Thread by @AlexandraErin

So the thing that these right-wing cosplay economists like Burger King Is Full Communism Lady keep missing about the "employment crisis" is that the reason businesses are foundering isn't that they can't compete with an imaginary UBI, it's that they don't want to compete, period.

An employer who says things like "If you have time to lean you have time to clean" but can't find any Standing Up Straight Money to pay their employees... that person isn't suited to compete for employees' time because they think it is beneath them.

The right-wing cosplay economists are pretending that slightly enhanced unemployment insurance *that you specifically cannot collect if you voluntarily quit your job* is close enough to a UBI to get people to quit their jobs because the alternative to believing that is reality.

And the reality that the right-wing cosplay economists don't want to face is that it's not a question of why people are quitting the fast food and related service sectors.

The question is... why would they stay? For what reason? What are they being offered?

Not even just money

Employers in these sectors don't let their employees sit while on duty. Why not? It costs them nothing. Arguably it would give them better value as their employees would be happier and have more energy for necessary tasks.

Not allowing cashiers to sit, policing the simple act of using an object or surface for support even momentarily... these are not rational economic decisions that employers make for some benefit to the business, they are things done out of spite.

And there it is. Contempt is built in to the employer-employee relationship at fast food franchises and other entry-level service jobs. It's an assumed part of the relationship.

Who is paying employees to put up with it? What amount of $ would be worth it?

https://twitter.com/McNutcase/status/1389082706332422146

There is not actually a rational economic reason in terms of X dollars vs. Y dollars why workers are abandoning these jobs. The cosplay economists are talking about "can't compete with UBI" but there is no UBI. Some people got a one-off payment of less than a month's expenses.

We know from places that have experimented with UBI that UBI does not stop people from working.

What it does is stop people from staying in situations that anybody who had the power to leave, would rationally have left long ago.

That's good! We should love that.

If you're a good employer, if you're willing to treat your employees like human beings who are a part of your company (and not a "resource") who share in its success and failure, you should *welcome* a more fluid job market where people are free to leave bad jobs.

In a market where everybody is terrified to leave their job whether it's good, indifferent, or bad... there's far less reward for employers to be good. They *won't* get all the good workers because some of the good workers got suckered in somewhere else and are trapped there.

But that's the thing is that these bad employers and the right-wing cosplay economists who are lining up to go to bat for them... don't actually want to see a world where employers have to compete for employees. They see it as more of a nobility > serf situation.

And Aldi's whole deal is efficiency. They won't throw away money on shelves when they know they can make aisles out of products stocked on palettes just fine.

Yet they invest in stools.

Why?

Because a worker is a person, not a product.

https://twitter.com/NaomiKritzer/status/1389084775273611264

The most efficient job market, the ideal one, would be one where if the boss says, "Stand up straight!" the workers could say, "Do you got Standing Up Straight money? Because last I checked you barely me to run the register, and for some reason I'm doing that."

Why do I say that would be ideal? Because expecting a cashier to entertain their boss by assuming a posture... that's superfluous work, and if the boss is made to pay for it, that's superfluous expense, which would force the boss to reckon with priorities.

And if the employee felt comfortable saying, "You're not paying me enough to dance for your amusement, you barely pay me enough for my actual job that makes you money," they'd likely feel comfortable leaving if the situation remains untenable.

And in this kind of highly fluid situation where a worker knows they will not lose their shelter or starve or become unemployable if they walk when a boss is being abusive or disrespectful or cheap... good employers thrive, bad employers fail.

And we don't have that! We don't have anything near that! We have almost no social safety net. There's no UBI, and unemployment doesn't cover most people who quit.

But we've got bosses, we've got whole industries, that are so bad people left it anyway.

The reason whatsername only had one worker to abuse when she went to get her Burger King kids club meal that morning is that an industry that requires human labor cannot sustain itself with human misery as part of its business model. Cannot. It's unsustainable.

Now she and the other cosplay economists will tell you, "No, no, no, the government is distorting the free market, this isn't natural."

It's more natural than the previous status quo. How do I know? Industry requiring human labor, making a practice of human misery. DO THE MATH.

Take the fable about the goose who laid the golden egg. In the story, the magic goose that produces endless wealth in steady increments is killed by greedy people who assume they can get a big payout all at once.

Imagine, instead, they were just jerks to the goose.

You're the founder and CEO of Golden Goose LLC. Your whole business model is: there's this goose, and it lays eggs, and you... you know. You "manage" it.

Without the goose, you've got no business.

How do you treat your goose, fellow CEOs?

Every restaurant that slaps up that copypasta sign about "Nobody wants to work please be respectful to the people who came in"... they thought that the restaurant was their golden goose. The physical location, the license, the franchise, the business chattels.

They thought that the restaurant was the golden goose and they owned the golden goose and that any employees they tolerate are people whom they were magnificently sharing the largesse that comes with owning a golden goose, so they'd better watch their step and act appreciative.

And you want to talk about distorted market places... that is not a natural state of affairs. It is not something that is possible in a state of nature, for whole industries to arrive at this same mistaken notion that owning a business creates money, rather than workers' labor.

These people didn't kill their golden goose but they were jerks to them and took them for granted, and for a long time that system seemed to "work" because the geese were all trapped, but now enough of the geese have figured out how to get out of their pens.

They thought their restaurants were money making machines and it turns out that the thing that actually makes money is *labor*, and what they own is a very expensive investment in harvesting the value of labor, which is just an expensive liability if they don't have laborers.

And the thing is that even in the face of this revelation, even in the face of overwhelming disaster and the loss of their investment... these bad bosses are unwilling or unable to change how they do business. They don't want to compete, or can't.

If I had a goose that laid golden eggs, then even if that goose had no ability to turn those eggs into goose feed and a warm roof without my management skills, I like to think that I would treat that goose... well, like a goose who lays golden eggs.

But these bosses... if they can't abuse the goose, then they don't see the point. What's the point of having a golden goose if you can't call it lazy and greedy and insult its intelligence and lie to it about its schedule?

If I had a goose that laid golden eggs, I'd treat it well even if I didn't think it had any choice but to stick around.

These bosses specifically and systematically drive away any goose that expects to be treated well, and now they're crying that the geese are all gone.

Human dignity is one of the cheapest perks you can give your employees. And per the right-wing cosplay economists, it's something no government check can ever give you.

So seems like employers could win this negotiation easily.

If they would stoop to negotiate.

Gonna wrap this thread up and go to bed because I'm repeating myself, and I'm repeating myself because... this is so simple and so obvious.

If your business needs the labor of others, you must treat them well or go out of business. That's what happens in a free market.

Any time a business is not treating its employees well and it retains employees, that is a sign the market is not free. Something is constraining it.

Businesses that abuse employees running out of employees to abuse is a sign of economic health.

I like fast food chains. I like eating at them. I would prefer they stay in business and everybody involved thrive.

But nobody owes it to me to put up with an abusive boss in order to make me chicken nuggets and a milkshake on demand.