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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the warning-earworm-ahead dept.

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.


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  • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:00AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:00AM (#621698)

    Mom and I never had our talk the day she had the difference of
      opinion with her sister, but about a week later, she sent Susan out to
      my darkroom, to tell me she wanted to see me in her room.

            She was in another negligee, but this one was much thinner than the
      previous one I had seen her wearing, so I was able to see the nipples
    of
      her rather large breasts quite clearly, as she swung around on her
      vanity stool to face me when I entered the room.

            "Close the door dear," she smiled, flushing as she saw my
      appreciative eyes sliding over her scantily clothed body, "Aunt Norma
    is
      in town today, but I wouldn't want Susan to see me dressed this way
    with
      you in my room."

            "I was just wondering dear," she said in a soft tone, the flush in
      her face deepening now, as she looked up into my eyes, when I stood
      before her, "if your suffering now that Marie is gone, because I
    haven't
      forgotten my promise, to help you when you get yourself all worked
    up."

            Actually I didn't need any help at all, but I couldn't tell her
    that
      I was now fucking Susan on an almost daily basis out in my darkroom,
    so
      I did what any good American boy would do under similar circumstances,
    I
      lied.

            "I try not to think about it," I said, finding I was almost choking
      on the words, as I let my eyes drop to her lap and discovered that I
      could now make out the dark shadow of her pubic forest beneath the
    thin
      material, "and if that doesn't work I take a cold shower."

            "Oh you poor baby," she whispered, smiling up at me, as she reached
      out and unbuckled my belt, "you should have told me, I would have
    taken
      care of it for you."

            If I had screwed Susan that day, as I usually did when she was
      finished making the beds, my prick might not have responded so
    quickly,
      but now my passions soared, as I looked down into her smiling face, so
      by the time she had pushed down my pants and shorts my eager young
    shaft
      sprung forth, hard and ready for fucking!

            "Oh God," she murmured, staring at the throbbing cock as she took
    it
      in her warm hand, then in a more controlled voice she whispered,
    smiling
      as she once more lifted her eyes to my face, her hand moving slowly
    back
      and forth on the thick shaft, "You really do need some help don't you
      darling?"

            At this point it I was too excited to do anything but grin back at
      her, but I was already wondering how she intended to take care of me.
      She didn't leave me wondering for long however, for she suddenly
    leaned
      forward and engulfed the bloated head of my hard prick in her warm
    moist
      mouth, never taking her eyes from my face, even as she moved her head
      back and forth slowly, letting her full lips slide over the rubbery
      head, until it was almost out of her mouth, before sliding it back in
      again.

            "Don't hold back darling," she whispered, releasing the prick from
      it's oral trap for a brief moment, "let it go whenever your ready to
      give it to me."

            She had barely gotten the cock back into her mouth when it
    exploded,
      shooting the searing cock juice down her throat! I had come so
    quickly
      that she gagged for a second before hastily swallowing the rest of it,
      as it pumped into her tightly clamped mouth, then her hand was milking
      it as she sucked away the last vestige of my sexual tribute.

            "Satisfied now sweetheart," she whispered, smiling up at me again,
      daintily wiping the remains of my hot offering from her lips, with a
      tissue from her vanity, "or would you like to fuck me too?"

            It was strangely exciting to hear my own mother asking me if I
    wanted
      to fuck her, not only had I never heard her use that word, but now
    with
      my cock juice still coating her tongue, I was not only able to accept
      the idea of her using such language, but able to actually tell her
    that
      I wanted to fuck her.

            Even though I was no virgin anymore, when she positioned herself on
      the bed, it was the first I had ever seen a woman totally naked, so
    even
      after I had stripped myself, scrambled between her lifted knees and
    into
      her waiting arms, my young cock was still as hard as a rock.

            Due to the length of time her poor little pussy had been neglected,
      Mom felt some discomfort when I forced the hard shaft into her fiery
      pit, but once she had greased it with her natural lubrication, she
    went
      berserk, as she tried to make up for all the years she had been denied
      the pleasure of being fucked.

            Happily for the two of us, her foresight of draining my balls
    before
      letting me get my cock into her hot hungry cunt, we were able to fuck
      until she was completely exhausted.

            "Oh God darling," she gasped, staring up at me with pleading eyes,
    "I
      can't take anymore, give it to me now!"

            "You want me to cum in you, Mom?!!" I asked in surprise, feeling my
      own climax approaching as I stared down into her beautiful, smiling
      face.

            "Oh, yes darling," she whispered, punctuating each word with a gasp
      as I hammered the breath out of her, "put it in me. Give me all you've
      got lover, give it to me!"

            No longer the least bit embarrassed, I scooped up her legs and
    threw
      them over my shoulders, leaning forward so her knees were almost
    beside
      her face, ramming my throbbing prick into her quivering cunt, until it
      was completely buried, before releasing my hot load sticky cock juice.

            Mom lay there smiling up at me with glittering, lust-filled eyes,
    as
      my cock jerked and pulsed within her, squirting my hot load deep in
    her
      heaving belly. After I had finished draining my aching balls in her
      drooling cunt, I let my mother's legs slip from my shoulders and
      collapsed on top of her, both of us panting loudly.

            She allowed me to savor the fabulous sensation of her educated cunt
      milking the last drops of semen from the buried prick, until it
    finally
      slipped from her of it's own accord, before gently pushing me from her
      perspiring body.

            "Come on darling," she whispered, "we have to get cleaned up before
      Norma gets home. I don't want her to know I'm letting you fuck me."

  • (Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:00AM (20 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:00AM (#621699)

    is businesses hiring a lot less employees, because they cannot afford to. That means more low education people on government cheese, which means more Democrat voters, to keep the handouts flowing. Everything going according to plan.

    • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:04AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:04AM (#621700)

      A small boy runs up to his father, crying.

      Son: "Daddy, daddy! I broke my toy!"
      Father: "Again? That's the tenth one this week. Well, I'll just buy you another one, since they are cheap and disposable."
      Son: "Yay! Thanks, daddy! I love you!"

      A heartwarming moment between a father and son. In the background, the corpse of a naked woman could be seen lying in a pool of her blood.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:16AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:16AM (#622051)

        Wow, I almost want to mod this up funny.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:15AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:15AM (#621702)

      Really, who cares? Subway kept Jared as their spokesperson even as they knew he was getting underager prostitutes sent to his room. I know that many corporations in America are evil and amoral, but that really takes the cake.

      Boycott Subway so you can be emptying some poor sexually abused underage prostitutes' wallet, the same way a five dollar footlong fills you up like Jared had been filling them up.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:53AM (2 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:53AM (#621765) Homepage Journal

        You'd prefer underage whores be out of work and starve? You heartless bastard!

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:12PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:12PM (#621875)

          Gotta love how RWNJ propaganda is now regularly published here but Aristarchus' LWNJ pieces are routinely suppressed. Yup, nothing to see here!

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by seeprime on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:21AM (1 child)

      by seeprime (5580) on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:21AM (#621724)

      I doubt the plan was to hurt people. That's just the unintended consequences of forcing higher wages upon workers in jobs that were never intended to be careers.

      Get a real account. Posting political opinions as anon makes you a troll.

      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:43AM

        by anubi (2828) on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:43AM (#621748) Journal

        I think it may well be the Government/Banking using their power to stoke inflation... so as to try to keep spending curves "looking good" numerically. With more wages, landlords can hike rents, and get it instead of getting a moveout-to-their-car. More people will no longer qualify for government subsidies, even though everything now costs more.

        Every businessman would love to hike prices, but the economy has been moderating the price hikes, as most people simply would not buy if saw the thing had been hiked. I know in my case, a coupon often makes the decision of where I am going to eat... a twofer burger is a good incentive. I quit going to both Burger King and Subway several years ago, discouraged by pricing.

        Business and Government plan on inflation, and depend on the Government and Banking sector to keep liquidating the economy by flooding it with money injections, usually in the form of loans or pay hikes, but the gravy train is running out.

        I cite the "Federal Reserve Interest Rate Chart" for my speculation of how they are nipping at anything they can get to place money in the hands of people who will spend it in a store. Trouble is they can't drop interest rates much lower for another wave of spending sprees by people spending borrowed money. Last year's Christmasses are still due and payable, every month... for years to come.

        We are still trying to push those HARP loans to persuade people with underwater loans on houses to continue to pay the banks. Can't have the rich people eating the loss, you know, just a shake of the Hand of a Congressman will divert public monies to the banks to make sure that loan stays put, and the interest continues to be paid.

        To me, its like crossing a wide expanse, and watching the fuel gauge. While the Congressmen and Bankers just want me to mash down on the accelerator, and constantly point to the speedometer telling everyone just how rosy everything is. That gauge marked "Debt" scares the hell out of me. I have seen what happens when other people did not pay attention to it. The debt-holder came in and took their stuff, while the Sheriff watched. And I have a whole riverbed of people nearby that this exact same thing happened to. They were playing around with their damned pills and toys while other people were lawyering up to go after their stuff.

