I know a number of service industry folx. I know a lot of tradesmen. I know a lot of people who, for the past year or so, have gotten a sense of what their government thinks they're worth, as opposed to what their employer thinks they're worth.
The 'wingers were all about how "why would someone go to work when you're paying them so much not to?" and not at all about "why are you paying someone less to work their asses off than any reasonable economist thinks they're worth?"
Here, watch how tortuously the actual problem is framed:
- Still, the shortage threatens to restrain what is otherwise shaping up to be a robust post-pandemic economic recovery. Some businesses are forgoing work, such as not bidding on a project, delivering parts more slowly or keeping a section of the restaurant closed. That reduces the pace of the economy’s expansion. Other companies are raising wages to attract employees, which could inflate prices for customers or reduce profit margins for owners.
- The economic recovery is fucked
- Because some companies can't bid on projects
- Or find staff to wait tables
- Which can be solved by paying people more
- Which will "inflate prices for consumers" or "reduce profit margins for owners."
Know how we set our salary for our office support staff? We looked at the prevailing rate and added 20%. Know what happens then? You get motivated people who like their job. Let's talk around that:
- “The pandemic has changed people’s motivations,” said ZipRecruiter economist Julia Pollak. “Employers may need to be patient, as vaccines are still being rolled out, and may have to become more flexible in order to find workers.”
You might have to upgrade your sweatshop conditions if you want to stay in business.
Let's also pause a moment to acknowledge that the day before the WSJ rolled this article, they rolled "Nearly 1.5 Million Mothers Are Still Missing From the Workforce":
Hypothesis: The proletariat has been given a taste of dignity, and has quickly been told that their taste of the forbidden fruit is over, that they are undeserving, and that they are the reason we can't have nice things. I suspect this will have greater knock-on effects than the bailouts of the Great Recession.