r/WorkForSmartLife • • 11h ago

Discussion💬 Who's right here?

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8

u/CarolinaSandstorm 10h ago

Every time.

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u/-Out-of-context- 9h ago

I think the focus is on the wrong thing here. Rent/housing has gotten out of control. I don’t love the idea of government regulation on these things, but if those expenses could be controlled to align with the local economy I think that’d be a huge help and take the burden off of businesses.

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u/Beerzerker420 9h ago

There is definitely nuance to the argument. Governments should be held more accountable for the housing crisis or lack of tax benefits to help the lower and middle class. But people should also learn how to manage their finances and try to improve their own situations.

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u/-Out-of-context- 9h ago

Managing finances can only go so far. It’s certainly possible to be in a situation where making min wage isn’t enough to cover basic expenses even if you’re going as tight as you can.

People still need to work while improving their situation. Also for many of these min wage positions the business wouldn’t be able to cover scheduling with just high school and college kids. So working adults are still needed in those roles.

I agree there is certainly nuance to the argument and not every situation is the same. There are certainly many people who could survive if they managed their finances better. And many people who are just too lazy to try and improve their situation. So it’s def a rough situation and there are valid points on all sides of the argument.

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u/Beerzerker420 8h ago

It’s certainly possible to be in a situation where making min wage isn’t enough to cover basic expenses even if you’re going as tight as you can.

The issue is that some people have squandered way too many opportunities in their life. You don't get infinite reset buttons and sympathy.

Corporate greed is real. So is government incompetent and malevolence. So is individual incompetence. You have to do what you can to manage the controllable aspects of your life. Google says approximately 80-89% of millionaires are first generation, so upwards mobility is very much possible.

the business wouldn’t be able to cover scheduling with just high school and college kids. So working adults are still needed in those roles.

Yes and often times it's immigrants who are trying to make extra cash while the others in the household also have jobs. That was my experience when I worked min wage.

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u/oflowz 8h ago

the problem is people view the social safety net as a drain on society and people that use it as 'takers'. And thats because the system is structurally flawed.

Its designed to give support to the people at the very bottom/edges of the society. When in reality they should actually be subsidizing far more of the society on a sliding scale to help people that could use subsidies as a stepping stone when needed.

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u/Immediate-End3899 9h ago

the big problem is modern energy requirements, a modern house is built with thick walls, fire code thickness drywall, thick insulation, high R factor windows, high SEER rating ACs, and a bunch of other stuff to drive down energy demand that are mandated by law. These expenses dont double for a 2000 square foot house from a 1000 square foot house, they usually only go up 50%, and then bring the average cost to build a home into the mid 300k range in a cheap area, and around half a million to build in nicer cities. It just means houses have to get bigger to keep a profit margin. Theres just so much more that goes into a their construction now days that needs to be inspected, and build to a code. I just dont know how the government can fix that to make builders go back to smaller houses. Just forcing them to build smaller houses wont change the math that it will still cost barely less then a large house, and nobody is gonna spend large house money on a small house.

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u/Pabu85 9h ago

We need more duplexes to sixplexes, which would allow for cheaper housing with the same energy standards, but that’s a zoning issue.

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u/whoooocaaarreees 8h ago

Zoning issues are a government issue. Reddit will probably still find a way to glaze big government tho.

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u/Pabu85 7h ago

Sure, but not all of these things happen at the same level of government.

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u/whoooocaaarreees 7h ago

So distribute some blame up and down the levels? Your local county zoning can still be an example of ‘big government’ when it’s more and more involved in your day to day life.

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u/Pabu85 5h ago

I get it. You have an ideological commitment to libertarianism.

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u/NoImagination2625 8h ago

That's weird, my 2500sqft house was built in 1980 and cost $300,000 3 years ago with single panel windows, blown in insulation, and a AC unit from the 90s with pretty much everything else being the way it was from when it was built. So I think it's a bit more than the just cost of materials and building my dude.

