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You probably remember Subway's famous "five-dollar footlong" promotion as much for the obnoxiously catchy jingle as for the sandwiches themselves. (Sorry for getting that stuck in your head all day.)
The sandwich chain recently resurrected the promotion in a national advertising campaign promising foot-long subs for just $4.99—but the special deal won't fly at one Subway restaurant in Seattle, where owner David Jones posted a sign this week giving customers the bad news.
Sadly, the consequences of high minimum wages, excessive taxation, and mandate-happy public policy are not limited to the death of cheap sandwiches. The cost of doing business in Seattle is higher than the Space Needle, and the unintended consequences of those policies are piling up too.
The biggest cost driver, as Jones' sign mentions, is Seattle's highest-in-the-nation minimum wage. It went from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015, then to $13 per hour in 2016, with a further increase to $15 per hour planned.
The result? According to researchers at the University of Washington's School of Public Policy and Governance, the number of hours worked in low-wage jobs has declined by around 9 percent since the start of 2016 "while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent." The net outcome: In 2016, the "higher" minimum wage actually lowered low-wage workers' earnings by an average of $125 a month.
And now those same employees will have to pay more for sandwiches from Subway—and everything else too.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:39AM (23 children)
Right there in the article, we have info from the University of Washington's School of Public Policy and Governance.
Not enough for you? OK, then try an introductory economics textbook:
ECONOMICS
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CHOICE
FOURTEENTH EDITION
GWARTNEY | STROUP | SOBEL | MACPHERSON
ISBN-13: 978-1-111-97021-5
ISBN-10: 1-111-97021-1
See page 76 to 78, where the authors reveal that employment is reduced. (of course this should be obvious) The authors also reveal something much more interesting: the non-wage attributes of such jobs deteriorate. You get less convenient working hours, fewer training opportunities, and less continuous employment. The authors go into why this is so and must be so, and discuss some really terrible impacts that affect the poor and the young.
See page 636, where minimum wage is shown to have helped prolong the Great Depression. The book shows clearly how an economy that was showing signs of recovery was slammed into the Great Depression by stupid legislation intended to help. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and the economy is no exception to this rule.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:00AM (21 children)
I don't know anything about the f'ed up warped world of economics where paying more wages actually results in less money for the worker, but... It just doesn't make sense to work for less than a living wage.
If you can't survive on what they pay you how are you going to, er, survive? Why would a person bother to work if they are literally not making enough to survive on? Is that what "work ethic" is? Can some big CEO explain it to me like I'm five? Work all day and make X dollars. Minimal cost of living per day is X+Y dollars. How does that work?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:23AM
-sta.
I have a friend who was a barista at the time. He loved his job.
Being homeless is really boring. I wanted to find a way to occupy myself. I expected that I would enjoy working with people.
I got no interviews. Perhaps they couldn't understand why someone with 25 years experience as a software engineer would want to work minimum wage.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:38AM
Each worker has their own reasons to work or not work. The CEO isn't supposed to pry into people's lives to know anything about these reasons.
Maybe somebody needs job experience for a reference. Maybe they are a kid trying to get time away from annoying parents. Maybe they need to show income -- any income -- in order to qualify for government benefits.
Not every job needs to be one that you can survive on. If that were true, then the employees would "quit" due to death. Clearly the employees are surviving somehow.
Economics is a horrible reality that you really shouldn't deny. I knew a person working part-time at two different restaurants. Full-time jobs would have been better for both the employee and employer, but the government mandated health coverage for full-time jobs and thus eliminated all the low-wage full-time jobs. Denial of economics at large scale has killed millions upon millions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:26AM (13 children)
Hyperbole. Many people survive on far less, therefore it is clearly not impossible to survive.
Impossible to survive in the style to which you believe you are entitled? Now THAT might well be true.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RedBear on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:24AM (12 children)
I was going to call you out for simply being pointlessly pedantic. But you know what? Under the right circumstances, we are actually talking about survival here. We're talking about an economically toxic environment that increases infant mortality for various reasons, way beyond what most first-world developed nations find tolerable. We're talking about the difference between having a place to live and becoming homeless, which can easily lead to death for various reasons. We're talking about people dying of various ailments like heart attacks years before they should, because they have to try to work three part time jobs to support their kids due to employers everywhere wanting to shaft their employees out of any benefits that come with full-time employment. We're talking about a whole society where employers don't have to provide paid sick days, so people come to work sick, spread sickness and are too afraid of losing their jobs to take a day off and see a doctor. We're talking about half our society unable to access affordable health insurance, so they let minor health problems build up until they literally have to choose between the emergency room visit they can't afford (no, emergency room visits aren't "free", idiots) and death. All of which costs our society far more than it would cost us to simply provide universal "free" tax-supported healthcare.