        They had a "good time", got to smile and pay for stuff they could not afford - "with card!", and paid for it, dearly.

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by KiloByte on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:09AM (9 children)

      by KiloByte (375) on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:09AM (#621739)

      That means more low education people on government cheese, which means more Democrat voters, to keep the handouts flowing. Everything going according to plan.

      I don't get why the AC got modded to -1 rather than +5. The very same trick has been, successfully, pulled by the far right in Poland. Their voter base is almost exclusively the uneducated, unemployed and very religious; all of which tend to produce lots of kids. Thus, the "500+" program: every kid beyond the first get their parents paid 500PLN, no strings attached (guess what most of this money gets spent on). (500PLN is just $142, but Poland is a country where a doctor after studies and three years of work experience earns $10800 ($7800 after taxes) annually).

      For the first kid you get the 500 only if your family's total income per person is below a given threshold. If you exceed it by just a penny, you don't get 499.99, you get 0 — which led to a lot of workers asking their employers for a wage decrease. This money is also exempt from debt collection (and not included in calculation of the exemption cap on other income), which goes well with PiS' rhetoric of banks being owned by foreign agents, mostly Germans and "international Jewry". Obviously, this means that a recipient of 500+ is less likely to get a loan — getting involved in any kind of business would risk making that person not depend on welfare, and PiS doesn't want that.

      --
      Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by anubi on Saturday January 13 2018, @10:39AM (4 children)

        by anubi (2828) on Saturday January 13 2018, @10:39AM (#621751) Journal

        I also disagree with the moderation, and did what I could. I believe both you and the AC are right on.

        It's just inflationary... and discourages businesses from hiring, leaving the public to pick up yet more laid off people.

        Once people have lost their job, its all too likely they will be on the dole for the rest of their lives, as the welfare way of life becomes ingrained.

        I talk quite often to the "people of the riverbed", and I hear the same story over and over. Lost job, heavy debt, lost everything to debt payments, now can't afford rent. While the merchants of misery ply the riverbed up and down selling drugs, cigarettes, weed, and alcohol, to "help" the unfortunate weather their misery. Its the biggest congressdammed mess I have ever seen.

        Yeh, I know, most of those people got themselves in that mess. The allure of a "good time" overrode their common sense. A lot of people are quite naive. And, admittedly, from what I could tell, a lot of them got themselves there trying to live up to others ( especially spouse and family ) expectations of them. I mean just what does a dad do if Christmas is coming up and his kids want expensive electronics - and everyone is running themselves silly in debt so they they won't be upended by their children's/spouses disappointment on Christmas Day?

        Relentless rat-race. Keep up with the Joneses. Like that stupid "hat and mink coat" crap amongst the wivery that my dad's generation had to put up with. I am where I am now because dad and mom didn't fall for that crap. Hollywood was pushing that crap hard during the day in all those movies. ( The "diamond as a symbol of betrothal", pushed by DeBeers, via Hollywood, lingers to this day! )

        The "system" has us all in a helluva bind, because all this stuff is available, but at a price. And we hate so much to not live up to the expectations of a loved one. Who wants to be known as the Grinch? So, we borrow against tomorrow for the jubilation of one day, buying crap that will be in next year's trash, but amortized for far longer.... for "easy" monthly payments. Often for years.

        Very few of us will stand up against the system, and those of us that will do so are usually not very popular and seen as "selfish", not "prudent", and then thought of as "fortunate" because we still are hanging onto what we worked for.

        Yes, I saw that little pink dinosaur on TV urging me to spend even more, as he could "help" me get stuff that was "out of reach". Easy payments... just a few sawbucks... per week. Yes week. So the little pink dinosaur would not have to say a very big number and shock people into reality of what they were committing to. Stuff like this predatory lending crap makes me sick. But I know there was a helluva lotta people that would go for it. And they will have to find the money to send to that company. Every week. In addition to the money they have to scrape up to scrape by for the month.

        I feel helpless, watching people spend money they don't have, for things they don't need, then when the timer runs out on the loans, these people lose everything, and expect those of us who wouldn't fall for this chicanery to bail them out. Then it becomes a matter of them doing what they have to do to survive, which is not a pretty picture. While somebody else who did nothing more than manipulate others ends up with all their stuff. All because that's how the law that governs our investment and business behaviour is written/regulated.

        Fractional Reserve Banking.

        Whose end result is the inevitable transfer of all wealth to the banks through the mechanism of debt.

        TL:DR - Another of my long winded rants. Take with grain of salt.
           

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:21AM (2 children)

          by Gaaark (41) on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:21AM (#621756) Journal

          The poor/heavy spenders just need to spend so much money that they become, collectively, too big to fail, and then if they throw a few more dollars each at their senator, maybe the government will bail them out!

          That's how wall Street does it!

          💩

          --
          --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:57PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:57PM (#621826)

            If you really think the poor are getting a good deal, why don't you go try it for a few years? The poor in the USA are fucked over and trodden on.

            • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday January 14 2018, @12:43AM

              by Gaaark (41) on Sunday January 14 2018, @12:43AM (#622019) Journal

              Ummm.... maybe turn your monitor sideways so you can see the sarcasm/irony?

              I'm saying, basically, that the government is willing to bail out the rich because they are "too big to fail", but the poor can just suck ass cause the government will do nothing for them.

              m'kay? You got that Timmy?

              --
              --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:40PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:40PM (#621841)

          I suppose educating people about responsibility is too late for your worldview?

          Not that you would be the one to do it. It just seems that your cause is against those giving the money and those collecting the debt, rather than insisting the people taking out the loans and blowing it on pills and whatever else actually read more than personalized advertising.

          I guess willpower is in short supply since it it's not for sale.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:12PM (2 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:12PM (#621852)

        And, yet, Poland has the biggest wild forest in Europe, so... clearly they aren't overpopulating the place yet.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 2) by KiloByte on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:16PM (1 child)

          by KiloByte (375) on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:16PM (#621918)

          To those who didn't get parent's joke: said far-right government not only converted said wild forest to a commercial forest (in all but law), but even made the minister of environment do so.

          --
          Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:38PM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:38PM (#621925)

            said far-right government not only converted said wild forest to a commercial forest (in all but law), but even made the minister of environment do so.

            Out Trump-ing Trump... he can only wish to do such effective damage to the environment in the name of lining kleptocrats' pockets.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:04PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:04PM (#621870)

        Birth rates need to keep up, or the ethnicity goes extinct, lost forever.

        Birth rates are killed by working women, the ban on child labor, legalized divorce with child support and alimony, porn, video games, the expectation of expensive education, and generally the expectation of expensive toys and housing.

        That 500PLN is a start. It isn't really enough. To get the smarter people making smart kids, it needs to scale with income.

        At least Poland is trying. Other places, like Germany and Sweden and France, are going to be wiped out.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday January 13 2018, @12:03PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 13 2018, @12:03PM (#621767) Journal

      So the end result is businesses a business hiring a lot less employees, because they cannot afford to.

      FTFY.
      I don't think Microsoft and Amazon is hiring a lot less employee in Seattle.

      And I also don't believe that even closing all Subway outlets in Seattle will impact Seattle economy's significantly - other fastfood outlets will just take its place and charge the (affording) customers a bit more.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday January 14 2018, @09:40AM

      by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Sunday January 14 2018, @09:40AM (#622139) Homepage Journal

      We won the evangelicals. We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated!

      I want to create jobs so that you don’t have to worry about the minimum wage. They’ll do a great job that they’re making much more than the minimum wage. But I think having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country. I want to keep the minimum wage pretty much where it is right now, because of the fact that we have a country that is now competing more than ever before because of airplanes and transportation and the Internet.

      I want to COMPETE with the rest of the world. What I do want to do is bring in jobs so much so that people don’t have to live on minimum wage. But we are going to have to compete with the rest of the world.

      Our taxes are too high, our wages are too high. Everything is too high. We’re not going to be able to compete against the world. I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is. People have to go out, they have to work really hard and have to get into that upper stratum. But we cannot do this if we are going to compete with the rest of the world. We just can’t do it.

      What’s going to happen is now people are going to start firing people. You know, the old story. It’s happened a hundred times. It’s always happening. But I’m not even saying from that standpoint. We have got to do something to compete with the rest of the world. Our country is not competitive any more. Should we increase the minimum wage? I’m saying that if we’re going to compete with other countries, we can’t do that because the wages would be too high.

      I’m going to make sure that people are making much more money because we’re going to bring so many jobs back that we’re not going to have to be worrying about minimum wage so much. We’re going to be bringing the jobs back where people can really make a good living, not just a minimum wage living. I’m going to be bringing so many jobs back. We’re bringing jobs back so that people can really get out there and make a tremendous living again. You look at wages, they effectively haven’t gone up in close to 20 years. We’re going to bring so much competition back and so many jobs back that people are going to make a far better living than anything you can even talk about with respect to minimum wage.

