Tim Hortons franchise owners tell workers to blame gov for cuts, don't vote liberal

[Pipboi]

Not really, you just get a lot of hipster fagget economists that rave on and on about how neoclassical models are outdated but propose no changes and/or adjustments to fix alleged flaws.

Wow MMO-C has really turned into a political cesspool of conservative idiocy in recent years...

[Deleted]

This is one of a number of reasons that I favor direct subsidies (negative income tax, EITC, or UBI - I don't really care about the exact structure) for improving conditions for the working poor. I don't think there's a good policy way to achieve a strong standard of living for low-skill workers in the modern environment via legislating wages or conditions, but one can directly transfer wealth from capitalists to the working poor with minimal economic disruption.

Well even those measures are essentially band aids, to not confront a reality that we're allowing pretty heavy exploitation and skewed ways of business to continually centralize wealth. But I do agree it is likely the best tools that are currently at hand in our current environment, but even then it is still just a band aid.

Not to mention, even those measures aren't actually enough, they don't even follow the same trend, so at some point those people will fall under and need assistance.

[Tiwack]

It's pretty funny that the exact outcome that's predicted by every basic model of labor economics (artificially high wages leads to worse employment conditions) is reacted to as though it's shocking and unfair.

What's artificially high wage when this is just a fair wage that meets the average standard living costs? Exec wage perhaps?

[Spectral]

What's artificially high wage when this is just a fair wage that meets the average standard living costs? Exec wage perhaps?

The term "artificially high" refers to whether a wage is a result of market conditions or not. If a wage is the result of a government regulation specifying it, that's higher than the actual market-clearing wage (by definition - otherwise the law would be completely pointless). Executive wages are not artificially high by any coherent definition - they're driven by what the labor market for executives looks like.

[Spectral]

To the people that are saying that increasing minimum wage to something a little closer to a livable wage, how would you suggest this is fixed then? Companies, including Tim Horton's, have been increasing their cost of goods and profits for quite a while now with the minimum wage having been incredibly stagnant for years. If their products were good, and people were making a livable wage across the board, they would continue purchasing from them now that they can more easily afford to. If they're crap products, with people now making a livable wage will get their products from somewhere else of higher quality, right?

This is one of a number of reasons that I favor direct subsidies (negative income tax, EITC, or UBI - I don't really care about the exact structure) for improving conditions for the working poor. I don't think there's a good policy way to achieve a strong standard of living for low-skill workers in the modern environment via legislating wages or conditions, but one can directly transfer wealth from capitalists to the working poor with minimal economic disruption.

Like that.

[Arewn]

Well sadly with increasing automatisation, low skill jobs will lose more and more value, maybe burger flippers aren't worth the money to "catch up". They'll probably be replaced by machines and then they'll end up unemployed.

Minimum wage laws won't work longterm because machines work for free, and this wasn't a problem in the past which is why wages rose, for the most part, with cost of living, but this trend has been slowing down and will continue to slow down then stop then be entirely replaved by machines

I get what you're saying, but just want to point out that machines do not work for free. There's an initial purchase cost, eventual replacement cost, operation costs, and maintenance costs.
But yes, when those costs get lower then wages, businesses will obviously switch and jobs will be lost.

[frogger237]

Nowhere in the USA is it illegal to have any opinion. There's just rules for how you share that opinion and push it onto others. This seems to be something that conservatives just can't grasp.

The only people I could think he was talking about are the people that got fired because they said nigger in a video or refused to sell shit to "fags" but you don't really need to be racist/homophobic to be republican and being a democrat doesn't mean your not racist/homophobic.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

That would indeed be quite illegal in Denmark but you can see on the text that they are clearly republican.

Well, technically they would be clearly Progressive Conservatives of Ontario.

[Spectral]

Wouldn't that not be possible in the USA with current policies? Didn't they just give a massive tax cut to the wealthy, whom this would be taking money from to "fix" the problem? Maybe if they chose to take away subsidies to corporations that don't need it, or charge corporations something closer to the actual corporate tax, it would probably work. Even then though, if the company sells a worthwhile product and people can now afford to buy products, there shouldn't be an issue. Unless the product is garbage and those people choose to go somewhere that it isn't garbage, thereby killing the business.

The article isn't about an American company, so I think the focus on the United States is undue here. I'm referring to my generally preferred policies for Western, industrialized nations, not what's possible in the United States today.

I don't think the remainder of the policies you're suggesting make any sense at all. They're not based on any economic principles, just a gut feeling about how the world should work.

[AeneasBK]

By what mechanism would they secure a monopoly? This makes zero sense.

Something along the lines of "When you can afford, because of massive capital, to out price all competing stores while potentially taking a loss, forcing enough of them to close that when you put prices back to standard there isn't enough competition left to actually compete" but I'm guessing that's not at all what monopoly actually means.

Tesco did a similar (does) thing to that in the UK, open up an express retail store, price everything cheaper than the local cornershops/convenience stores so they closed, then do frustrating stuff like hike up the price of milk to 30-40% more than what you had been paying.

