I could not conceivably attempt to get "into the head" or motivations of a 20 something year old. My life experience through childhood was profoundly different. I wasn't constantly overstimulated my entire childhood by electronic devices that didn't exist yet. Bullying didn't follow me home from school on the internet. I didn't have constant stream of people presenting illusions of their life on instagram. I also didn't grow up in an era of credit driven consumerism.

The environmental factors that impact the psychological makeup of todays 20something year old are just different.

As someone else has already alluded to, the carrots of long term goals is further from reach than ever (home, retirement, vacations, family) for younger people. That said, there has never been a better time in my memory for a person that has work ethic but no skills to go out and land a high paying job.

I think, perhaps, my most frustrating thing about todays workforce is their lack of understanding about credit ratings, debt loading and compound interest. I can't believe I have to beg staff to participate in our employer matched Vanguard 401k. A few are absolutely gangbusters about it, fist pumping money at their 401k's like there's no tomorrow (coincidentally, they are arguably my best employees). It is extremely difficult to get them to take any type of long term view on finances. As others have said, "whats the point".

Labor has the upper hand right now and many are leveraging that into higher wages, benefits or a better work environment and others leverage it to perform poorly, show up late, not show up at all. I can tilt at windmills all day about it but it isn't productive or change anything so I just keep my head down and try to operate in the current environment. I am 100% for anything that drives my employees wages up as long as I can remain viable. While some employees could care less about the viability of the business they work for, there are most certainly employees there that DO depend upon the viability of that business to lead their life and those employees "sticking it to the man" are most assuredly hurting their fellow employees.

The pendulum will swing. However you feel about the current labor market, labor would be well served to take a long economic view and secure their position now while they have the overwhelming advantage for what they want when their 60 years old. Because guess what you f#$kers, I don't care if your 20 years old. 60 years old is right around the corner.

Hard work doesn't guarantee wealth or security but not working hard is pretty much a guarantee of what you will end up with.

Objectively, it's pretty damn hard to blame them when even our biggest corporations operate with their only concern being the financials of the current quarter.

A year ago, I would have agreed. In the current climate, I couldn't disagree more. Opportunity abounds even with a minimal skillset to land a career level paying job.

Cant argue against any of your other points.

Secondary education and lending is completely predatory pushing students at an early age to go to college and acquire a lifetime of debt to start their lives out. Further, the degrees they are getting are ever increaslingly less valuable because sooo many were pushed to get degrees (unless that's a STEM degree).

A degree isn't much of a leg up if everyone has one.

I'm not a boomer but damn I hate people who generalize an entire subset of people based on age, race, sex, etc.

I would say I'm "successful" (seems like a house of cards that could fall more often than not) and I would attribute some of that to luck and circumstances... and hard work.

But, without the hard work the luck and circumstances wouldn't have meant shit.

Well, it is part of the terms of their employment and it's a career field not without risk. My brother retired from the Army and did two tours in Afghanistan and two tours in Iraq and spent the better part of 20 years on overseas deployments. He also watched many friends die that he came up with when his sister Chinook in their flight crashed into the ocean back in the early 2000's (the US was carting Philippine special forces around chasing Abu Sayiff after they kidnapped three americans).

So, I can't begrudge a military service member utilizing taxpayer funded benefits as per the terms of their employment. I doubt Gracia Burnham would either...

Minimum wage and it's history is always an interesting topic to me.

Without a doubt FDR's intention was that minimum wage was supposed to be a living wage. His words on the subject with regard to his intent are unassailable.

As implemented, minimum wage was not a living wage, nor was it for decades (if ever). Minimum wage in inflation adjusted dollars vs the CPI is higher right now than it was for the first decade after the FLSA. Minimum wage purchasing power peaked over 50 years ago in 1970.

Of course, the goal posts of what a "living wage" is have shifted significantly since the 40's. I doubt many people would be happy owning a home with the exact same amenities offered in your typical 1940's dwelling.

The percentage of the labor force on minimum wage wasn't tracked until the end of the 70's when it was at approximately 13% of all jobs. Minimum wage jobs (not considering undocumented labor) dropped to only approximately 2% of the labor force by 2017 and to 1.5% by 2020. That said, that percentage only reflects those employees making exactly minimum wage.

So, just my humble opinion, federal minimum wage should be pushed to match it's inflation adjusted peak in 1970 and pegged to inflation at that point. Further, the impact on the total economy would be less severe than many would have you believe as the percentage of true minimum wage workers with regard to the total labor force is at one of the lowest points in history.