      You know, the minimum wage is a very, very complex situation, because we are a noncompetitive country. If you look at what’s going on throughout the world, one of the big problems we have are wages. I am going to make our country so competitive that people at minimum wage are going to escape the minimum wage. They’re going to go up and they’re going to make a lot of money and they’re going to have companies and be involved with companies that are really successful, where they can be paid more and more money. But if you start raising that minimum wage, you’re going to make a lot of our companies even more noncompetitive. And it would be a big, big problem.

      I’m very different from most Republicans. You have to have something you can live on. Now, if you start playing around too much with the lower number, you’re not going to be competitive. I’ll say raise the minimum wage to $15. Raise the minimum wage to whatever it might be. But the problem we have is that our country is losing businesses. You look at corporate inversions and all the things that are happening. We have to COMPETE with the rest of the world. The middle-class has worked so hard, are not getting the kind of jobs that they have long dreamed of -- and no effective raise in years. BAD!!!!

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:11AM (4 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:11AM (#621701) Journal

    Never before has a submission gone so totally wrong as this one. I have double spam modded, and I sincerely expect them to stick. Or at least be a foot-long.

    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:41AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:41AM (#621704)

      Triggered. No matter how much you and your pathetic ilk try to control the narrative, the truth eventually gets out.

      • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:24AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:24AM (#621715)

        I will fuck your mind, or what is left of it, since there is so little to begin with, using a strigil to scrape off what little of rational thought remains. The truth that you think is truth is actually Faux truth, or Russian Truth, which are in fact the same things. We do not control the narrative, we just spam mod it when it goes all twerky.

    • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:08AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:08AM (#621713)

      Not a argument.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:07AM (32 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:07AM (#621711) Journal

    I see no reason to take David Jones, or any other business owner, at their word. If David Jones won't reveal his personal finances, in particular, how much money those Seattle Subways make, then we can't figure out for ourselves whether they really are that tight for money, or whether Jones is just making self-serving assertions not backed by evidence.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:39AM (23 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:39AM (#621720)

      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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:00AM (#621722)

        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

          by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:23AM (#621725) Homepage Journal

          -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

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:38AM (#621729)

          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)

          by Arik (4543) on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:26AM (#621734) Journal
          "If you can't survive on what they pay you how are you going to, er, survive?"

          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)

            by RedBear (1734) on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:24AM (#621743)

            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.

            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)

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:52AM (#621750)

              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)

                by Dogeball (814) on Saturday January 13 2018, @12:33PM (#621772)

                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)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:21PM (#621879)

                  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.

                  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

                    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @01:00PM (#622169)

                    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

                  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @05:21AM (#622100)

                  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)

                by RedBear (1734) on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:14PM (#621779)

                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.

                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)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:21PM (#621880)

                  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)

                    by RedBear (1734) on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:05AM (#622065)

                    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

                      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @05:38AM (#622103)

                      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

                    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @01:05PM (#622170)

                    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)

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:16PM (#621877)

              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

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:00AM (#622063)

                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)

          by fliptop (1666) on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:58PM (#621812) Journal

          If you can't survive on what they pay you how are you going to, er, survive?

          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)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:02PM (#621829)

            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

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:51PM (#621894)

              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

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:12PM (#621853)

            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

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:58PM (#621813)

          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.

          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

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 13 2018, @12:07PM (#621768) Journal

        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
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:53AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:53AM (#621721)

      You can pretty much determine this for any business. Simply ask if there is some sort of serious barrier to market entry. For example, there could be network effects (nobody wants a facebook clone or dating service without users) or a patent.

      If there is a serious barrier to market entry, the business is probably raking in the money. If not, they are probably struggling to stay in business.

      What we have here is a place to eat food. Seattle might be a painful place to operate a business, but it is possible to open a restaurant. There is no serious barrier to market entry. Therefore, the business is struggling.

      If you disagree, then you have found a way to get rich. Go for it. Open a restaurant in Seattle. Prove me wrong, getting rich in the process. Good luck.

      • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:09AM (2 children)

        by MostCynical (2589) on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:09AM (#621723) Journal

        there is a chance Subway has run the numbers and worked out *exactly* how much it can charge (and what excuses it needs to convince xustomers/justify that price, and bing, profit, screwed employees, and, likely, screwed customers.

        --
        "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:24AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:24AM (#621726)

          These are all voluntary transactions. Either side can walk away from the deal. If a better deal is not available elsewhere, then that just tells you that you're getting a good deal. I know, you'd like $100/hour wages and $2 subs, but the lack of that doesn't mean you're getting screwed. If you could get what you wanted, YOU would be the one screwing over the other party.

          I suppose you could claim there is fraud, but there is no evidence of that. Are the sandwiches smaller than advertised? Are the workers threatened with death if they quit their jobs? There doesn't seem to be a reason to suspect that the transactions are involuntary.

          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:12PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:12PM (#621778)

            For some reason conservative minds are highly susceptible to memes, the "socialism killed hundreds of millions" is a pretty recent one. It doesn't matter how many countries have successful universal healthcare, implementing it in the US would LIRERALLY kill millions!!! *eye rolls*

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by TheReaperD on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:39AM (3 children)

      by TheReaperD (5556) on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:39AM (#621735)

      To make this even more fishy is that the math given doesn't add up to his story. If the minimum wage is up 3% and hours are down 9% with the average employee taking home $125 less home total, that means that the franchise is paying less overall in wages than they were before the wage increase which would make his whole argument BS.

      --
      Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
      • (Score: 5, Informative) by hemocyanin on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:03AM

        by hemocyanin (186) on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:03AM (#621737) Journal

        He's also paying less for basic worker benefits like Industrial Insurance which in Washington State, is calculated based on a formula that has at its root, the number of hours worked. The jist of it is: hrs * risk classification * experience rating (a little more complicated, but the end result is still an hourly rate: http://www.lni.wa.gov/ClaimsIns/Insurance/RatesRisk/How/PremRate/Default.asp [wa.gov] ). If his workers are working fewer hours, he's paying less for workers comp.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:09AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:09AM (#621738)

        First of all, those numbers were norms for the city, not specific to the Subway restaurant example. But anyway...

        Suppose the business decided that the total wages paid out to all employees would not change. (this is your expectation) Since the wage rate goes up, the amount of hours must go down. So far so good, but we have a problem: the required workload did not decrease.

        Ideally, the workers would become more productive. Well, that isn't too realistic. They will get less done, which means fewer sales and less revenue. An expense needs to be cut.

        You might not think that cutting the workforce makes sense, because after all this will decrease the ability to do work, but that argument applies to every other expense too! Some tough decisions need to be made. Most likely, a little bit of everything gets cut. This has to do with demand curves that the business has for the various things it needs. The franchise agreement with Subway and the lease agreement with the landlord may limit the options, but ignoring that: cut back a little bit on service, a little bit on food quality, a little bit on portion size, a little bit on building size, a little bit on advertising... until the restaurant is profitable. If there is no way to become profitable, then close the business.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:40AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:40AM (#622059)

          It's standard business owner histrionics. They're negotiating, that's all. Most of them will probably cut service waay back, more than it needs to be, as some form of *gasp* collective bargaining.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by D2 on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:51AM (1 child)

    by D2 (5107) on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:51AM (#621730)

    Reason? As in State Policy Network, Koch Foundation, and ALEC?

    Pushing shit partisanship articles is NOT a replacement for news-for-nerds. Peddle this bullshit over on the depressingly-overrun-by-bros shitpile that used to be slashdot. It doesn't belong here.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:11PM

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:11PM (#621982) Journal

      This place is full of, and run by, a bunch of RWNJs, at least one of which in my unlicensed opinion is a clinical sociopath. What do you expect?

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by RedBear on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:23AM (17 children)

    by RedBear (1734) on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:23AM (#621733)

    OK.

    1. The fact that American employers, especially fast food employers, continue to do their best to screw over American employees by restricting their hours in order to avoid providing stable full-time employment or any benefits such as health insurance or paid sick leave is a completely separate problem from the minimum wage argument. It has its own causes and solutions. They also deliberately screw with the scheduling so that people can't get a second part-time job, and laws are slowly changing that mess as well. Again, separate from wages.

    2. Inflation is continuously reducing buying power by a small amount every single year, regardless of wage increases or decreases. You can't sell a sandwich for $5 for 30 years just because it's a catchy jingle and expect to turn a profit forever. Can you still buy a comic book for 10 cents? Eventually component costs increase and you have to raise the price. We've never had $5 footlongs where I live in Alaska because *shock* the general cost of shipping fresh food to an island on the frontier is much higher than the Lower 48. *surprise* Same goes for many other areas with a Subway franchise location. They've been losing money all over the country on the $5 footlong "promotion" for a long time. At this point it's a loss leader to get people in the door trying a Subway sandwich again. But what it should be now is at least $6 footlongs even as a promotion. Because life. This is not a valid argument against paying people enough to survive on.

