You must log in or register to comment.
no silly employment rights
All this talk about “prosperity” when he really means “prosperity for me and none for the poors”
Also they seem to have a weird fascination with child labor of old times (their argument sounds worse the more that I think about it).
WTF “I could work at my own store to make up the difference” is an own?
More like a threat that his employees will have to directly interact with him
single serving of wholesale beans: 10p
single serving of sewage water: 1p
single serving of mad cow disease milk: 5p
Someone who’s good at economics please help me make a viable business out of selling a product everyone wants that’s very cheap for me to produce. My employees only generate £15 in revenue within the first five minutes of the hour.
[thing] would be good for a majority of people but bad for me!!
that is like definitionally a you problem, why the fuck should anyone else care?
deleted by creator
There isn’t a single argument in there as to why Starbucks shouldn’t take over. He freely admits they would if he had to pay the 15 pound minimum wage and that they could. His entire argument hinges on the fact that jobs would be lost but even he admits that wouldn’t really happen. You could be a die hard capitalist and think this guy should kick rocks on account of most efficient allocation of capital grounds.
Like usually these people go for some sort of “oh I pay local taxes” or “oh this has heart and soul” or “I’m mostly self employed and only have a bit of help” or if you’re more woke conservative “I have stakes in the local community unlike the faceless megacorp” but he doesn’t even go there, the entire thing hinges on an axiomatic sense of the idea that this idiot should be able to profit off of an inefficient coffee shop
The only reason a non-starbucks coffee shop should exist is if they have seats and tables with outlets that don’t kick you out.
Starbucks killed plenty of chill cafes, then optimized out the third-space element in a lot of their stores.
Yeah this isn’t me glazing Starbucks this guy is just too dumb to make the boilerplate arguments of his ilk
Sorry that was actually me pissed as hell I couldn’t find a cafe to sit in a strange town.
Given that the wage share as a percentage of GDP has fallen in capitalist countries since the beginning of the neoliberal period, all of these arguments are idiotic and completely negated by the fact that we already know what a higher wage society looked like and it had a low unemployment rate and a high capital accumulation rate.
Of course, this guy completely understands his class interests. Higher wage share means less luxury spending for this guy. So he makes these round about arguments, because outright saying “workers need to be miserable so I can afford rolexes” would get him clowned on. Frankly, people like this aren’t that interesting. They’re garden variety sociopaths.
As for coffee shops closing down, it’s not really a problem. Neoliberal economies are tending towards an oversupply of labor-intensive services compared to capital-intensive manufacturing anyway. Do some capital controls and jack up the wage rate, you’ll fix the trade deficits in a few years. Of course, that requires many petite bourgeoisies to be proletarianised, which I’m fine with.
people having more money means more people spending money on coffee :)
“I can’t free my slaves, I’d never be able to keep my plantation going if i had to actually pay workers on it!”
But like, hideousness aside, doesn’t this person realise that if minimum wage is higher, then more people will be able to afford their overpriced coffee? They would make up the losses in wages through more sales, since more people would have more disposable income.
But I guess the concept of: “more money for people = more money to spend on things” is just too complex and difficult of a topic for this world class economist.
Capital really isn’t about generating wealth, but only about hoarding as much of it as possible.
doesn’t this person realise that if minimum wage is higher, then more people will be able to afford their overpriced coffee? They would make up the losses in wages through more sales, since more people would have more disposable income.
Two problems with this argument:
One: it assumes that those who consume the coffee are also those employed to make it. This is not necessarily the case. The customer base of artisanal coffee shops typically works higher paying jobs. It is commonplace across many industries that workers don’t generally get paid enough to buy the products they themselves make. They make it for those wealthier than themselves to consume. This is by design.
Two: in the eyes of a liberal what you are describing is inflation. The liberal theory goes like this: When you increase wages or in any other way give people more money to spend, prices will rise as a response. Why? Because they can. A capitalist will always raise prices as high as they can get away with. It is fine and expected that some people will not be able to afford the product – this is also intentional.
“regulations” are up. What are those regulations and how much do they cost you a month and why can you not pass those costs on to consumers. Business people are fucking stupid
“My business would close!”
GOOD
It’s like verbatim the example I gave here of petty/petite bourgeoisie:
For example, small business owners who oppose an increase in minimum wage because then they will struggle more on payroll.
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11411340/8110290
More importantly, here is the glossary part on the term that I linked in that post (the part on petite/petty bourgeoisie is near the bottom of the page):
https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/e.htm
These people think they are cute calling out socialists as supposedly ignorant, but it’s simply that they do not share the same interests as the working class and the working class is the main category that socialists are interested in empowering. Socialists are not interested in empowering small business owners at the cost of the working class. If you have to shove the cost onto the working class or the customer, then you’re operating on the mindset of the capitalist. Worth noting this person ends with “the cost of living […] is solved by ending high inflation and creating prosperity.” They don’t explain how exactly prosperity gets created.
In effect, what they say is: “Don’t put it on me, it’s not my responsibility.” One might even say they’re implying: “It’s not my responsibility to do what is for the common good, but rather what is personally beneficial to me.” This kind of insistence on the personal business success of the individual is antithetical to collective liberation. Personal success in terms of getting needs met is not incompatible with socialism (far from it), but it cannot come from a means of crushing someone under you in order to be taller. Personal success in terms of running a small business is not a guarantee under socialism or capitalism and under socialism, it really has nothing to do inherently with being able to get needs met. The whole point is to build a society where you are not on the precipice, alone, with any factor able to send you careening off; where instead your problem is my problem and my problem is your problem, your solution is my solution and my solution is your solution. Collective benefit and shared responsibility for the common good.
Socialists are not interested in empowering small business owners at the cost of the working class.
Small capitalists are still capitalists; their class interests and those of the working-class’ are antitthetical to each other. So it was, is, shall be not at all surprising when small business owners & others in the middle class, out of class interests, did, do, and will support fascism.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I like the call for a return to cheap child labor to improve the bottom line.
Small businesses have a legitimate right to complain, but aiming their ire at workers instead of the system that favors large monopolies over small, local businesses, is misplaced.
@thisclown Free market baby sucks to suck, I guess now you’re a wage slave like the rest of us.
