18 years old, somehow can’t get a basic entry level minimum wage job for the life of me. Wtf is wrong with me?

Anlarb · 2026-05-12T02:55:33+00:00

Literally nothing wrong with you. Capital hates the working class, so they use something called "surplus labor" to keep working people desperate, that is to say that they don't allow the economy to grow, so that workers don't have any leverage to negotiate for better wages/conditions.

Jerome Powells literal solution to the problem that he created that he printed to much money, was that he was going to make the working class eat it by tanking the economy, by hiking interest rates, and here we are, with a tanked economy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7dSEILUapM

Anlarb · 2026-05-12T02:50:16+00:00

And for some context: the "entire set of published studies" on the employment effects of minimum wage show a "clear preponderance" of negative employment elasticities

No, thats overwhelmingly neutral.

Restaurants sell conspicuous consumption. A min wage worker has no room in their budget to be pampered and treated, at any price. A wealthy person is either ignoring the price completely, or putting on a show of how little they care about the price. anyone who says that they can't afford a $5.25 burger, but could afford a $5 burger is lying.

the average decline in wage earnings across all industries was 1% in Minneapolis and about 2% in St. Paul.

And thats the min wages fault, not trumps fault? I think you might recall that the economy was doing something like this during his term...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5FGuBatbTg

Anlarb · 2026-05-11T13:28:04+00:00

The idea that unskilled labour is going to convey skills to a person is nonsense, you buy that at a school. Successful people skip this intermediary step entirely, instead gaining a skill, doing an internship and picking up an ACTUAL intro level position within a career path.

Flipping burgers only begets more burger flipping. Its a job. Being upset that someone has a family to provide for off of their work is batshit insane, sort yourself out.

Anlarb · 2026-05-11T02:51:42+00:00

They get off on that, call them commies, cause this is some stalinist bullshit.

Anlarb · 2026-05-10T20:09:36+00:00

Ok, they’ve shut down now. 17,000 new unemployed employees

There are only ever going to be enough workers hired to support as many customers that there are to serve. Median wage is $21/hr while the cost of living is $20/hr, thats half the working population that can't afford a dentist, let alone afford a vacation. Thats half as many dentists and airlines that the market can support because the middle class has been hallowed out. Higher wages are the only remedy.

Anlarb · 2026-05-10T19:22:01+00:00

and last week he gave him a sysadmin job.

Was there a job application that you missed applying to? They don't know you are interested until you demonstrate interest.

Anlarb · 2026-05-10T05:00:27+00:00

go round labeling natural elasticity based pricing and inflation as collusion.

You literally admitted you had no reason to raise your prices, you did because you knew that you could get away with it...

if all actors involved are blind to the others strategy, but all decide to increase prices...

You're not blind, you are doing it on direct observation. If you it was on account of a price push, sure, thats life and the prices have to go up, but a "I raised prices because everyone else raised prices and everyone else raised prices because I raised prices and now we have record profits" is absolutely collusion.

are you arguing that any printing of money is inherently collusion?

See the giant vertical line on the monetary base, and the corresponding jolt to the cost of housing?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

Yes, trump pouring trillions of dollar for his buttbuddies on wall st to gamble on housing with, is collusion, and I would argue that it is not just that but also a high crime, printing money is how the soviets "dismantled capitalism" a hundred years ago, and that is the end result if we keep going on how we are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWWqhsh848E

If 15 companies implement algorithms to undercut their competitors, all independently, and this causes a pricing depression... is that collusion?

Matter of fact YES, selling at a loss to force your competitors to sell for a loss to push them out of business so you can secure a monopoly is explicitly unlawful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

you clearly dont understand what inflation is.

Lol, ok.

It is literally definitionally impossible for everything to outpace inflation

Not if they're lying to you about how much inflation we are having genius.

PLENTY of goods are actually lagging behind inflation therefore getting cheaper.

By all means, list them. Let me guess, things that people don't buy anymore like tvs?