    2(a). Inflation gives everyone a small pay cut every year. You can't pay people $5/hr for 35 years and expect society to continue functioning. The math doesn't work. Minimum wage (like most higher wage tiers already are) should have always been tied to inflation. Is the economy going to have to make a few adjustments as we get back to paying people enough to live on? Of course. If a business has to close up because it can't afford to pay people a living wage, it will be replaced by a legitimate business whose profits aren't propped up by the welfare system. If a business has to slightly raise prices to deal with the wage increase, then that's what the damn prices should have been all along. This is not rocket surgery.

    Papa John's pulled this kind of stupid crap before the Affordable Care Act kicked in. The CEO went around moaning that they'd have to fire people or go out of business if they were forced to provide health insurance. But it was calculated that all employees could be easily covered by raising the price of an average pizza by less than 14 cents. Subway can't sell you a $5 footlong sub sandwich now because it costs too much to make the sandwich, but only a vanishingly tiny fraction of that cost increase comes from the company being finally forced to pay their employees a wage that allows them to live within 100 miles of their workplace.

    Think about how many sandwiches a Subway lackey can make every hour. An extra $5 per hour pay raise can be covered by increasing the cost of a sandwich by less than 50 cents. Is that going to bankrupt the customers? In a city where everyone buys themselves a $6 coffee every morning? And that's if people only buy a sandwich by itself, but they don't. They buy meals, with soup, drink, cookie, chips, whatever. Which means you probably only need to raise the price of the sandwich by 10 cents to cover a sudden $5/hr INCREASE in the wage. And the minimum wage isn't increasing by $5 every year. The next increase in Seattle is just $2 and then hopefully it will be tied to the inflation index and thus change by less than 2% each year. Oh noes! How will capitalism survive? Tune in next week...

    In case it's not clear, I am pointing out here that while prices go up over time, there is not even close to a linear relationship between wages and prices. Raising the minimum wage doesn't suddenly proportionally raise the price of everything in existence and instantly negate the buying power of the minimum wage increase. That is one of the most nonsensical arguments I've seen that constantly comes up when people are objecting to minimum wage increases. By that logic it would make sense to give everyone a 50% pay CUT every year so prices would drop drastically and everyone could afford to buy more. If that makes any sense to you, you need to see some kind of doctor.

    The article behind this submission is quite clearly right-wing extremist anti-minimum wage claptrap. I can't wait for the followup article bitching about the fact that we can no longer buy a footlong sandwich for 25 cents like we could back in the '30s when workers made $5 per DAY (and liked it!, uphill both ways in the snow with no boots). It will make just as much sense as this one. I can see the title now: "The $6/Day Minimum Wage Killed the Two-Bit Sammich!!! Damn Commies!!!"

    Let us not forget that minimum wage work went from being a small fraction of the economy to being a large chunk of all jobs currently available. It went from a temporary beginner wage for people new to working, like teens sweeping floors, to a career wage for employees of all ages and skill levels, with almost no possibility of promotion (most managers are hired from other companies where they were already managers, not promoted within the company from among low-level employees). Minimum wage got stuck in the '70s and hardly moved for decades as inflation ate up more and more of every dollar, while higher wage earners continued to get their traditional yearly increases. Large corporate employers are raking in profits hand over fist right now while teaching their own employees how to fill out welfare forms so that their corporate profits can be supported by the taxpayers. Remember how McD's calculated that a worker in NYC could live just fine on their wages as long as they went without any form of heating in the winter, among other essentials? I remember. We're not quite back to the Gilded Age, but we're headed that way fast. The weak social contract where corporations used to provide stable lifetime careers is virtually nonexistent now.

    Minimum wage has been broken for a long time, and it needs to be fixed, and I have yet to see a valid argument as to why every American doesn't deserve to be paid and treated like a damn human being. If the argument is because you want to be able to keep buying a fixed-price $5 footlong sandwich until we all die of old age, then fuck you. Fuck you and the little spotted pony you rode in on.

    tl;dr: Give me a break.

    --
    ¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
    ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
    • (Score: 0, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:29AM (11 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:29AM (#621744) Journal

      The fact that American employers, especially fast food employers, continue to do their best to screw over American employees by restricting their hours in order to avoid providing stable full-time employment or any benefits such as health insurance or paid sick leave is a completely separate problem from the minimum wage argument. It has its own causes and solutions. They also deliberately screw with the scheduling so that people can't get a second part-time job, and laws are slowly changing that mess as well. Again, separate from wages.

      This is the standard blame displacement. Blame the employer for policy consequences. In any other market, we'd expect supply and demand to hold (for example, an increase in cost of employees resulting in a reduction in demand for such employees), but somehow that doesn't hold for employment.

      Inflation is continuously reducing buying power by a small amount every single year, regardless of wage increases or decreases. You can't sell a sandwich for $5 for 30 years just because it's a catchy jingle and expect to turn a profit forever. Can you still buy a comic book for 10 cents? Eventually component costs increase and you have to raise the price. We've never had $5 footlongs where I live in Alaska because *shock* the general cost of shipping fresh food to an island on the frontier is much higher than the Lower 48. *surprise* Same goes for many other areas with a Subway franchise location. They've been losing money all over the country on the $5 footlong "promotion" for a long time. At this point it's a loss leader to get people in the door trying a Subway sandwich again. But what it should be now is at least $6 footlongs even as a promotion. Because life. This is not a valid argument against paying people enough to survive on.

      Wikipedia says the Subway special [wikipedia.org] has been happening since 2008 (and in Florida since 2004).

      In 2004, Stuart Frankel, an owner of two Subway franchises inside Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, noticed that sales were slower at his stores on the weekends. In order to help boost sales, Frankel decided to lower the prices on the footlong subs for the weekends only. A fan of round numbers, Frankel decided to make every footlong sub $5 each. At the time, Subway had various prices for its subs.

      Sales shot up immediately. Two local Palm Beach/Broward County franchisees took notice and started to implement $5 footlongs in 50 of their stores, also noticing sales increases. The move couldn't have come at a better time: the United States housing bubble was about to go bust, which hit Florida especially hard. Unlike with many such promotions, the Subway franchises didn't see a decline in profit margins, nor did they sell each sub at a loss.

      Meanwhile, Subway executives at the company's headquarters in Milford, Connecticut, were getting tired of the company's longtime ads featuring Jared Fogle and wanted something to compete with the various dollar menus at McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and Taco Bell. Although several stores were skeptical of offering $5 footlongs, stores in Chicago and Washington, D.C., followed in the Miami stores' footsteps and saw instant sales increases. Some stores in blue-collar neighborhoods (notably East Cleveland, Ohio, locations) were seen offering steeper discounts at the height of the promotion, such as 5 dollar footlong combos (Sub plus chips/cookie and a drink). Sales shot up immediately for the company. To go with the promotion would be the "$5 footlong song," created by Jimmy Harned of the New York-based jingle firm Tonefarm, which was deliberately designed to be campy and has in itself spawned a life on its own, including singing contests and as an internet meme.

      So it hasn't been kicking around for 30 years, but rather 9 years for Seattle.

      Inflation gives everyone a small pay cut every year. You can't pay people $5/hr for 35 years and expect society to continue functioning. The math doesn't work. Minimum wage (like most higher wage tiers already are) should have always been tied to inflation.

      Nor can you expect to pay people increasing amounts for work they aren't doing. Speaking of inflation, mandating high minimum wages is one way to create inflation.

      Is the economy going to have to make a few adjustments as we get back to paying people enough to live on? Of course. If a business has to close up because it can't afford to pay people a living wage, it will be replaced by a legitimate business whose profits aren't propped up by the welfare system. If a business has to slightly raise prices to deal with the wage increase, then that's what the damn prices should have been all along. This is not rocket surgery.

      And now we get to the ugly "But we didn't need those jobs anyway" rationalization. Let us recall once again that the actual minimum wage is $0 per hour. And let us recall once again, that "propped up by the welfare system" is merely the label for the employers who happen to pay the lowest wages at the moment. There will always be someone who pays that and hence, always someone that can be blamed for getting "subsidies" for paying poor people to work.

      Large corporate employers are raking in profits hand over fist right now while teaching their own employees how to fill out welfare forms so that their corporate profits can be supported by the taxpayers.

      And you perform according to stereotype. In a rational world, they would be lauded for employing poor people. The bleeding hearts might even be evaluating if that welfare was sufficiently high to incentivize the employers! But not today's bleeding hearts! It's terrible that employers are helping their employees survive! War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

      In today's world, we can survive Seattle and its misguided laws. Employers can route around the damage merely by employing people outside of Seattle and its mess, automate, or not care, if they already pay more than $15 per hour. But of course, this is just a move in a long term strategy to raise minimum wages to ridiculous levels throughout the US. What happens to all the places that don't have a plethora of high paying jobs (like West Virginia)? Answer is that the unemployed either stay in place and rot or they move to some place with the higher paying jobs. This results in such things as a decline of urban areas (urban minorities having particularly high unemployment) and massive migration from low cost-of-living semi-rural areas to already densely packed, high cost-of-living urban areas.