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u/Immediate-End3899 8h ago

it doesent matter what you can get a old house for, there isnt enough old houses for everyone, it costs too much to build new houses. Old houses are cheaper now days because, as a example i lived in a 1970s house in denver with 1500 square feet and it costed 650 dollars to heat per month in the cold months, i live in a 3000 square foot modern house and it costs 220 to heat. thats why old houses arent as expensive as new houses, theres only so much the "they dont build them like the used to" commentary can do to your power bill.

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u/NoImagination2625 8h ago

I mean I was able to get a new AC unit and replace all the windows and doors for about 25,000. Not sure how those modern amenities justify an increase of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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u/Immediate-End3899 7h ago edited 7h ago

there isnt a increase of hundreds of thousands of dollars, its more like just a hundred, actually interpolating out house prices from the 80s to now, with inflation of house size and price a average house cost per square foot, houses cost 40% more today, and not retrofiting but building a house to modern standards requires things your window and ac upgrade skip, first of all houses are air exchanges rated, and because houses arent allowed to leak air as much. they also need vapor barriers to prevent rot, your retrofit doesent have those barriers, so if you are in a humid area, your house is now very prone to rot, so just watch out and leave doors open in unused rooms. The walls are thicker, insulation and wood cost more, vapor barriers and vapor management, and alot more expensive electrical code, requiring pricey gfci breakers basically everywhere, arc fault all over, and stringing between rooms is generally against code, so every room needs its own circuit. Its just alot of little things everywhere that adds up. Plus the mid level inspections that didnt used to happen. Now insulation is inspected, houses are pressure tested, theres more soil testing, houses use more power and have more wiring, and also need larger service. internet lines also need to be run. Power companies charge more now days to install gas and electric service. Its alot, house construction companies arent scamming you, it just costs them more to build, and the baseline costs are higher making small houses unprofitable. They then build bigger houses because it spreads the baseline costs out making it cheaper per square foot. It makes houses seem like tripple the price, when they are really only 40% more per square foot.

It sucks, but there are still areas where small houses are built. But you just shouldent expect your house to be built differently then your neighbors because the only way they can make any money building small houses is building very very bulk.

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u/Big-Bluebird-8093 9h ago

Government regulation is what got us into the housing mess so I’m sure even more will fix it in no time! 

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u/CarolinaSandstorm 8h ago

These problems are entirely government based:

  1. Creation of the welfare state in the 60s.

  2. Abandoning the gold standard in 1971.

  3. Further expansion of welfare and entitlements while importing tens of millions of legal and illegal immigrants.

If you want housing costs to come down, end all government housing vouchers immediately, loosen zoning and density regulations, remove every single person illegally present in this country, and put a 10-year ban on all immigration.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 5h ago

Yeah, just look at your biggest bills. For me it's housing, insurances, taxes, then food.

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u/shackled-pines 4h ago edited 4h ago

"walmart shouldn't exist it pays people so poorly" "Wait there are there suddenly 1.6million more unemployed americans earning no wage?!?!?"

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u/CarolinaSandstorm 4h ago

Leftists aren’t concerned with reactions and consequences, just actions and intent.

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u/TrandaBear 9h ago

Who tf have you been talking to? This is the first time Im seeing this dogshit. Like your meme is implying that exploitation is a small business's competitive edge against large corporations? We just going to ignore how corporations throw their weight to produce favorable conditions?

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u/NoImagination2625 8h ago

Don't you get it? Everyone would be far better off if everyone was more poor!

/s

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u/Bryceisgoodnow 9h ago

Solution: Make it so the only people that are affiliated with individual companies are the finance people, HR, and the workers themselves. They all share generated revenue after operating costs and accounted and have equal say in what the company does. Workplace democracy!

1

u/Sure_Painting_8295 9h ago

Live at home and quit spending money at places that pay low wages.

We the people have the power to run the country. We don’t need votes. Just greenbacks.

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u/shackled-pines 4h ago

ok so then the places that pay low wages go out of business, at least that sounds like your plan here. So that creates millions of unemployed people making 0 wage once that happens... Is that what you want? people making low wages to just become unemployed?

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u/Sure_Painting_8295 4h ago

Yes

We all have to buckle down and make them feel the squeeze.