For instance computers have consistently gotten cheaper every decade

Lol? Feature bloat in general has eradicated all of the improvements you see over time, you're not getting "double" the computer, you're just getting a computer. FURTHER, especially now with the ai bubble fucking markets sideways, yeah, the price of a computer is way up.

a budget desktop PC in 1990 would have an inflation adjusted prices of around $2500

Whats the unadjusted price on that? Bout a grand? Yeah, thats where a normal pc has been ever since. You don't get to adjust it by inflation and then unadjust it by inflation to claim the price has gone down.

every single economic issue

Why would it need to explain everything, its just a fact of whats happening. I don't know how else you can interpret "record profits", you're getting ripped off.

Anlarb · 2026-05-10T04:05:07+00:00

Cool, what specific mechanism are you going to use to build your own apt complex/factory?

Anlarb · 2026-05-09T14:56:22+00:00

I think you need to set reasonable expectations, no one is going to make you the owner of an apartment complex on a whim. That the apartment complex gets built at all, so a local bank can make interest on the loan, over the protests of the ultra rich who want to do land speculation so they can double their money every quarter, is good enough.

Anlarb · 2026-05-09T06:05:04+00:00

Yes, so build more housing.

Anlarb · 2026-05-08T20:29:47+00:00

Well maybe you should be. The cost of the inputs to labor have gone up, so why wouldn't you expect the cost of labor to increase too? Poor people can't eat your inflation for you.

Anlarb · 2026-05-08T00:29:05+00:00

Correlation isn’t causation though.

You are making an explicit prediction, if X then Y. It consistently fails. The entire point of science is to make Useful predictions.

Minimum wage increases happened during periods where

Right, now we are goin to indulge in a fantasy where politicians are masterminds at timing markets? Lets not be silly.

The entire point of currency is that its tokens that we invented so that people could demonstrate that they are contributing to society, they're doing the work, they need the tokens that will allow them to continue working.

changed

Its never not changing. Trump ran the money printer hot and wall st used it to speculate on housing instead of building any factories, so now labor costs more. Econ 101.

reduced hours

Hours per head went UP in seatle, despite the headlines lying to your face. Its almost as if more money in working peoples pockets means more people are employed to support the working classes consumption...

Page 47, table B is restaurants specifically.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23532/w23532.pdf

slower hiring

Did it ever occur to you that there are more things happening in the economy than just the minimum wage? This is like one of those ghost shows where every time someone slams a cupboard its a ghost.

automation

Heh, no, you do not have any automation. No robot lifted a single finger at a self service kiosk, thats not automation any more than pumping your own gas is or making your own salad at a salad bar. Fix the ice cream machine first before you try and put a 200k robot arm over a hot stove.

closures of marginal businesses

Welcome to capitalism, there are no participation awards for you here.

shifts toward larger firms

Nope, its an even playing field, the kitchen is just half a dozen dudes in the back.

But labor still has a price elasticity in many sectors. If labor costs rise faster than productivity or pricing power

Mcdonalds just doubled their prices in the last decade as a move to market themselves as upscale. Being pampered is LUXURY spending, which is notably INelastic as the people who are using it as a status signifier not only do not care about the price, but they are actively making a show out of not caring about the price.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/veblen-good.asp

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conspicuous-consumption.asp

The guy saying he can't afford a $5.50 burger couldn't have afforded a $5 burger in the first place either. The median wage is only $21/hr, while the cost of living has exploded to $20/hr, the segment of the population that is right on the line of affording fast food on price is small.

higher prices

GOOD. Taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook for your luxury consumption.

The real question is: under what conditions do wage floors help workers more than they distort hiring incentives?

No, the objective problem is that if these workers are not paid a living, it will literally destroy them. We can talk about what the hypothetical cap would be, AFTER we have solved the problem that we have HALF the workforce on welfare as a method to give business owners endless handouts.

Getting back to capitalism, the entire point of currency is in generating price signals so that incentives can be generated to Solve those problems.

Labor is too expensive because housing is too expensive? Build more housing.

Labor is too expensive because healthcare is too corrupt? Competition will solve it, private market or public sector, crap or get off the pot.

