to a ridiculous rant like that? Did you just sit down and compose that, or grab it from somewhere else?

Those who only interpret (or see) history through the lenses of their own extreme standpoint are doomed to failure ... or at least disappointment.

Good grief. Do you really live your life thinking about this sort of thing?

Well, as someone who knows human nature pretty well, Seth is absolutely correct in his entire "rant."

Instead of just calling it "ridiculous" why don't you explain why and how Seth is wrong?

Because from where I am sitting, Seth is absolutely right about human nature and that's why socialism doesn't work.

You agreeing with Seth doesn't make him right. It just means that the two of you think the same way.

As for rebutting it in detail: During my time on the Internet, I've paid my dues on that score, and then some. I've been in many lengthy and convoluted debates in my time. But I also know full that it's a waste of time to try and argue with someone who has time and time again shown that they are not interested in any argument, viewpoint or evidence that might contradict any idée fixe that they cherish. When the only response is the same tired old broken record, why bother?

Not with me. Not here. And not about Marxism. You're just evading the debate like every other Marxist I've ever met anywhere on the planet.

...

See? There's the end of any possibility of any reasoned discussion. By your definition, anyone to the left of you is a Marxist. And that would be pretty much anyone on the political/economic spectrum who does not occupy the space that you do, because I don't see anyone at all to the right of you. Since there is not even the remotest hope of finding any sort of common ground where one could agree to disagree and compare perspectives, any debate is useless. Others have tried, and ended up completely frustrated.

Your posts will, however, make perfect material for an "Extreme libertarian quote generator" some day ...

I'm prepared to demonstrate exactly how and why all socialists are Marxists, and have done so in the past. I've explained in gruesome and extended detail exactly why and how socialism always fails, what it's connection with Marxism actually is, and why it's both reasonable and rational to call a Marxist a Marxist.

You, on the other hand, have nothing by way of valid rebuttal. All you can do is evade, obfuscate, pettifog and delve into perpetual ad hom.

Since you have never, ever even attempted to refute any of my voluminous arguments against socialism or Marxism with any sort of reasoning, I must therefore conclude that you are a Marxist, because you act like a Marxist, write like a Marxist and (un)reason like a Marxist. Therefore I see no reason not to think of you as a Marxist, at least unless and until you make a valid and honest attempt to justify your socialist beliefs and rebut my allegations and reasoning.

I'm not holding my breath because no Marxist on earth since Marx himself has ever been willing to vigorously defend Marxism or socialism in a reasoned manner.

That, of course, is because Marxism and Socialism are indefensible.

[laklak]

Your industry is a good example, too. If they jacked up your labor cost to $15 an hour, you might choose to work more yourself rather than have someone in there for you. .... You are competing with other low cost food alternatives, and if people have to pay too much for a dog, they'll go somewhere else.

Yep. I shut the business down because the USDA and state Department of Hotels and Restaurants regulations got so onerous that I couldn't make a living. See, I was an idiot, and I followed the letter of the laws. Unlike the numerous taco trucks and hot dog vendors you see all over the place. I was paying minimum wage, while the other guys were claiming that their employees were "tipped positions". Bullshit, of course, nobody tips the counter guy for a hotdog even though there's a tip jar on the counter with a couple of ones and a five stuffed in it. I also followed all the time and temperature and other health and safety regulations. I ended up selling at a loss because I couldn't compete with the guys pushing salmonella burgers. Oh well, the best revenge is living well, which is what I'm doing now.

[piscator]

What happens is, when you raise the minimum wage, the unskilled, new entry-level teenage workers can't get jobs because more experienced, older, more reliable and more manageable unemployed adults take the jobs from them....

That's fucking ridiculous. Were that true, McDonald's would pay enough to attract experienced older reliable manageable adults in the first place.

A rising tide raises all boats. Deal with it.

It's a question of degree, of course, but what Seth says is not "ridiculous" in this case.

It's not that McDonald's need the most highly skilled and educated worker to hand out fries, but if McDonald's is going to pay $15 an hour for someone they are going to pay for a college graduate, not a high school drop out, even if a high school drop out would be sufficient.