So take your pointless pedantry and shove it. We really are talking about survival as well as access to even the most basic levels of prosperity.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:52AM (9 children)
You speak of survival while advocating for policy that is roughly (not fully fleshed out) communist or socialist. That kind of nonsense killed over 100 million in the past 100 years.
Let's take that last item for example, because right now is a special time: in the UK right now, all non-urgent operations are suspended for at least a month. They might operate on you if your spleen is ruptured, but cancer will have to wait. Due to this, some people will not survive. YOUR IDEAS ARE DEADLY.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Dogeball on Saturday January 13 2018, @12:33PM (3 children)
The UK has a Conservative government.
Conservative policies have caused the current crisis. In the context of the topic, Conservatives opposed introduction of the minimum wage.
In 2010, two years after the global financial crisis hit, and after 13 years of a nominally socialist party in charge, health outcomes were among the best in the world, and public satisfaction in the NHS was at an all time high.
Your assertion that socialism has caused the health crisis in the UK is muddled at best and batshit crazy at worst.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:21PM (1 child)
National debt doubled under Labour, we were borrowing 450 million a day under Gordon Brown and have been paying 30-45 billion a year interest ever since.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @01:00PM
And after almost ten years of austerity, the the deficit still stands at £50bn and the national debt is £1,700bn and rising.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @05:21AM
The UK does not have a conservative government. It hasn't had one for many decades at least, if ever.
BNP and UKIP might be conservative. I'm not so sure about that. Is any party at all suggesting equivalents to the USA's 1st and 2nd amendments? Is any party suggesting the elimination of the Orwellian monitoring, where school teachers (unless muslim) report non-leftist behavior to the authorities? You may have defeated Germany, but you recreated the Stasi. Is any party suggesting a stand-your-ground law, with the complete right to defend yourself with deadly force when threatened?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RedBear on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:14PM (4 children)
Totalitarian communism has never really been actual communism, and neither has much to do with democratic socialism which is how many of the European countries are described. Several of them are rated as the nicest places in the world to live. So...
It's very weaselly to mash things like China's great communist famine (70-ish million dead) together with Norway's democratic socialism and claim that they both contributed in a meaningful way to killing 100 million people.
Your second thing seems pretty weaselicious too. First link I found said the shutdown was 3 weeks during holidays this year, only talks about a couple of hospitals (not the entire NHS system), and says: "NHS Tayside said emergency surgery,urgent procedures and all cancer surgeries would still be carried out." So... somebody going to die because their hip replacement was delayed?
It's also a fact that conservatives in the UK have been trying their best to sabotage the NHS for decades, kind of like conservatives here keep trying to sabotage, well, the entire government but especially the Postal Service. Did you know the USPS is required to fund a pension 75 years out, unlike, you know, any other government agency or private corporation in existence? Yeah. So I take those budget issues with a large grain of salt. Our local private hospital has been having a hell of a time staying open for many years even with continual grants from the city. That's not something unique to government run healthcare. If UK conservatives keep trying to de-fund the National Health Service, of course they will run into budget issues.
You might want to try reading some boards where actual people from the UK or Norway or (heaven forbid) Canada talk about their respective national health care systems. They definitely aren't perfect, but people generally have high opinions of them. And here's the funny thing about all those nasty "socialist" countries that American conservatives don't seem to be capable of comprehending. If you're rich enough to pay for your own healthcare, YOU CAN DO WHATEVER THE F**K YOU WANT. Employ your own doctors and nurses, buy yourself a million dollar MRI machine, fly your rich ass to Switzerland or Sweden for even better care, or just pay for a private room at an NHS hospital. Whatever, they don't care. They're still free countries! There is literally nothing to stop you from PAYING FOR HEALTHCARE THROUGH THE NOSE, if that's what you really want to do. It's just that normal people who can't afford to buy an MRI machine can still get an MRI scan if they need one. For a minor fee. Or free. Instead of putting themselves and their families in debt for decades. And most of them actually pay less in taxes than we pay if you add our health insurance premiums to our taxes.
And "death panels" don't exist and even the Republican who invented that nonsense knows she's a liar.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:21PM (3 children)
Charlie Gard was a very sick baby in the UK. His parents were offered experimental treatment in the USA, but were not allowed to take their baby.
You say "death panels" don't exist. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. A death panel by any other name is just as evil. Charlie Gard was killed by a death panel in the UK.