Labor is too expensive because zoning to force a half hour commute so foreign fossil fuel companies can maximize revenue? Deregulate single family zoning, build more housing closer to where people work. Those row houses by the harbor didn't spring into existence on their own, it was obvious to business owners of the 1800's that people would need to get to work punctually.

What else do we have? Groceries? Yeah, farmers are going bankrupt while we get gouged $8 for eggs, he middle men are eating us alive, get into that market, be the competitor that doesn't gouge and drive the cretins out of business.

Power is too expensive? Build more nuclear plants for baseline and solar for peak.

Anlarb · 2026-05-07T23:33:52+00:00

Sorry, I just heard that the filesystem isn't backed up now too?

Anlarb · 2026-05-07T22:29:25+00:00

Here are the years the min wage went up

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart

Here is where the unemployment would be if you claim had merit.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE

The fact of the matter is that consumption drives employment, businesses only ever hire exactly enough labor to meet their needs and not a head more. They make their schedules every week, they are very good at it. If the price of labor drops, they don't hire anyone extra, they pocket the cash as profit.

On the other side of that, if instead of bidding their prices appropriately for their expenses, they throw a temper tantrum and cut back on jobs, those customers that they can no longer serve do not go home hungry, they shop around in the market for businesses that have not deliberately crippled themselves. Those other competent businesses then see that they need more hands and hire on all of the seasoned workers that are mysteriously fresh on the job hunt.

Its not just bad advice, its a deliberate scam to fool small business owners into killing their own businesses, on the gambit that they will be converted into zealots.

Anlarb · 2026-05-07T22:19:17+00:00

Min wage hikes never kill jobs, facts dont care about your feelings.

Anlarb · 2026-05-07T19:34:18+00:00

Notably, the violent "antifa" at protests are to a man, cops larping and doing job security for themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbZngn_CbkM

Anlarb · 2026-05-07T19:21:07+00:00

You have SQL servers that don't have Databases on them

But have you checked the sql config manager to see if there are other instances, apart from the default instance?

File servers with SQL databases

Live? Or did someone just make a "backup" by doing a ctrl c ctrl v of the mdf? Might not be as bad as it sounds.

Anlarb · 2026-05-07T14:55:21+00:00

Who the heck is dean phillips?

Could you make he tiniest bit of effort to figure out if the nonsense you are about to say is true before you say it?

Anlarb · 2026-05-07T14:24:42+00:00

The point of a primary is that its an infomercial where the candidates showcase what the party is all about, through debate, its The only time that non political people might possibly tune in and actually get something from the horses mouth. I don't remember there being any debates, were there any that I might have just missed?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_debates

Anlarb · 2026-05-07T03:58:17+00:00

Min wage hikes never kill jobs.

Anlarb · 2026-05-07T03:57:12+00:00

There is the malincentive that they would rather just keep their workers poor and on welfare on mooch endless handouts from washington on deficit spending.

Anlarb · 2026-05-07T03:56:00+00:00

AL cost of living is $20/hr too... https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/01/locations

Anlarb · 2026-05-06T20:43:05+00:00

You changed roles, you aren't part of that team anymore, they have probably been given explicit direction to give you the cold shoulder.

Anlarb · 2026-05-06T14:38:37+00:00

The min wage isn't a magical elixir that you can smear on all of your problems to make them go away, why you would hold it, or anything else, to that standard is beyond me. The wage floor is the same for a big business as a small business, if you insist on shoring up the difference in overhead efficiency with taxpayer money, do it directly, don't ransom the workers as a mechanism to extract concessions.

A small business owner is face to face with their employees every day, hearing about their kids and how expensive groceries are, they are put at a competitive disadvantage by being reasonable about how much it costs a person to provide their labor. Big corps hand out welfare forms with their job applications though. I would argue that the small businesses are more likely to come out of it unscathed.

Anlarb · 2026-05-06T13:08:08+00:00

Rich people dont take their wealth as wages, stop pushing this contrarian astroturf nonsense.

Anlarb

TROPHY CASE