The minimum wage has gone up in the past, yet McDonald's remained staffed by kids.

It is most certainly not true that raising the minimum wage means that all wages up the wage scale will have a corresponding increase. That isn't what happens.

Yes it is.

Wages are set by supply of workers and demand for workers.

At the bottom, which is what we are talking about, it's set by law.

As the price of workers goes up, the demand for those workers tends to push downward.

Fucking frozen concept. What makes the price of workers go up in the first place in your world?
McDonald's keeps opening stores. The robots haven't come online yet. There's not going to be any less demand for fast food workers until some technology reduces it.
As I've said quite a few times in this thread, McDonald's Corp. isn't a charity. They have people in their stores because they are necessary for McDonald's Corp to make money. They have young people in there because they discovered a long time ago that kids are the cheapest labor they can get, and "Hey! Why pay more than you have to?"

These are general statements, and of course demand can also be more elastic or more inelastic -- which means that industries and types of jobs may differ in the price-demand curve. Sometimes a small increase in price has a huge impact on demand, and sometimes the price will have a smaller impact on demand (depending, for example, on how critical a product, or job function in the case of workers, is).

McDonald's stores will stay open and continue profiting on kid labor no matter what the minimum wage is. If McDonald's and Pepsico don't like what they have to pay, they can damn sure go find something else to do with their time. But we all know they won't. It's just too lucrative.

[klr]

...

See? There's the end of any possibility of any reasoned discussion. By your definition, anyone to the left of you is a Marxist. And that would be pretty much anyone on the political/economic spectrum who does not occupy the space that you do, because I don't see anyone at all to the right of you. Since there is not even the remotest hope of finding any sort of common ground where one could agree to disagree and compare perspectives, any debate is useless. Others have tried, and ended up completely frustrated.

Your posts will, however, make perfect material for an "Extreme libertarian quote generator" some day ...

I'm prepared to demonstrate exactly how and why all socialists are Marxists, and have done so in the past. I've explained in gruesome and extended detail exactly why and how socialism always fails, what it's connection with Marxism actually is, and why it's both reasonable and rational to call a Marxist a Marxist.

You see (although of course you won't), that's another problem. While most of us see ourselves somewhere on a spectrum - or on a whole range of them - you don't. There are people who agree with you, and there is everyone else, who are all lumped in the one pot. A pot which contains most of the global population, and is almost infinitely variable. But you see none of that. It's us or them, black or white. If I wanted to discuss the artistic merit of The Last Supper with someone, I certainlly wouldn't choose a person who could only see in black and white - and who always preferred white.

[Coito ergo sum]

Your industry is a good example, too. If they jacked up your labor cost to $15 an hour, you might choose to work more yourself rather than have someone in there for you. .... You are competing with other low cost food alternatives, and if people have to pay too much for a dog, they'll go somewhere else.

Yep. I shut the business down because the USDA and state Department of Hotels and Restaurants regulations got so onerous that I couldn't make a living. See, I was an idiot, and I followed the letter of the laws. Unlike the numerous taco trucks and hot dog vendors you see all over the place. I was paying minimum wage, while the other guys were claiming that their employees were "tipped positions". Bullshit, of course, nobody tips the counter guy for a hotdog even though there's a tip jar on the counter with a couple of ones and a five stuffed in it. I also followed all the time and temperature and other health and safety regulations. I ended up selling at a loss because I couldn't compete with the guys pushing salmonella burgers. Oh well, the best revenge is living well, which is what I'm doing now.

The biggest cure for being a Lefty is to run one's own business. One can certainly still be liberal, of course. But, there does come a realization when a person runs a business that they try to pay less for stuff, and that they tend not to pay extra just to be nice. The suggestion that it is good business to just go ahead and pay extra for stuff is generally only recommended to others by people not footing the bill. LOL

[MrJonno]

The biggest cure for being a Lefty is to run one's own business. One can certainly still be liberal, of course. But, there does come a realization when a person runs a business that they try to pay less for stuff, and that they tend not to pay extra just to be nice. The suggestion that it is good business to just go ahead and pay extra for stuff is generally only recommended to others by people not footing the bill. LOL

People who run businesses 1% ? 0.1% of the population, society doesn't revolve what is good for them it revolves around the rest of us. If you choose to have the privilege (not right) to run a business you are generally going to be better off than those who don't have that privilege but it comes at a cost

[laklak]

So who do the 99% work for, if not for those who own businesses?