I find it obscene that parents would be denied to right to take their own baby home and go wherever they want, but that's socialism for you. Socialism kills.
Actual communism is totalitarian communism because theoretical communism is incompatible with human behavior. All communism requires violent enforcement. Those "democratic socialism" places in Europe are not in fact nice. People can't afford large families due to taxes. The countries depended on cultural values that are rapidly eroding. The traditional Swedish culture was such that a non-working person was shamed into working, but migrants feel no such duty. All of those countries are going to collapse.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RedBear on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:05AM (1 child)
I could come up with a hundred cases here in the US just like the Charlie Gard case, where physicians refuse to allow an experimental procedure or extend the suffering of a patient unnecessarily with no hope of improvement. It sounds like it was fundamentally a disagreement between doctors doing their best to provide proper care. Such disagreements and outright mistakes happen wherever you go. So if that's your definition of "death panel" then we have that here too. Never heard of Terri Schiavo? I don't see any of that as a relevant reason not to have a not-for-profit national health care system.
I never said real communism works well, or at all. But you still can't claim that totalitarian communism is the same as textbook communism. The real stuff has been tried numerous times in small communes, and always failed. But it was tried, and it wasn't totalitarian. Which, of course, is why it failed.
Migrants feel no duty to work? Really. Nothing racist about that kind of blanket statement applied to millions of people, most of whom are actually quite motivated to work hard and make a better life for themselves and their children in their new country. That's why they migrated, after all. Migrants are human beings, just like everyone else.
People can't easily afford large families in any society unless they're wealthy or live on a traditional farm where they can use their progeny for cheap labor. I don't see that as a relevant indictment of democratic socialism versus uncontrolled profit-worshipping capitalism. Why would you want people to have large families anyway, don't we have an overpopulation problem conservatives are always moaning about?
Long story short, I won't be holding my breath waiting for all the European democratic socialist nations to collapse.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @05:38AM
Terri Schiavo's case didn't involve a death panel. It involved one person, her husband, wanting to let her die. He alone had the authority. Her parents disagreed and raised a fuss.
I have no doubt that sometimes the USA effectively uses the court system as death panels. We don't need to add to the problem.
Migrants clearly seek to claim asylum in the European countries with better welfare benefits. This actually violates refugee treaties; they are required to claim asylum in the first safe country. Many pass through Turkey or France, both considered safe by treaty standards. Migrants usually continue on to places like the UK and Sweden. Most do not find employment; you can find them idle on the streets during the day.
Some of those European countries are having roughly 1 kid born to each woman. They need a bit more than 2 to avoid extinction. Adding migrants does nothing to preserve endangered European cultures.
Sweden is already having to increase the retirement age due to non-productive refugees. This isn't going over well. There is a lot of suppressed anger in that country; you can't dare say it because it is socially unacceptable. At some point the inhibition will be overcome, and then the genocide starts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @01:05PM
Charlie Gard's parents were offered a no-hope scam that would have drained them of money and left the baby just as dead. Being desperate and vulnerable, and not being doctors themselves, they would have fallen for it had not the doctors of the NHS recognised that the child's best interests were served by staying in the UK and receiving palliative care. Tough decisions are tough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:16PM (1 child)
A friend of mine recently tried out a temp agency and worked at a food plant for a few days. Apparently they jeep defibrillators on the lines because workers have hear attacks often enough! Now that is fucked up, driving "efficiency" to the point of causing hear attacks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:00AM
My office job has one of those next to the bathroom. By your standards of associations my job expects your heart to take a shit while you are.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fliptop on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:58PM (3 children)
Work 2 jobs. Get a roommate. Move back in w/ family. Cut your expenses. Be frugal when shopping. Learn to cook. Don't go into debt. Drive a beater.
There's all kinds of ways to save money and live on less.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:02PM (1 child)
Live off your investments or inheritance. Move into the family Summer home. Get appointed to a board.
This is simple stuff. The poor are just too lazy to be bothered doing it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:51PM
Maybe if we just had a 'war on poverty', we could solve this crisis!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:12PM
Move further away from your job and commute for 4 hours each way. Cut down your food bill by eating cheap-ass food. Quit insurance (health, life, property, etc.). There are so many ways to cut down expenses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:58PM
It benefits the worker who manages to get a job, but everyone else is still unemployed because there is no more money in the business's budget to hire additional employees.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday January 13 2018, @12:07PM
Yeah, right, we need to apply macroeconomics because one fucking company with mediocre products, company which is a [beep] in the Seattle economy, can't afford (or doesn't want) to lower the price.
What a tragedy, mate!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford