I was talking with a coworker the other day and they were talking about how raising minimum wage causes inflation because businesses will raise prices to offset to rise in labor costs. I asked if he thought inflation had gotten bad in the past 5ish years in particular. He said of course. I said well federal minimum wage hasn’t risen since 2009, which was 15 years ago, so it sounds like inflation is gonna happen regardless of wages and is based on the capitalistic goal of infinite growth, so maybe we should raise minimum wage so lower income people have a shot at affording basic necessities.
He just said no, then inflation just would’ve been worse. It’s maddening.
The response to this is that inflation is a market force working against the downward pressure of demand. There is a limit to the amount prices can go up before people stop buying altogether.
Another inflationary force is greed, funneling additional profits into the pockets of the 0.1%.
Let the inflation due to minimum wage be X, and the inflation due to greed be Y, and the maximum total inflation be Z. X+Y=Z
Of course there are other variables, but in a general sense, if X goes up, Y must go down. If X does not go up, Y does.
So yes there will be inflation, but increasing wages takes more money from the ownership and puts it into the pockets of the bottom 99.9% where it will do far more good.
And in case it wasn’t clear, this is precisely why the oligarchy opposes increasing the minimum wage. It has nothing to do with inflation, and everything to do with they make less money.
This companies are able to generate billions in profit every quarter, let alone every year. They have also been reporting record breaking profits quarter after quarter for the past several years. I’m pretty sure the 17 y/o Burger flippers aren’t the problem here.
I wonder how da fuq did McDonalds think that this is okay?
Setting aside all considerations of ethics or morality, from a pure greed standpoint even a very naive person could realize that if you squeeze the sheeple too much they may choose to go elsewhere rather than continue to rely on you for easy comfort food.
Do they think they have a monopoly on the market? Even just from the fast-food burger places that were included in this graphic, there are multiple cheaper options - Burger King and Wendy’s - plus Arby’s & Taco Bell and Chick-fil-a are somewhat similar.
Do they think that people will suddenly not care about where their money is going? That strategy tends to work when you squeeze (bleed) them slowly, but this kind of a sudden spike carries the risk of waking them up to how much eating there is costing them - and once they are gone, it would be very hard to attract them back.
So this strategy even looks to be detrimental to the company of McDonalds, even if good for the short-term stockholders & CEO before they jump elsewhere.
If I had to guess it would be for 2 reasons, humans don’t like change so people that frequently go to McD will still go, and that all humans need food and a bonus of less people know how to cook
It’s a scary thing to think these companies can just get away with shit like this but at the end of the day until we as a society boycott them - and I mean a legit boycott, not some 3 day reddit boycott - they’ll find any excuse to fuck us for profit
Ooooh, now plot the avg wage across this period. Y=min wage.
I was talking with a coworker the other day and they were talking about how raising minimum wage causes inflation because businesses will raise prices to offset to rise in labor costs. I asked if he thought inflation had gotten bad in the past 5ish years in particular. He said of course. I said well federal minimum wage hasn’t risen since 2009, which was 15 years ago, so it sounds like inflation is gonna happen regardless of wages and is based on the capitalistic goal of infinite growth, so maybe we should raise minimum wage so lower income people have a shot at affording basic necessities.
He just said no, then inflation just would’ve been worse. It’s maddening.
The response to this is that inflation is a market force working against the downward pressure of demand. There is a limit to the amount prices can go up before people stop buying altogether.
Another inflationary force is greed, funneling additional profits into the pockets of the 0.1%.
Let the inflation due to minimum wage be X, and the inflation due to greed be Y, and the maximum total inflation be Z. X+Y=Z
Of course there are other variables, but in a general sense, if X goes up, Y must go down. If X does not go up, Y does.
So yes there will be inflation, but increasing wages takes more money from the ownership and puts it into the pockets of the bottom 99.9% where it will do far more good.
And in case it wasn’t clear, this is precisely why the oligarchy opposes increasing the minimum wage. It has nothing to do with inflation, and everything to do with they make less money.
This companies are able to generate billions in profit every quarter, let alone every year. They have also been reporting record breaking profits quarter after quarter for the past several years. I’m pretty sure the 17 y/o Burger flippers aren’t the problem here.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/gross-profit
[1]Average franchise profitability at Burger King rose nearly +50% last year (2023) compared to 2022
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SBUX/starbucks/gross-profit
I wonder how da fuq did McDonalds think that this is okay?
Setting aside all considerations of ethics or morality, from a pure greed standpoint even a very naive person could realize that if you squeeze the sheeple too much they may choose to go elsewhere rather than continue to rely on you for easy comfort food.
Do they think they have a monopoly on the market? Even just from the fast-food burger places that were included in this graphic, there are multiple cheaper options - Burger King and Wendy’s - plus Arby’s & Taco Bell and Chick-fil-a are somewhat similar.
Do they think that people will suddenly not care about where their money is going? That strategy tends to work when you squeeze (bleed) them slowly, but this kind of a sudden spike carries the risk of waking them up to how much eating there is costing them - and once they are gone, it would be very hard to attract them back.
So this strategy even looks to be detrimental to the company of McDonalds, even if good for the short-term stockholders & CEO before they jump elsewhere.
If I had to guess it would be for 2 reasons, humans don’t like change so people that frequently go to McD will still go, and that all humans need food and a bonus of less people know how to cook
It’s a scary thing to think these companies can just get away with shit like this but at the end of the day until we as a society boycott them - and I mean a legit boycott, not some 3 day reddit boycott - they’ll find any excuse to fuck us for profit