Shocker, sometime between 1900 and 2022 someone updated your house. Your house is not "fairly unchanged" system wise. Practical electrical systems were only introduced in the 1880's. Only 10% of rural america was "electrified" by 1932. It wasn't until 1932 (and again FDR comes up, that f@#ker is pretty much legend at this point) that the REA was established which was largely responsible for getting electric to the masses. If your house built in 1900 had electricity the owners were damn filthy rich. Further, it would be knob and tube wiring. I would bet my entire pinball collection that there is little, if any, knob and tube wiring active in your house (If there is, get an electrician in there pronto). But, you can probably find the remnants of it in your attic. Parallel un-insulated wires approximately 6"-12" apart on small white ceramic insulators.

In 1940 roughly 45% of homes reported to the census bureau that did not have indoor plumbing. You went to the bathroom in an outhouse and kept a bucket of water nearby your hand pump to prime it, 15% didn't have electricity, heat was primarily via a central wood stove and only 37% had a phone. I can remember as a kid there were three elderly people that we would walk the neighborhood to visit because they always had cookies handy (and by neighborhood, I mean rural). While all of them had electricity, all of them got their water from a cistern hand pump in the yard. Getting water for them was part of the childhood ritual of scoring cookies.

It wasn't until the 1970's that indoor plumbing came in nearly 100% of new home construction.

I was hoping this thread wouldn't go all reddit late stage capitalism.

Historically those empires that didn't fall through war, famine ect fell because their Gini coefficient got out of whack. The economic system that they operated under (capitalism, socialism or whateverism) was irrelevant. They often fell (and coincidentally, it will be the demise of the United States as well) because over time any economic structure migrates wealth and resources to the few (the gini coefficient). Rome fell when 1% of the population controlled 16% of the wealth.

Currently, most developed countries are much much worse (which passes as long as there's enough bread an circuses for the masses). Currently the USA is at the top 1% owning 32% of the wealth.

There is no economic system in history where, over time, wealth doesn't migrate to the few. It's not a "capitalism" thing, it's a human nature thing. Our own failings ultimately corrupt whatever economic (or political) system we live under.

Without a doubt, a phone (even a cellular phone) is a prerequisite for basic living at this point. That said, there's a cricket wireless plan and then there's an iphone 10 on AT&T...

This is the problem with sarcasm these days right here. Only two sentences. Just putting in the bare minimum to make the point. Back in my day sarcastic writers would write extra paragraphs without extra compensation just for the joy of being sarcastic. You probably typed that up in your home office instead of a real work environment.

You originally responded to my comment "I doubt many people would be happy owning a home with the exact same amenities offered in your typical 1940's dwelling."

Your home having an original electric system or plumbing is just an anecdote which you are using to imply "because my home has a 1911 electrical panel in it all homes of the time had it" and dismiss the fact that the many did not.

It's a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" logical fallacy. My house built in the 70's had a solar system. That doesn't mean all other houses had solar.

Some of us do our best work while pooping on the toilet.

It's a good thing 100% of the population lived in the northeast in 1940 then! Whew! That house pictured is not a typical 1940's home...

Your block is not the entire country. We have this penchant for saving relevant older architectural buildings and razing insignificant ones leaving a "survivor bias".

No doubt your neighborhood is more architecturally interesting than the subdivision urban sprawl of today.

Employers could easily solve these issues by buying a pinball machine and giving half of the money to an employee for maintenance and emergency mystery playfield goo removal.

Free sprite would be a bonus

The average profit margin of a restaurant is between 3% to 6%. At 6% on 1M in sales that's a whopping $60k. Just looking at the photo posted above of the restaurant entrance, that's probably a low volume place and the owner is the operator and probably works there full time plus some. I doubt you you realize how much owner/operators actual work in small independent restaurants. You can remember a couple months of half paychecks, try years of no paychecks getting a restaurant going...

Since the pandemic there has been extreme volatility in COGS (costs of goods sold) as well as the frequent unavailability of products in addition to a tight labor market. It's volatile enough that you would be reprinting menus every couple of weeks, thus you see lower tier places going to fluctuating surcharges rather than menu reprints because their margins are too low to ride the fluctuations.