I actually didn't see spending all that money in licenses, taxes, equipment, supplies, wages, insurance, etc., the hours of marketing (unpaid), the hours of driving (unpaid) or the hours of standing over deep fryers and grills in a 130 degree trailer (unpaid) as a "privilege", seemed a lot more like a "shitty job". Also didn't see paying for my employees hotel rooms and food at fairs and art shows and paying them out of my pocket when we didn't turn a profit as a "privilege", seemed more like an "obligation". See, to me a "privilege" would be I get to lie around on my ass and live off my investments. Oh wait....that's what I'm doing now!

Yay! I'm privileged!

[piscator]

Your industry is a good example, too. If they jacked up your labor cost to $15 an hour, you might choose to work more yourself rather than have someone in there for you. .... You are competing with other low cost food alternatives, and if people have to pay too much for a dog, they'll go somewhere else.

Yep. I shut the business down because the USDA and state Department of Hotels and Restaurants regulations got so onerous that I couldn't make a living. See, I was an idiot, and I followed the letter of the laws. Unlike the numerous taco trucks and hot dog vendors you see all over the place. I was paying minimum wage, while the other guys were claiming that their employees were "tipped positions". Bullshit, of course, nobody tips the counter guy for a hotdog even though there's a tip jar on the counter with a couple of ones and a five stuffed in it. I also followed all the time and temperature and other health and safety regulations. I ended up selling at a loss because I couldn't compete with the guys pushing salmonella burgers. Oh well, the best revenge is living well, which is what I'm doing now.

I don't deal with the minimum wage trade. I paid a college student over $70k last year to visit far away places with strange sounding names, fly around in a helicopter, and do work that is easy for him. Why? Because he made me over 10 times that much. He's right up the road in Moose Pass now, working on a $1.4m state contract for a design survey. He'll clear $12-$15k from that job (not that he looks at it like that, I pay him an hourly wage), and move on to the next one in Anchorage. He may actually get to attend some of his classes while he's working in his hometown, instead of getting people to video lectures for him. (He lacks 33 hours for his Geomatics degree @ UAA.)

Could I scurry around and get someone cheaper than this kid with 7 years experience working for me? Sure. But I'm not going to. He's solid, and I like him. He knows he's got a good job. I know I have a good man.
That's my business model: I invest in people and do good work. I'm booked up for the next 2 years because I deal with sophisticated clients who know my expensive design surveys save them $$ in the long run. I have time to sit around and BS with people on the internet because I sell quality and let other guys run themselves ragged on volume and AR issues.

[Coito ergo sum]

The biggest cure for being a Lefty is to run one's own business. One can certainly still be liberal, of course. But, there does come a realization when a person runs a business that they try to pay less for stuff, and that they tend not to pay extra just to be nice. The suggestion that it is good business to just go ahead and pay extra for stuff is generally only recommended to others by people not footing the bill. LOL

People who run businesses 1% ? 0.1% of the population, society doesn't revolve what is good for them it revolves around the rest of us. If you choose to have the privilege (not right) to run a business you are generally going to be better off than those who don't have that privilege but it comes at a cost

Not necessarily.

Society doesn't "revolve around" one person more than another person. But, whether something is "good for" one group or another has nothing to do with the point I just made. It's easy to tell other people to be generous and to label them greedy. The picture changes when you're the one making the decisions, paying the bills and taking the risks.

One might also simply declare being an employee to be a privilege and not a right. Neither of them are "rights." So saying that running a business is not a right doesn't mean anything.

And, people who run businesses aren't necessarily better off than people who don't. Well, at least in the US, where lots of people run lots of businesses and most of them are middle class folks, who are trying to build something.