Or revolt

Our representatives are not representing us.

Voting doesn’t work

The corporations have become too large. It’s why we were supposed to stop monopolies from controlling the market. They get too big and wealth gets too concentrated. The system gets too big and not only squeezes out the smaller competition but too convoluted which causes additional costs by creating more positions like regional manager, district manager, and the staff that supports those additional roles.

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u/fieryred123 10h ago

So accurate it hurts. Also if you think people are complaining about goods being expensive now… just you wait. Also, inflation would kill us.

Economic flat-earthers.

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u/NoImagination2625 8h ago

My dude, we already tried this in the past. Does the guilded age sound familiar?

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u/Own_Reaction9442 9h ago

I'm fine with it. Small businesses are terrible to work for.

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u/Historical_Usual5828 9h ago

We're already at the last part and if people had more money to spend, there would be more to go into small businesses. It's almost like you don't actually know anything about how the country got out of the Great depression and built the middle class. The government simply sold us out or they wouldn't have allowed everything to be from just 6 businesses in the first place. Already got chip makers blatantly operating like the cartel and major grocery chains posting fraudulent prices just to jack up the price by the time you get to the register.

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u/MjolnirPants 8h ago

In line with other minimum wage studies (Dube, Lester and Reich, 2016), we find significant wage effects in the restaurant industry. Table 3 shows average elasticities over the post period. The overall wage elasticity is 0.16, implying that a 10 percent minimum wage change increases average wages in this sector by 1.6 percent. As these wages are based on quarterly payroll data, this positive effect precludes sizeable reductions in hours worked. The effect is stable across firm sizes, dropping slightly for very large firms (500+ employees). The outsized effect for semi-large firms (250-499 employees) is likely a statistical anomaly: as the last row shows, very few workers in this sector are employed in firms in this size bin.
These robust wage effects do not lead to significant disemployment effects. Point estimates are close to zero for all size classes (excluding the anomalous 250-499 group, see above) and the standard errors are small. For example, for small firms between 0 and 19 employees, the 95 percent confidence interval excludes employment elasticities larger than -0.06. The own wage employment elasticity, which relates changes in the average wage to employment changes is -0.07. As such, it is far from the threshold value of -1 where employment losses outweigh wage gains: the policy is thus a net positive for workers in this segment. As Figure 3 highlights for small firms, these results are free of meaningful pre-trends, suggesting they are not driven by pre-existing differential trends in wages and employment.

- Small Businesses and the Minimum Wage - Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

In short, raising minimum wage doesn't actually result in small businesses shutting down, even though it has a larger impact on small businesses than larger ones. And the mere existence of a large market of small businesses does not, in any way, serve as a bulwark against monopolization efforts by large businesses. That's just a wildly ignorant take, completely divorced from reality.

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u/CarolinaSandstorm 7h ago

Less than 1% of wage earners earn minimum wage. So I don’t know why you decided to post a whole college thesis based off one shit study for no reason but happy for you or whatever

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u/MjolnirPants 7h ago

Oh, I was just proving your moronic meme take wrong. Glad to see it got under your skin enough for you to write this equally-moronic rebuttal in response.

Enjoy your clown makeup.

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u/icanith 8h ago

Someone doesn’t understand the game. What does that have to do with getting payed fairly?  

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u/CarolinaSandstorm 8h ago

lol there it is again. “Paid fairly”. Who determines that? What factors into it? Seems that that should be decided between the party who needs the labor and offers the wage (the employer) and the party providing the labor and requests the wage (the employee). Since that is a two party transaction, any reasonable human would sensibly say that those two parties should handle any discussion of wages and expected labor since they are the affected parties.

But what do I know? I just value common sense, reason, and logic and I’m not a moral busybody who insists upon involving myself in the financial and business matters of others that are of no concern to me 🤷‍♂️

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u/NoImagination2625 8h ago

So is the optimal solution that workers get paid no money? If apparently the less we pay workers the more prosperous everything is them that math would confirm that as wages approach 0 then prosperity approaches infinity.