      This is not an academic question. California has already decided to implement [ca.gov] a state-wide minimum wage of $15 per hour (to fully kick in on January 1, 2023 after many annual increases in minimum wage from its current $10.50 per hour). I predict it will be a disaster for places like Fresno which have almost half of their workers paid less than that minimum wage and barely noticeable in places like San Jose, where the market-based minimum wage is already almost $15 per hour.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by RedBear on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:39AM (10 children)

        by RedBear (1734) on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:39AM (#621762)

        This is the standard blame displacement. Blame the employer for policy consequences. In any other market, we'd expect supply and demand to hold (for example, an increase in cost of employees resulting in a reduction in demand for such employees), but somehow that doesn't hold for employment.

        There isn't a simple relationship between cost and demand for anything, least of all the labor you need to run your business. There is a relationship, but it's far from simple. Studies of minimum wage changes over several decades lean toward minor increases having negligible or slightly positive effect on overall employment. But it's not even close to simple.

        Wikipedia says the Subway special [wikipedia.org] has been happening since 2008 (and in Florida since 2004).

        Pardon me, I was being slightly hyperbolic to make the point that prices increase over time. Although I did think it started much earlier than 2008. Have you noticed in your lifetime that prices for everything, especially food, increase over time? Because prices for things, especially food, increase slowly but surely. You know. Over time.

        You would agree, I hope, that if they kept trying to sell $5 footlongs for long enough it would eventually become untenable no matter what the location or how far minimum wages were allowed to drop. Point being that a fixed-price product can only survive a limited time in an economy subject to any amount of inflation (as all healthy economies seem to be), and that this is only tangentially related to minimum wage variations.

        Nor can you expect to pay people increasing amounts for work they aren't doing.

        For work... they aren't... doing. Holy shithole, Batman. Textbook conservative response. The low wage earners don't "deserve" a pay increase, because they are low wage earners, and therefore lazy and unproductive. So... explain why everyone in all the pay grades above lower middle class have been getting pay increases every year, beyond what was required to keep up with inflation, for the entire 35 years or so when minimum wage was stagnating. Were they all doing more and more productive work every year? How? How is that possible? Why did higher wage earners "deserve" to make more and more money while the lower wage earners literally earned less and less as their wages failed to keep up with inflation? It's literally a damn self-fulfilling prophecy. The poorer they get, the less they "deserve" to get paid more, because the fact that they aren't being paid more already is proof positive that they don't deserve to be paid more. Right? That's how it works in conservative minds, right? "Poor people" are worthless scum who should lick their employers boots clean every morning for being given the privilege of employment. Right? And if you didn't want to be a "poor person" you should have chosen different parents. Got it.

        Speaking of inflation, mandating high minimum wages is one way to create inflation.

        And if we got rid of minimum wage, would inflation suddenly stop, or reverse? I don't see how, since all higher wages would still continue to go up faster than inflation, as they have for several decades, and the prices of a great many things will follow the increase in higher wages just easily as other things might follow the increase in minimum wages. But the increase in minimum wages is pocket change to the increases in the wages for the upper crust. We already have inflation, and a minor amount seems to be part of every normally functioning economy that isn't rapidly shrinking, so what do you mean "create inflation"? How high does the minimum wage need to be before it triggers increased inflation? What is the exact relationship between the minimum wage and inflation? What is the relationship between the highest wages and inflation? Somehow I doubt that you can find specific answers to these questions that you haven't cherry-picked to match what you already believe. It just isn't that easy. It's very, very complicated.

        But what isn't complicated is that minimum wage used to be reasonably adjusted to keep up with inflation in the past, and then at some point people started promoting things like trickle down economics (a.k.a. "Fairy Dust") and minimum wage was allowed to go off the rails and lag inflation for decades. And all anybody is really asking for is to realign the minimum wage with inflation, at an equivalent level of buying power as it had prior to the '70s. Is that really, seriously too much to ask of the MOST PROSPEROUS NATION ON EARTH (AND APPARENTLY GOD'S NEW CHOSEN KINGDOM)? Oh, excuse me, sorry for raising my voice. Anyway, I don't think it's too much to ask.

        In a rational world, they would be lauded for employing poor people. The bleeding hearts might even be evaluating if that welfare was sufficiently high to incentivize the employers! But not today's bleeding hearts! It's terrible that employers are helping their employees survive! War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

        You are legitimately insane, as expected. It's like you're incapable of realizing that those people are only "poor" because their employer is filling its own pockets with taxpayer dollars while they make more than enough profit to pay everyone much higher wages. Instead of noticing that they are screwing their employees out of a reasonable level of prosperity, you believe they are actually doing their employees a huge favor by deigning to employ those "poor people" in all their unresplendent worthlessness, at a wage level that would never allow them to escape poverty. But if they paid higher wages they wouldn't be heroically employing "poor people", they would be unheroically employing "middle class people". The intense self-referential circularity of this concept is extraordinary. If the minimum wage was 30 cents per hour, just imagine how much more "heroic" those big-hearted companies would be for employing those worthless people wallowing in abject poverty. Why, we should give them all medals! And prop up their company profits with even more taxpayer funds! Why don't we just wire the welfare checks directly into the company bank account and cut out the middleman? After all, people in abject poverty only buy booze, hookers and drugs, right? A respected Republican Senator said so just the other day. What was his name, ASSley or something? (I jest.)

        Didja miss the part where these companies are pulling in higher profits than they ever have before? They are literally making record profits and are in no danger of going out of business. And their employees don't deserve any piece of that action because... ? Oh, I forgot, because they are Poor People[TM]. And Poor People[TM] don't "deserve" to not be Poor People[TM]. What I tell you three times is true, eh, Alice? At least in Looking Glass Land.


        "You are old, Father William," the young man said,
        "And your hair has become very white;
        And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
        Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

        And let us recall once again, that "propped up by the welfare system" is merely the label for the employers who happen to pay the lowest wages at the moment.

        Um, no, you do not understand this concept. If the employees of a company are being supported by welfare checks to reach a total wage level that allows them to live at a permanent address and eat food, that company's profits are literally being SUPPORTED and INCREASED by the taxpayers. And they are making YUUUGE profits. They are having no problems filling their bank accounts and paying all their high level management megabucks. So why are we wanting to feed them even more money and increase their profits even more if none of it goes to benefit working people who actually need it? (ZOMG! The specter of "wealth redistribution" rears its ugly head! Socialist, begone! Out, foul demon!)

        Let us recall once again that the actual minimum wage is $0 per hour.

        I'm sorry? In no functional society could that possibly be true. There is a level far above zero where it simply becomes easier for the populace to kill off all the rich people and redistribute their resources, a la French Revolution, and then turn to something awful like communism or heaven forbid, democratic socialism. If I have to work for 70 hours to afford to buy a hamburger, you are done. Capitalism is done. Over. That would happen long before anybody gets to $0/hr. It's as if people like you actually want capitalism to collapse, and millions of Americans to reach starvation level poverty.

        There's actually a word for being paid $0/hr: slavery.

        This is not an academic question. California has already decided to implement [ca.gov] a state-wide minimum wage of $15 per hour (to fully kick in on January 1, 2023 after many annual increases in minimum wage from its current $10.50 per hour). I predict it will be a disaster for places like Fresno which have almost half of their workers paid less than that minimum wage and barely noticeable in places like San Jose, where the market-based minimum wage is already almost $15 per hour.

        Yes, isn't it wonderful? Many more will follow. And I predict the Moon won't fall from the sky, and red states will continue to be by far the poorest states in the union, leeching off the taxes of blue states, as they have for decades now. Shall we come back in a couple more decades and see which of us was right? Anyway, there's no way in hell we're going to agree on any of this. We both think the other is looking at the world upside-down and inside-out. So this is all a remarkably fruitless exercise.

        --
        ¯\_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, @06:32PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:32PM (#621886)

          There are numerous federal employees in blue states, both direct and contractors. By increasing the minimum wage, you force the federal government to supply more money.

          You raise your taxes, but your economy doesn't suffer the full result. People are allowed to deduct that from federal taxes. This forms a subsidy to the blue states.

          Lots of people are being paid off-the-books due to illegal alien status. This cuts the burden of federal taxes in those states, particularly California.

          Blue states ought to be paying far more than red states, because they vote for the expensive things. The red state people are at least trying to save money. If you vote for it, you should pay for it.

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by RedBear on Sunday January 14 2018, @01:04AM

            by RedBear (1734) on Sunday January 14 2018, @01:04AM (#622027)

            There are numerous federal employees in blue states, both direct and contractors. By increasing the minimum wage, you force the federal government to supply more money.
            You raise your taxes, but your economy doesn't suffer the full result. People are allowed to deduct that from federal taxes. This forms a subsidy to the blue states.
            Lots of people are being paid off-the-books due to illegal alien status. This cuts the burden of federal taxes in those states, particularly California.
            Blue states ought to be paying far more than red states, because they vote for the expensive things. The red state people are at least trying to save money. If you vote for it, you should pay for it.

            I live in a red state, BTW.

            I've never seen evidence that the federal government paying people to do real work is a terrible thing, unless it's like half the population. Sure helped pull us out of the Great Depression.