And, of course, the small business owner typically is the one who pays the lion's share of the cost, so you're not really saying anything relevant when you suggest it comes with a cost. Duh. We all know that. Anyone who has run a business is very familiar with costs. Taxes from every angle, workers compensation costs, unemployment compensation costs, benefits, etc. etc. etc. The costs are endless, and then add to that the general sentiment among those who've never run a business that the employer has an endless pit of money to dip into, and that it is some sort of easy life to be the business owner, well, that's all understood.

And, incidentally,in the US it's not 0.1% owning a business. It's about 12% of households. That's not an insignificant or irrelevant portion of the population.

[MrJonno]

Well I guess I don't move in circles where I socialise with people who run businesses

[Seth]

...

See? There's the end of any possibility of any reasoned discussion. By your definition, anyone to the left of you is a Marxist. And that would be pretty much anyone on the political/economic spectrum who does not occupy the space that you do, because I don't see anyone at all to the right of you. Since there is not even the remotest hope of finding any sort of common ground where one could agree to disagree and compare perspectives, any debate is useless. Others have tried, and ended up completely frustrated.

Your posts will, however, make perfect material for an "Extreme libertarian quote generator" some day ...

I'm prepared to demonstrate exactly how and why all socialists are Marxists, and have done so in the past. I've explained in gruesome and extended detail exactly why and how socialism always fails, what it's connection with Marxism actually is, and why it's both reasonable and rational to call a Marxist a Marxist.

You see (although of course you won't), that's another problem. While most of us see ourselves somewhere on a spectrum - or on a whole range of them - you don't. There are people who agree with you, and there is everyone else, who are all lumped in the one pot. A pot which contains most of the global population, and is almost infinitely variable. But you see none of that. It's us or them, black or white. If I wanted to discuss the artistic merit of The Last Supper with someone, I certainlly wouldn't choose a person who could only see in black and white - and who always preferred white.

This is your cognitive disconnect. It's not that I'm uncompromising in my positions, it's that nobody has produced a convincing argument that would make me change my position. Mostly this is because, as I said, and as you amply demonstrate here, Socialists cannot and do not and do not wish to rationally defend their ideology. They make a priori assumptions that just because they think it's a good idea, it's not subject to critical analysis and they need not do the work to defend their reasoning.

If I always prefer white, it's partly because you only prefer black and are unwilling to see any shade of grey either. In fact you don't even try to see anything but black. You close your eyes and your mind at the mere mention of the notion that socialism might not be everything you've been propagandized into believing as a religious truth.

My position is to criticize Marxism and socialism, using logic and reason. And I do so in great detail all the time. But nobody here has the balls to take on the arguments themselves and refute my reasoning, rather they just, as you do here, turn directly to ad hominem argumentation that completely evades the subject.

[Seth]

Well I guess I don't move in circles where I socialise with people who run businesses

That's a common fault of the idle proletarian dependent-class leeches. They see every business as an evil corporation out to rape the planet and workers. It's their a priori position: Capitalism MUST be evil because if it isn't, Marxism and socialism immediately crumble into ash and vanish. It's an iteration of the fallacy of appeal to the consequences of a belief. "If I accept, even in the slightest way, that capitalism is not inherently evil, corrupt, rapacious and harmful, then a very bad thing will happen; my golden calf idol will turn to lead before my eyes and my Socialist heroes will reveal their feet of clay."

But not one swinging dick among the Marxists and Socialists have the balls or the intellect to come up with rational and logical discourse supporting their dogma and ideals. They pronounce it every bit as mindlessly and religiously as the very epitome of evangelical Christians or radical Muslims declare their particular stupid ideas to be the "truth," and they brook no objection either.

Which makes Socialists and Marxists fervent and mindless religionists of the first water.

[laklak]

Most people I know around here own their own businesses, only a couple actually work for someone else. Lawyers, doctors, general contractors, lawn services, restaurateurs, accountants, its a long list. The few that work for others are usually young, and their goal is to own their own operation. Must be that idiotic American Dream stuff.