No, I work with and employee many of the so-called poor, and I can assure you that the vast majority of them have no one to blame but themselves. I see them self destruct on a weekly basis. It's a shame, but many are just lost causes and will likely stay that way forever. The ones that don't fit that mold, pull themselves out of a crappy situation eventually.
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Paying Your Employees So Little That Most Of Them Are Poor?
- Thread starter nutmeg
- Start date
No, I work with and employee many of the so-called poor, and I can assure you that the vast majority of them have no one to blame but themselves. I see them self destruct on a weekly basis. It's a shame, but many are just lost causes and will likely stay that way forever. The ones that don't fit that mold, pull themselves out of a crappy situation eventually.
Sorry if my sarcasm was a little too subtle... I agree with you completely.Quote from clacy:
No, I work with and employee many of the so-called poor, and I can assure you that the vast majority of them have no one to blame but themselves. I see them self destruct on a weekly basis. It's a shame, but many are just lost causes and will likely stay that way forever. The ones that don't fit that mold, pull themselves out of a crappy situation eventually.
Quote from Mayhem:
Mother nature works that way... a small fraction of baby bluefin tuna make it to 1000 lbs, most of the tuna serve as fodder for other organisms in the food chain. You can call the baby tuna that get eaten "poor", but I like to think of them as happy-go-lucky tuna that would buy Chevy Blazers if they were human.
Heh -- pure genius.
Quote from Ed Breen:
Walmart, Starbucks and McDonalds don't make people poor because of thier business model or thier pay structure.
Actually, they provide jobs for the least employable; they provide work for the unemployed poor and unskilled. In fairness all these firms have management positions once a worker learns some skills that can provide an income that would pull them out of poverty. The entry level jobs in these businessess are opportunities for the young, down and out, intellectually handicapped, self medicated, and otherwise unemployable to have a structure and learn something about work that they can build on. A lot of diswashers would otherwise be sitting in the street under a scaffold. Which do you think is better?
Good point! And to the extent that Walmart, etc., does this they are providing a service that is useful to them, to the employee, and to the rest of us. Anyone not fitting into the "least employable" category would do well to work for these companies in other than a management position only as a last resort. I would never accept a low level job at one of these companies thinking you will work your way up to a management position without knowing what their track record is for promoting from within. My impression is that they are more likely to hire directly into a management position than they are to promote a high performing employee. I hope I am wrong about that.
Quote from Random.Capital:
Unrestricted capitalism means most people will be poor. No middle class. No "bulge" in the wealth distribution, just a Pareto curve.
That's what we all want, right?
This is clearly wrong. There are far more people in the middle class today than there were twenty or thirty years ago - hundreds of millions more. It's just that they're in China and Brazil rather than the United States.
You can't expect to integrate two billion illiterate peasants into the global economy overnight, with no effect whatsoever on unskilled wages. To boost wages you can either reduce the supply of labor, or wait until the market 'works off' the excess supply.
Quote from clacy:
I am involved in a family business where we own and operate five sit down, restaurants. I will be the first to admit that many of our employees are not paid well. Our tipped employees (servers) end up making pretty good wages if they are good at their job. The cooks, dish washers, bus boys, etc are not highly paid.
It should be noted that many of these employees are not very employable outside of these service sector. They often have low skills, criminal records, or high school/college students. So, I think that low paying jobs are better than nothing for this type of employee.
The market is really where wages are determined. Frankly if I were to increase the wages of my hourly employees significantly, we would go out of business in a matter of months.
Some might say raise your prices to a point where you can pay your employees more. I would say that you clearly have never run a business before or taken a basic economic class if you think it's that easy. Every time I raise my prices by X%, I lose Y% of customers and the impact of the price change increases/decreases my overall sales by Z%. There is a cost benefit (which can usually only be done in hindsight, where you try to keep the price increases positive
The restaurant business is very saturated and competitive, so it is not a high per-employee profit margin business. Relative to how many people we employee, or how many customers we serve, we actually make very little. It's the exact opposite of say an engineering firm or dental practice.
When you invest your life savings and personally guarantee large loans/leases, you really would like to see a profit if you are successful. So there is no way to satisfy all of your employees and still earn a fair profit relative to the risk that you take when you open a restaurant.
I would tell the employees/writers who complain about low wages to put their money where their mouth is and start a business where they have to set wages and run a viable business.
This is the US, so they are free to do that at any time.
great post.
Quote from morganist:
The main problem is property. It is too expensive. It has been pushed by the central bank pushing low interest rates. The idea is people feel wealthy if the house price is high and consume more. It is an illusion and it gives the home occupiers an advantage. Cheap credit and huge spending power. Plus they can chose to buy at low prices when they occur.
It is mainly the central bank believe me.
Property is mis priced.
As a business owner... who wants to open more offices... the rent situation is ridiculous. Empty buildings and high rents in So Cal.
I wonder who the investors in these building are. Is it mostly banks with access to Free fed money?
Quote from ssrrkk:
yes, but then you would hope that humans would have evolved their social structures further than tunas or gorillas for that matter.
Nah, you can't beat mother nature... Humans can't escape the Darwinian reality that we have genetic variety in our human population. Genetic variety functions to preserve the species and to pass forward the genes most "fit" for our environment. There will always he winners and losers whether we are talking about tuna, gorillas, or humans.
In the case we are discussing, this woman had a windfall of $8000 left to her by her mother. This woman has children. She asked for advice from a broker, and she got sound advice to invest it. She felt a return of $600 per annum was too low, so she spent it on a Chevy Blazer (a very quickly depreciating asset both in value and personal utility). Could we all make better decisions for this dolt? Sure, but the price of freedom is that we let idiots live their lives and make their own mistakes... the world needs ditch diggers and middle-aged moms who fluff up the salad bar at Ruby Tuesdays too.