            Thanks to the new GOP tax plan blue states are now being actively penalized for having higher state taxes by a limit to state tax deductibility. Even if things were quid pro quo, the blue states still pay significantly more in federal taxes and receive fewer benefits back from the federal government (because they don't need them as much, because they have higher state taxes). Blue state taxes that go to the federal government get redistributed to red states. You have things completely backwards. If blue states lower their taxes to avoid penalizing state residents under the GOP tax scam, less money will flow through the federal government to the red states. Then red states will have an even bigger shortfall. I don't think the results will be what you expect.

            What percentage of jobs are held by undocumented workers, even in California? If this cuts the burden of federal taxes in blue states by a significant amount, why do blue states still pay way more in federal taxes than red states? Blue states already pay much more than red states, but you want them to pay even MORE than more? How the hell does that work in your mind?

            What expensive things are you talking about, that blue states vote for, that affect red states? Schools? Roads? Hospitals? The military? You'll have to be more specific.

            Thanks, I now have a better understanding of the specific conservative insanity that created the GOP tax scam.

            --
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            ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
        • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:04PM (3 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:04PM (#621900) Journal

          There isn't a simple relationship between cost and demand for anything, least of all the labor you need to run your business. There is a relationship, but it's far from simple. Studies of minimum wage changes over several decades lean toward minor increases having negligible or slightly positive effect on overall employment. But it's not even close to simple.

          We're not speaking of minor increases here.

          To give an example of how deceptive the assertion of the last sentence is, consider the case of Puerto Rico. They are indeed "slightly positive" after minimum wage was increased (over the period 1974 to 1983) to match US mainland minimum wage. But that happened by about 2-3 million Puerto Ricans moving off the island between 1980 and present to places with higher wages. That has resulted in two effects that are ignored in the studies above: cost of living and increased migration.

          The great unanswered question here is what does a lower demand for labor look like? People aren't just going to stop working. They'll move, they'll accept lower pay relative to their costs, accept workplaces with more difficult conditions, etc. And that's what we see. Much has already been written of the decline in wages+benefits relative to productivity in the US. Much has been written of the "greed" of employers. Much has been written about living wages and the people who don't receive that arbitrary threshold of income. That's all signs of reduced demand for labor just as one would expect from a half century of policies that make US labor more expensive.

          The poorer they get, the less they "deserve" to get paid more, because the fact that they aren't being paid more already is proof positive that they don't deserve to be paid more.

          Yes. Next question.

          If the employees of a company are being supported by welfare checks to reach a total wage level that allows them to live at a permanent address and eat food, that company's profits are literally being SUPPORTED and INCREASED by the taxpayers.

          Then don't pay those employees, if you don't like it. The policies create the (alleged) problem. But really what problem is there here? You wanted to support these employees. And that had the effect of supporting this company's profits. It's working as intended.

          I'm sorry? In no functional society could that possibly be true. There is a level far above zero where it simply becomes easier for the populace to kill off all the rich people and redistribute their resources, a la French Revolution, and then turn to something awful like communism or heaven forbid, democratic socialism. If I have to work for 70 hours to afford to buy a hamburger, you are done. Capitalism is done. Over. That would happen long before anybody gets to $0/hr. It's as if people like you actually want capitalism to collapse, and millions of Americans to reach starvation level poverty.

          Or we could look at what works. Your angst is the result of half a century of supposedly helping out the US worker. Destroying jobs and forcing people into high cost of living areas is not fixing the problem.

          Yes, isn't it wonderful? Many more will follow. And I predict the Moon won't fall from the sky, and red states will continue to be by far the poorest states in the union, leeching off the taxes of blue states, as they have for decades now. Shall we come back in a couple more decades and see which of us was right? Anyway, there's no way in hell we're going to agree on any of this. We both think the other is looking at the world upside-down and inside-out. So this is all a remarkably fruitless exercise.

          Meanwhile, I predict Fresno [soylentnews.org].

          I picked it [Fresno] because it's a growing city (has been that way ever since its creation around 1880) and because it is one of the poorer regions of California. So a sudden reversal in its population, which is hard to disguise, would be a strong indication that the city has changed in a bad way and hence, its population has similarly experienced bad times.
          ,br> I think we'll see the start of population decline in Fresno by 2027 which is about five years into the $15 per hour state-wide minimum wage law that California passed in the recent past (and for which roughly 50% of Fresno's workers make less currently). It should be educational.

          • (Score: 2) by RedBear on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:04AM (2 children)

            by RedBear (1734) on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:04AM (#622049)

            To give an example of how deceptive the assertion of the last sentence is, consider the case of Puerto Rico. They are indeed "slightly positive" after minimum wage was increased (over the period 1974 to 1983) to match US mainland minimum wage. But that happened by about 2-3 million Puerto Ricans moving off the island between 1980 and present to places with higher wages. That has resulted in two effects that are ignored in the studies above: cost of living and increased migration.

            It's my understanding that we've basically been leeching off Puerto Rico for decades without doing any real reinvestment to build them up. That's why they are having major infrastructure problems now. Because they aren't a state and we've never treated them like one.

            The great unanswered question here is what does a lower demand for labor look like? People aren't just going to stop working. They'll move, they'll accept lower pay relative to their costs, accept workplaces with more difficult conditions, etc. And that's what we see. Much has already been written of the decline in wages+benefits relative to productivity in the US. Much has been written of the "greed" of employers. Much has been written about living wages and the people who don't receive that arbitrary threshold of income. That's all signs of reduced demand for labor just as one would expect from a half century of policies that make US labor more expensive.

            Yet you have no answer for how America doesn't turn into a 3rd world shithole if we don't pay people enough to be simultaneously employed and housed and fed. Or perhaps you're fine with that happening.

            Yes. Next question.

            Wow. Now that's integrity. But will you go so far as to admit you believe "poor people" to be genetically inferior? You feel it in your bones, don't you? I'll bet you even wish you could have Bill Gates' genetically superior baby.

            Then don't pay those employees, if you don't like it. The policies create the (alleged) problem. But really what problem is there here? You wanted to support these employees. And that had the effect of supporting this company's profits. It's working as intended.

            Don't pay... Oh, you mean don't provide welfare checks so people can feed their children while working at Walmart. What reveals your intellectual dishonesty most clearly is how you continue to shy away from acknowledging that these corporations we're talking about are making record profits and therefore have no reason not to pay their employees a reasonable wage. Record. Profits. Not revenue. Profits.

            High cost of living areas are created by the fact that we don't place any limits on the upper end of income levels and the limitations we place on developing new housing, not by having a reasonable minimum wage.

            Guess we'll just see about Fresno.

            --
            ¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
            ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
            • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Sunday January 14 2018, @04:56AM (1 child)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 14 2018, @04:56AM (#622093) Journal

              It's my understanding that we've basically been leeching off Puerto Rico for decades without doing any real reinvestment to build them up. That's why they are having major infrastructure problems now. Because they aren't a state and we've never treated them like one.

              And yet we have:

              Nonetheless, the two tables below, present the “net” figures for 2004 and 2010. The tables show that in 2004 and 2010, seventeen states and the District of Columbia received more in net federal expenditures per capita than did Puerto Rico. That is, in more than one-third of all the states, in these two years, the net amount per capita received from the federal government — federal expenditures minus federal taxes — was greater than the net amount per capita received in Puerto Rico from the federal government. The reality demonstrated in the tables, then, belies the conventional wisdom and indicates that, by a reasonable comparative standard, Puerto Rico is not treated “generously” by the federal government.

              In other words, Puerto Rico receives more in net benefits per capita from the federal government than two thirds of the states. If spending at levels comparable to far wealthier states is not reinvestment, then what is?

              Yet you have no answer for how America doesn't turn into a 3rd world shithole if we don't pay people enough to be simultaneously employed and housed and fed. Or perhaps you're fine with that happening.

              I certainly do have an answer here. Get out the way of employers. One of the most obvious things about an economy is that just because you have a need, doesn't mean that you have a means to fulfill that need. You need the infrastructure in place. For example, most people have a need to not die. But we don't have any sort of infrastructure that would allow us to radically extend our lifespans beyond the usual range. No matter how much one could pontificate about the importance of not dying, it's not going to matter in today's world.

              Same goes for space colonization. One can decide that humanity living off of Earth is the most important thing ever, but mere money isn't going to make that happen. We'll need to build all kinds of Earth and space-side infrastructure to make that happen down the road.

              At least with your above paragraph, we have the means to do so. But it involves maintaining infrastructure for employing people gainfully. The key part of that infrastructure are employers. Without them, it's just as impossible as having your 200th birthday, or living on Mars would be without the corresponding medical or space-side infrastructure. I'm tired of people telling me what they want, without offering a way to get that (or worse proposing all sorts of road blocks to getting the very thing they claim to want). Thus, my usual response that you don't actually deserve this thing any more than you deserve that 200th birthday or that Mars bungalow. And if you're not going to try to get it with approaches that actually work, then of course, you won't get it. Economics like most of reality doesn't go away merely because you can't be bothered to think rationally.