Again, I'm sure that's not necessarily what "monopoly" means in the strictest sense (can't you only have a monopoly on a commodity, not a service) I think it fits the "laymans" understanding of it. "Too big for anyone else to fairly compete"...

[Sinyc]

I'm wondering what 'basic model of labor economics' advocates for historically high wage disparity.

Your comment/reply makes no sense. High wage disparity is not due to "labor economics". It's due to greed and corruption at the top and crooked lawmakers keeping it that way. When a business has just as many rights or even more than an actual person, something is fucked up.

Edit: Also, don't forget lobbying which advocates only for the Ultra Rich and huge corporations.

[Spectral]

Something along the lines of "When you can afford, because of massive capital, to out price all competing stores while potentially taking a loss, forcing enough of them to close that when you put prices back to standard there isn't enough competition left to actually compete" but I'm guessing that's not at all what monopoly actually means.

Tesco did a similar (does) thing to that in the UK, open up an express retail store, price everything cheaper than the local cornershops/convenience stores so they closed, then do frustrating stuff like hike up the price of milk to 30-40% more than what you had been paying.

Again, I'm sure that's not necessarily what "monopoly" means in the strictest sense (can't you only have a monopoly on a commodity, not a service) I think it fits the "laymans" understanding of it. "Too big for anyone else to fairly compete"...

Even aside from semantics of the meaning of monopoly, I don't find this model at all plausible for a fast food establishment. How in the world is Tim Horton's going to prevent competition from McDonald's, Taco Bell, Dunkin' Donuts, and so on? When it comes to the labor market (which is what's being discussed here), how in the world are they going to form some massive cartel that prevents employees from working at the local diner or wherever instead?

I'm not pointing the finger at you, obviously you're engaging in good faith, I just see so many people writing things that are obviously just based on some gut feeling they have without any consideration of the economics of how their idea would work.

[Deleted]

Something along the lines of /snip.

Oligopoly is a more apt word.

[Zogarth]

That would indeed be quite illegal in Denmark but you can see on the text that they are clearly republican. This hopefully is illegal over there too.

Nah, I am even pretty sure that a company cannot fire you even if you are openly a nazi. As long as it does not have a negative impact on how you do your job that is. We just don't have that many of them, and those who do hold those beliefs usually keeps them to themselves.

People are upset about the form and not the content, that's why it funny. I'm just making a jab at this because sjw-leaning companies like google and twitter will do much worse and actually fire you, unlike this random piece of paper telling you to email the premier if you have issues lol.

Difference is that here they are telling people what to think and not what to do. It is still wrong that the guy at Google was fired, but what he did was still different. He openly expressed his beliefs within the company. Meanwhile in this case, they are telling them what to think, and not what to openly express as a person of the company. But just to be clear, if the Google guy was employed in Denmark, his union (yes he would be in a union) would have a fucking field day with Google over how they handled the situation.

[Deleted]

Something along the lines of "When you can afford, because of massive capital, to out price all competing stores while potentially taking a loss, forcing enough of them to close that when you put prices back to standard there isn't enough competition left to actually compete" but I'm guessing that's not at all what monopoly actually means.

There is no relevant market entry barrier for flipping burgers.

[bladeXcrasher]

How many threads do we need on this topic?

[AeneasBK]

There is no relevant market entry barrier for flipping burgers.

I may have misunderstood; I thought Tim Hortons was akin to a Starbucks, just the Canadian home-brand one (sorry Canadians).

And what I thought I was replying to was the poster saying:

The blow back is honestly welcome, Tim Hortons was becoming a monopoly a little too quickly.

From which I thought they meant monopoly in the sense I described: i.e. the only place around you can get coffee because its pushed the "mom and pop" cafe's out of business; rather than that Tim Hortons was getting a monopoly on the minimum wage labour market.

[Lochton]

Yeah, those dang Canadian Republicans!

I honestly thought it was an american company settled in the US.

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Nah, I am even pretty sure that a company cannot fire you even if you are openly a nazi. As long as it does not have a negative impact on how you do your job that is. We just don't have that many of them, and those who do hold those beliefs usually keeps them to themselves.

I wasn't talking about firing. They can actually deduct your pay by sending you on a little non-paid vacation time.

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Well, technically they would be clearly Progressive Conservatives of Ontario.

Thought it was a US chain in Canada, haha. Even so, still bull what they attempted. More reason for a company like that to croak.

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They are Canadians.
Canada has a separate political system to the US.

They are a rather unknown chain to some, so thought it was seated in the US.

Hopefully?
I wasn't aware that restricting people's free speech rights was a 'good thing'.

Not really free speech other than a jab at what an employee might have voted for.

[THE Bigzoman]

Wow MMO-C has really turned into a political cesspool of conservative idiocy in recent years...

I'm not too surprised that two words are all you get from that post.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

I'm not too surprised that two words are all you get from that post.

To be fair...any post containing terms like "hipster fagget economists" (if you really feel a need to use slurs you could at least spell them correctly) doesn't really warrant much analysis.