A 3.5% surcharge on a menu price based on 2021 wouldn't even sniff keeping the owners income the same

The #1 killer of independent restaurants is under-capitalization. The bar to entry is relatively low and "enough to open" initial finances coupled with poor business management lead to a lot of quick deaths in the industry. There's a common misconception among people diving in that it's FUN to own a bar and that selling booze for 70% markup how can you go wrong. You've got to be sitting on at least enough capital to cover 100% of your expenses for six months or have assets you can borrow against. Many just end up buying themselves a low paying 60 hour a week minimum job and end up stuck there until insolvency. Even getting by, the smallest blip in revenue (or a huge blip like a pandemic) are instantly terminal.

And then, there's a not an insignificant number of owners/operators in the industry that are just sketchy AF.

Even ran correctly, the market is highly elastic and there's only so far you can push pricing without having a significant impact on sales.

Looking at MW increases objectively... If you are running well and already paying over MW and/or your competitors wages the initial pain of labor cost increases are tempered because it's a bigger problem for those competitors. I, for one, am loving fast food portion reductions and price increases eroding consumers perception of value. All that's left for them is the convenience factor of getting your 20 minute old warming window food quickly.

First, the business needs the income to cover its expenses. Second, tipped wages are a long game. Counterintuitive though it may be, any transaction that increases your gross sales increases your tipped income. Over the long haul an employees tip percentage deviates very little (tenths of a point). Therefor, increasing gross sales increases tipped income regardless of what an individual tip is. Professionals servers in the service industry know this.

Tipped employees that subscribe to your beliefs usually aren’t good at their job. They wear a bad tip on their face and let it negatively impact their percentage on subsequent tables.

The customer benefits too.

Yes, it is. 100% of all expenses of any business are paid by the customer. Any business where the customers are not covering 100% of the costs of the business, that business gets rebranded as 'closed'.

The average server in spain makes about $7-$8 USD per hour. The median in the US is significantly higher than that.

Non tipping models have been tried at every level of the F&B industry in the US from Mom and Pops, Chains to the extremely high end. It almost always fails.

Joes Crab Shack tried it. The customers didn't like it and location sales dropped drastically. The servers didn't like it, they made less money and left.

Danny Meyer/Union Hospitality Group (high end) tried it. They had the exact same issues as Joes Crab Shack.

Do people really think something positive will come about by taking federally protected wages (tips) and diverting them to the owners via higher menu prices?

Australia's MW is over $20 but converted to USD it's less than $15 an hour. On average the cost of living is also 10% higher there. That said, even just shy of $15 an hour it's the highest national MW in the world.

In every other country they make less money both on average and at the top scales.

This is more than balanced out by better publicly funded benefits like single payer healthcare and better mass transit that we don’t have.

So, you’re comparing apples to oranges.

The current US tipping system, even with it's flaws, creates higher income for employees, reduced overhead for businesses (and I'm not talking about direct labor costs) and saves the consumer money.

Voting against our own self interests is a national pastime in the US.

Single payer healthcare is a no-brainer fiscally. Per capita healthcare spending is drastically lower and the healthcare outcomes are equivalent.

Some people would rather pay twice as much as the rest of the world as long as someone else doesn't get a "free ride".

And, no matter how hard you work or if you are insured. A family healthcare crisis in the US is probably going to wipe you out.

Assuming staff made the same amount of money after converting to a non-tipped system the same thing would actually cost you more money than under the tipping system (and that's current price + tip).

What you advocate is for currently federally protected wages (tips) to be put under the control of the owner. Who's that going to benefit? ...the owner.

Totally. We are much better off in a system where a 30 million people don't have insurance yet we pay twice as much per capita as our peers with single payer systems and universal coverage.

I am totally down for healthcare being wholly reliant on non direct healthcare related services (insurance companies and the required administrative labor to deal with them) causing us to have a higher % of our healthcare dollars go to administration than our peers.

My wife is also in healthcare. She disagrees with you.

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What case size?

Random breasts are only $2.18/lb right now. Switch from double lobe/hump/butterfly breasts to single lobe for sandwiches and randoms for everything but sandwiches.

Chicken went up but we have not seen 170%...

PFG. Why are you forced to use one supplier?

Healthcare spending is public data.

Sysco and USFoods both operate in CT.

Worked for C in the mid 90's - mid 00's

You're one location is an anecdote. You are typically end of life healthcare (from your posts, have to be working at a nursing home).

The whole picture is per capita spending and healthcare outcomes. The conclusions drawn from that in economic study after economic study are unassailable.

Gen X starts in 1965. A master tech at barely 19 is impressive.