              Wow. Now that's integrity. But will you go so far as to admit you believe "poor people" to be genetically inferior? You feel it in your bones, don't you? I'll bet you even wish you could have Bill Gates' genetically superior baby.

              Your race-baiting is noted.

              Don't pay... Oh, you mean don't provide welfare checks so people can feed their children while working at Walmart. What reveals your intellectual dishonesty most clearly is how you continue to shy away from acknowledging that these corporations we're talking about are making record profits and therefore have no reason not to pay their employees a reasonable wage. Record. Profits. Not revenue. Profits.

              There's no problem here. Subsidize the companies that employ these people and there is no problem. But you can't have that. Envy is your downfall.

              High cost of living areas are created by the fact that we don't place any limits on the upper end of income levels and the limitations we place on developing new housing, not by having a reasonable minimum wage.

              Of course, I already explained how that is incorrect. A reasonable minimum wage in San Jose is not a reasonable minimum wage in Fresno or Puerto Rico.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:21PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:21PM (#621909)

          This is why I want the south to succeed. Whole gulf coast. So they will be forced to live this bullshit without taxes from the blue areas. The south is a hidden welfare state. And the idiots who support it dumb enough to fall year after year for changing Fox News propaganda.

          The south is a cancer. Let them feed of each other.

          Please Texas. Succeed like you pretend (manly like) to want. But in reality you like you hidden rural welfare system.

          • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:13PM

            by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:13PM (#621983) Journal

            Gods, yes. The entire South. They won the fucking civil war; they made us keep them. They make all this noise about seceding? Well they can put their money where their toothless sister-screwing mouths are and get the fuck out. They'll be a basket case inside of 6 months, and then we can conquer them and *properly* reconstruct them like what should have been done in the first place. Or maybe just burn the entire place to the ground.

            --
            I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:53PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:53PM (#621996)

          khallow is basically a medieval feudalist. He doesn't call them kings, dukes, barons, knights and lords, but his attitude towards the rich is exactly that of a peasant who truly believes that god mandated their stations in life. It is an honor just to serve them, and the scraps from their table are more than a peasant deserves.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:39AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:39AM (#621745)

      A lot of that seems obvious. That doesn't make it true. Those arguments give us modern Venezuela, with a population that is literally starving. Failure to understand basic economics has killed well over a hundred million people in the past century.

      You talk of minimum wage being "a career wage for employees of all ages and skill levels". If I were satisfied with that wage, which would be the case if it were much higher, then I might choose a different career. I could put my high-skill valuable profession aside for something that would help me lose weight. Instead of hacking all day, I could be a gym teacher. This kind of decision, replicated millions of times over, would crash our economy.

      My son has a minimum wage job at Ace Hardware. He got it at age 14 so that he would come to understand a work environment, get a reference, and gain a better understanding of why he must do well in school. The money is a bonus. Your ideas would deny all that to him, because he wasn't worth a high wage.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:11AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:11AM (#621752)

        > My son has a minimum wage job at Ace Hardware. He got it at age 14 so that he would come to understand a work environment, get a reference, and gain a better understanding of why he must do well in school. The money is a bonus. Your ideas would deny all that to him, because he wasn't worth a high wage.

        That works for a 14 year old, but try the argument on a 35 year old single mother of two or whatever. Times change, and unlike in the 80s, most minimum wage jobs are no longer occupied by teenagers trying to get some work experience and pocket money.

        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:39PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:39PM (#621888)

          The 14-year-old needs to job. It helps train him for a productive future.

          The 35-year-old single mother of two is already a failure. She shouldn't be taking jobs from children.

          I think "single mother" is part of the problem. A mother should be supported by her husband, the father of 100% of her children. Anything else is fucked up. Abandoning the traditional family is a huge source of poverty.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by RedBear on Saturday January 13 2018, @12:23PM

        by RedBear (1734) on Saturday January 13 2018, @12:23PM (#621771)

        Venezuela? What?

        You seem to be imagining a scenario in which the minimum wage just keeps uncontrollably climbing until it rivals wages for specialized jobs. Yet that is not what anyone actually wants. The $15 people are asking for is just a realignment of the minimum wage with the buying power it had decades ago when it was $2 in the '60s, or $5 in the '80s. Nobody wants the minimum wage right now to be $50/hr (at least not until 2075 or so when that might make sense), nor has anyone ever requested a minimum wage of $100,000/hr as they hyperbolically talked about on Faux Noose one day a few years ago. The fear so many conservatives seem to have that a $15 minimum wage by 2020 or 2025 will collapse the economy is in my opinion nonsensical. If you're getting anywhere close to $15 for a specialization like programming, yeah, we have a problem.

        As to the other thing, I don't believe that any person doing the same job as someone else should be paid a drastically lower wage. If you work, you should get paid. Period. What you aren't remembering clearly is that the same job you might have had as a teen would have given you much more relative buying power. I think teaching your children that you should be forced to rely on a corporation "doing you a favor" by employing you is a terrible idea. The favors go both ways. You work for them and help them make money, and they share the wealth in a reasonable manner. I think your son is worth a reasonable wage that might give him a chance to build up some savings, buy a car, find a place to live, get more education and in general find his own path in the world as soon as he graduates. A job at $7.55 ain't gonna cut it.

        You're also assuming that the people above him at Ace are making much more. In all too many areas, that isn't true. People of all ages in our workforce have been stuck in dead-end jobs at minimum wage for years. Do you want your son to still be making that same minimal "starter" wage five years from now? Because that's what's happened to millions of workers in this country, as their employers are in turn making record profits. If you don't think there's something wrong with that, well...

        Let me see if I can say this even more clearly. Corporations in America, in recent decades, have taken to abusing the minimum wage simply because they can. People all over America are stuck in jobs where nobody ever gets a raise and nobody ever gets promoted no matter how good they are at their job. They can keep people in those jobs because so many other companies are doing the same thing. And inflation gives them all a pay cut every year. It's time for the backward slide to stop. That's all that is being fought for here. The idea that this will turn us into Venezuela is silly. Besides, Venezuela is collapsing because of bizarre artificial controls on trade, from what I understand.

        Imagine for a second that you had to try and support your family by working at your son's job. That's exactly what millions of Americans are doing, quite literally.

        --
        ¯\_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, @02:51AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:51AM (#622061)

        OMG Socialism! Hitler! Stalin! Mao! Pol Pot! Venezuela!

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by lx on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:56AM (5 children)

    by lx (1915) on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:56AM (#621736)

    Just pay the increased price.
    If you can't afford to buy a ready made sandwich then make your own goddamn sandwich for 1/10th the price.
    It's not rocket science, although you're free to add rocket [google.nl] if you like.
    Probably better for you anyway.

    • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:19AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:19AM (#621742)

      If you can't afford to buy a ready made sandwich then make your own goddamn sandwich for 1/10th the price.

      Price inflation due to government mandated minimum wage is the problem here and it effects everything and everyone. If you look deeper you find that the real problem is certain people have awarded themselves remuneration rates in excess of what the market dictates. The solution to this ever widening wealth inequality is not inflation (increasing minimum wage), it's freezing or reducing wages for individuals who are overpaid (eg: state employed bureaucrats).

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:39AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:39AM (#621747)

        Fight the power comrade.
        Until you are the power and you´ll do even worse than the shitheads that are in charge now.
        Oh well, at lest it makes a change.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:47AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:47AM (#621749)

          Fight the power comrade.
          Until you are the power and you´ll do even worse than the shitheads that are in charge now.
          Oh well, at lest it makes a change.

          What? Taxpayers should not tolerate government mandated price inflation or economic illiteracy from employees.

          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:17AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:17AM (#621754)

            Taxpayers should also not tolerate having desperate people willing to work any job to avoid having their families starve, but same people arguing against minimum wage also argue against all social programs. Negative economic impact on the entire country from you accepting an exploitative job is almost always not a problem of economic literacy.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:21AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:21AM (#621755) Journal

      So what's the problem here?

      What's the problem, you ask?
      By the reactions in the comments, the pinnacle of USian civilization, the very reason for which that country was founded by lotsa fathers some (small) hundred years ago is ... the $5 footlong sammich.

      And... oh, the unspeakable tragedy... those Seattle guys kill it, choosing to degrade themselves into the unholy company of Microsoft and Amazon instead of appreciating what Subway brought to them!!!

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:16AM

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:16AM (#621753) Journal

    I remain skeptical of these claims, especially in light of the outrageous levels of executive "compensation". The complaint would have much more credibility if backed by some data showing that the board and the C-levels have tightened their belts a little. Otherwise this just smacks of the same insincerity as a snotty, little kid claiming "look what you made me do."

    --
    Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:33AM (1 child)

    by Gaaark (41) on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:33AM (#621758) Journal

    Solution is, the employees by the and rise in pay as the CEO. He gets a bonus? They get one too, same percentage. Stock options? Yup.

    Sears executives here in Canada got bonuses for failing at their jobs, employees got shafted. Fair?

