196
California fast-food workers’ minimum wage win stirs up old economic debate
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
196 points (99.0% liked)
News
36529 readers
368 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Remember, prices arent simple functions of cost. The business owner isn't tabulating costs to produce a product, and then adding a standardized profit markup to determine price. Generally it works in reverse. A business owner introducing a new product into a market is competing with the prices already in the market. If your product is of similar quality, you're not gonna sell your product for much higher than that market price, no matter how much it costs you to make. Instead, you increase your profit margins by reducing costs as much as you can. Like say, fighting against legislation like this to pay your workers less.
Now, there probably will be some price increases from this, same as there was from the pandemic, because people will expect to pay more because they think that's how prices work. But they can only get away with so much increase, anyone that keeps prices low gets an advantage over the competition.
Also, the threats of reduced hours and layoffs is a pretty empty threat. Again, employment isnt a simple function of cost. Business owner isnt budgeting a set amount of earnings to hire with. An employee is there to handle customer demand. If you don't have the employees to handle the demand you're getting, you're losing sales. Especially in fast food where consistency is so important to customer retention. If you're short on fry cooks and have to turn down a bunch of customers hoping to get fries with their meals, they're gonna go elsewhere eventually. But they also dont want more employees than they need to meet that demand, thats eating into the profit margins. This is why fast food workers get so stressed, employers try to meet the most demand with the lowest amount of labor cost. Again, there might be some temporary layoffs and hour reductions as employers try to stretch their labor even thinner, until they realize they were already stretched to the limit and have to hire back.
Exactly. In Econ class we used the elasticities of supply and demand to see who “paid” for the tax or additional costs. Business owners will try to push it off if they can, but because of prices people are willing to pay, they often eat a large portion out of profit.
Things are never as simple as econ classes make you believe.