Wage growth seems to be the only inflationary sign but is productivity increasing faster than wage growth?
I expect a lot of the layoffs in the tech industry is due to AI being able to program as well or better than people.
I think a good bit of the inflation in the restaurant food industry is likely due to a pretty significant increase in pay for those low skill jobs. Wouldn't be that long ago you really did start out at minimum wage at one of those places. Now day's they are starting at $12+/hr.
do you really think the wage gap is not a problem in this country? that we wouldn't be better off if wealth were spread a little more evenly? (and, no, I'm not talking about govt redistribution.)
Restaurants seem to be banking the higher prices as their ingredients prices come down. And where are waiters or bartenders making 12 bucks an hour?
Sounds like an irrational thing to worry about. I doubt anyone can control it. I feel bad about natural selection too. I mean why doesn’t the national geo camera guy try to stop the lion from eating the gazelle?
Productivity growth averaged 1.2% in 2023. I must confess I have no idea if that's a good number, but it contracted 1.9% in 2022, so it's not a given by any stretch.
The wage gap grows exponentially every time the Fed spikes the punch bowl. I think the Covid years saw the largest transfer of wealth ever. The Fed printed trillions of dollars and the rich got richer.
Who has the most successful CEOs in the world? America. Name another country that has this much opportunity and the bottom half only pay in 3 percent of the national income tax receipts. Also, quantitative easing didn't happen for the first time ever during Covid.
Where I live they get minimum wage of $14.50 plus tips. I can’t see how they should get more than a couple dollars for good service and yet they want 18%+. Wish restaurants would just pay their employees instead of making their customers ensure their employees are fully paid.
And yet, you are viewed as a shitty person if you don't comply with the tipping custom. It's certainly a dilemma I've wrestled with over the years. I usually start my experience with a 20% tip in mind and deduct if things are mishandled. I think that probably ends up working out to a 15% average over all meals when deductions are taken into account. Many times I tip 20%, but I never go over that.
I was referring more to McDonalds type restaurants. I don't really have any bartender/waiter friends anymore, so I'm not sure what happened with their wages. But I'll note the beer at my local bar has come back down to the $5-6 craft beers I buy rather than the $7-8 they were trying to get for awhile.
When unemployment rates were dropping under Obama, Republicans regularly claimed they were fake, that Obama had changed how it was measured, that rather than using the Q-3 measurement, which has always been the most common, the feds should use Q-6 because it's higher, etc., etc. Now we get these kinds of claims under Biden. Did we get any of that under Trump? Did Democrats routinely call the numbers fake the way Republicans do under Democratic presidents?