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:37AM

      by Gaaark (41) on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:37AM (#621760) Journal

      Sh*t f*cking spell check tablet shit feck shit

      Preview shit......feck

      Employees get the same rise in pay

      Shitfeck

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:55AM (5 children)

    by sjames (2882) on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:55AM (#621766) Journal

    Let's say that we don't increase minimum wage, BUT we also decide that we are not going to subsidize low paying employers through welfare, food stamps, etc. How many $5 footlongs do you suppose a Subway can sell in Seattle if it is staffed with hepatitis infected homeless people who haven't showered in 6 months?

    So, what ever would they do? Sell $5.50 subs so their employees could afford to not stink and not have hepatitis, naturally.

    The minimum wage is society's way of not letting employers sponge off of our social safety net (such as it is) while also not letting people starve in the streets.

    • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:18PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:18PM (#621781)

      They cut my wife's hours from 30 hrs/week to 12 hrs/week due to the minimum wage increase. Better yet... When Obamacare started years ago, they ceased all employee medical coverage benefits nationwide. Thanks Ofucker.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by drussell on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:25PM (2 children)

        by drussell (2678) on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:25PM (#621836) Journal

        They cut my wife's hours from 30 hrs/week to 12 hrs/week due to the minimum wage increase.

        They may say it was due to the minimum wage increase, but that just doesn't make sense.

        Unless your wife was making about $6 an hour before, cutting her hours from 30 to 12 to make up the wage differences just doesn't doesn't add up. They're just using it as an excuse to downsize their workforce.

        • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:18PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:18PM (#621920)

          You are assuming some motives that just aren't there. It's not "I really want to screw her over, but I have no excuse... oh, now I have an excuse!" with somebody trying to run a business.

          No excuse is needed, but it is always there: The business is not a charity and has no desire to pay anything to anybody.

          They would have cut her hours before, but it didn't make financial sense. She was earning her keep. Now they run the numbers, and it appears that they'd be better off with fewer of her hours. It isn't personal.

          The effects of cutting hours are complicated. Obviously, less is paid to the employee. Revenue will decrease because less work gets done. Material costs go down because less work gets done.

          You can't tell if it adds up unless you know lots of details about demand curves for that business. Unless the management is incompetent though, we know that somehow it does add up.

          • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:02AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:02AM (#622064)

            It's not "I really want to screw her over, but I have no excuse... oh, now I have an excuse!" with somebody trying to run a business.

            They're just throwing a tantrum right now.

            After the ACA passed, they stopped offering anybody more than 29.5 hours. Now all I hear is "why are our employees so crappy?!" "Why is the competition eating our lunch on quality?!" "Why are we losing customers?!" "Waaah! Waaah!"

            These people would shutter profitable businesses out of sheer spite. They already have enough to live the rest of their life in comfort.

            Don't give me any "but but but trying to run business rational holy owner would never blablabla." You don't know enough small business owners if you think that.

      • (Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday January 14 2018, @07:21PM

        by sjames (2882) on Sunday January 14 2018, @07:21PM (#622238) Journal

        Funny though, they seem to have cut her hours by far more than enough to compensate for the higher hourly rate. They also seem to have cut out health benefits in spite of them costing no more under ACA than before IF they actually were providing a benefit.

        Would you be happier if they cut your wife's pay to $4/hr and gave her 60 hours a week with no benefits?

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @12:16PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @12:16PM (#621769)

    So let me get my math straight: An hour's work at minimum wage in Subway was just over enough to buy two footlong sandwiches sold at subway and prepared by said employee. Three sandwiches, after the minimum wage increase.

    Am I the only one who thinks this is either an absurdly expensive sandwich or a disgustingly low wage? How many customers are served and how many such sandwiches does an employee make in an hour? 50? 100? How much value does such an employee produce to deserve such a wage? The ratio of value produced and wages received must be seriously distorted.

    No matter which way a I look at it, there must be something seriously wrong with your economy if it allows such one-sided exploitation of labor by employers to occur. Why would anyone even choose to go to work at all at those wages? I'd expect the supply of labor to approach 0 at that price.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:33PM (#621784)

      > Why would anyone even choose to go to work at all at those wages?

      No one chooses to. Well, maybe an occasional teenager working part-time. Other employees are working there because if they don't they'll starve. This way they're just sick and hungry. Improvement!

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:11PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:11PM (#621792)

      So let me get my math straight: An hour's work at minimum wage in Subway was just over enough to buy two footlong sandwiches sold at subway and prepared by said employee.

      You've never run a business have you? Deduct sales taxes and divide by 3 (profit, cost, wages) and you're left with around $1.50. Every Subway I've been in has a sandwich maker (usually more than one) and a clerk to take the cash. That $22 wage bill requires 18 footlongs to be sold an hour, every hour. A footlong every 3 minutes and would you like it toasted? With a wage of $11 an hour, you get that volume of sales or you close the business. They're not getting that sales volume all day are they?

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:40AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:40AM (#622074)

        Ok well pretend that they dedicate a third to wages. That's $1.67. For 22 hours of wages you only need to actually sell 13.2 sandwiches. This also doesn't include the high profit items of fountain soda and cookies. Which cost cents per oz and are sold for dollars. But we'll continue with the example as stated and pretend no one wants to wash down their stale bread with anything. The only have to sell one every 4.5 minutes. Add back in the Soda, cookies, and even the low cost subs like the vegie and your probably only having to make a sandwich every ten minutes to stay profitable.

        Lets do another thought exercise. Lets raise those employees wages to 15 an hour.
        Now you have to make enough sandwiches to cover $30 dollars of wages. At that rate you need to make 18 foot longs an hour. Surprise. Thats the number you came up when you rounded. Wait whats that, the $4 an hour was a FUCKING ROUNDING ERROR. Just give them the $15 dollar wage. Your own math proved it is nothing but a rounding error.

        I cant find good stats on it but from what I could find an average subway sells 400-500 subs a day. Say they are open for 12 hours, two employees working the entire time (although early and late its often only one) You are talking $264 in wages if they get paid $11 an hour. And $360 if they are getting paid $15. For a total difference of $96. If you split that up among 400 sandwiches you only need to raise the cost of your sandwich $0.24 a piece. Shit that is passing THE ENTIRE COST to the customer, and its so little THEY WONT EVEN FUCKING NOTICE.

        Quit being a pinch penny, raise the cost of the sandwich 0.25 and give your employees enough money to live off of. Hell you even get to pretend to be the fucking good guy, and you haven't cut profit one single cent!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @06:07PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @06:07PM (#622649)

        That $22 wage bill requires 18 footlongs to be sold an hour, every hour.

        This argument is wrong on the face of it, because subway sells more than just sandwiches. Some of those items have much higher margins.

        If people buy pop or coffee with their sandwich then the required sales volume goes down significantly.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by chromas on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:48PM

      by chromas (34) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:48PM (#621807) Journal

      The ratio of value produced and wages received must be seriously distorted.

      You're forgetting the materials cost. Those pale, flavorless tomatoes aren't free, ya know. Plus you've got utilities, property tax, non-customer-facing staff and other infrastructure whose costs are diffused into the price of all them sammiches.

      Why would anyone even choose to go to work at all at those wages?

      Bills.

    • (Score: 2) by drussell on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:52PM

      by drussell (2678) on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:52PM (#621848) Journal

      Am I the only one who thinks this is either an absurdly expensive sandwich or a disgustingly low wage?

      Indeed... It is both.

      The least expensive foot-long at most of the Subways here (when there isn't a $5 deal, coupon, or other promotion) is $7.74 plus tax. Absolutely, that's very expensive sandwich for just some cold cuts with some veggies on it. You're paying for all the overhead of it coming from a dedicated sandwich shop, the labor for it to be made to order in front of you in a (hopefully) reasonable time frame, etc. :)

      How many customers are served and how many such sandwiches does an employee make in an hour? 50? 100? How much value does such an employee produce to deserve such a wage? The ratio of value produced and wages received must be seriously distorted.

      The "sandwich artists" each probably do about 45 sandwiches per hour during a busy lunch rush, yeah. Many of the busy Subways I've been to during a rush will have one or two employees just taking the initial order and grabbing the bread choice, then 4, 5, 6 "sandwich artists" going full tilt with one cashier and at least another worker or two replenishing supplies, etc.

      No matter which way a I look at it, there must be something seriously wrong with your economy if it allows such one-sided exploitation of labor by employers to occur.

      Indeed.

      Why would anyone even choose to go to work at all at those wages?

      Out of sheer desperation.

      I'd expect the supply of labor to approach 0 at that price.

      See desperation above.

    • (Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday January 14 2018, @07:26PM

      by sjames (2882) on Sunday January 14 2018, @07:26PM (#622242) Journal

      They would never choose to if not bent over a barrel by a combination of needing income to live and nobody making a better offer since unemployment is perpetually a positive number.

      If we had a Basic Income, the situation would change overnight, which is why conservatives would rather die (or more likely, see everyone else die) than see such a thing implemented.

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