‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation’: the states pushing for 14-year-olds to serve alcohol : wisconsin

[-] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago

Have you considered this from a Republican point of view? I mean, are the cute? Are they available after their shift?

[-] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago

Let's employ minors to work late at night around drunk adults, what a fantastic idea that can't possibly go wrong.

[-] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago

Republican shithole states, it's only Republican led legislatures doing this, and Republican should be in every fucking headline, because it's only fucking Republicans doing this fucking bullshit

[-] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago

He hasn’t found takers in over a year of running “help wanted” ads, so he’s made do by working extra shifts in the kitchen and paring back the menu.

Could it be that the offered wages are too low? Over a year and no takers says something about you not the workforce. But hey, kids can be payed even less, so let's make it possible to put them to work serving adult beverages. And after that we can let the be farmhands on a pot farm.

[+] [email protected] -16 points 11 months ago

Not every employer can afford to pay more. Restaurants in particular operate on very thin margins. If the minimum wage, whether natural or legal, goes above what they can afford, the outcome isn't restaurants that pay more, it's fewer restaurant jobs.

This is just one of the many reasons why people who actually care about the poor, working or otherwise, should be transitioning away from a massive package of subsidies and entitlements that separately target an innumerable number of groups that need some kind of help (including workers whose wages are insufficient to live) and toward a single Basic Income program. In addition to being much cheaper to administer and much easier to access, it would also allow us to put the burden on those privileged individuals and entities that can actually afford to bear the burden, rather than putting up a sign that says "your business must be at least this profitable to operate".

[+] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago

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[+] [email protected] -6 points 11 months ago

Are you being sarcastic?

[+] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

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[-] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

"demand" is not only willingness, but also ability to pay. If a business is going to pay employees more, it has to come from somewhere. If rents are rising and investors have other places to put their money, then it's going to have to come from the customers. And the customers don't have infinite money any more than anyone else does.

There are plenty of services that provide value to society, but don't necessarily bring in massive amounts of revenue. There's even a value to the workers themselves, the pride in providing a service to customers on need rather than having to come up with sketchy ways to squeeze yet more money out of the upper middle class. And don't forget: restaurant owners aren't rich. Most of them aren't even upper middle. Divide their take-home by the number of hours they work, and many small business owners are doing poorly, sacrificing income for the sake of running their own business. The workers need to be able to sustain themselves, but just as most of the income of the rich comes from a source other than their labor, there's no reason 100% of anyone's income has to come from their labor.

A UBI would put more money in both the worker's pocket, and their customers. Not only would it make it possible for workers to sustain themselves without breaking small businesses operating at the margin, it would also make it easier for the customers to absorb higher wages, should it become necessary.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If your business cannot afford to pay its workers a living wage and instead relies on exploitation, then your business model sucks and deserves to fail.

[-] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago

"Business" isn't all evil coproate entities sucking at the teat of other peoples work. It's also small operators who put in a lot of time for not very much money. As a pest control technician, I've seen how the rich live from the outside. But I've also seen how small business operators (my bosses, in some cases) live. They weren't doing much better than my middle management father, and putting in a lot more man-hours to get it.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

It's not okay for small businesses to exploit people, either. I don't see how this changes my point.

[-] [email protected] -3 points 11 months ago

Ironic that I am being attacked by both sides at the same time.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I think some people think all business owners are evil, no matter how large or small they are.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

There are a few different things touched on in your comment, and I'll try to respond to them all, sorry if I miss any.

Losing jobs with no demand is not a bad thing. If you list a job, and nobody will take it for a year, then the market doesn't want that job. There is an tendency to obsess over the number of jobs as a marker of economic health, but it's a correlation at best.
The restaurant industry specifically is hugely over saturated, plenty of restaurants succeed paying a living wage, if you can't then you need to make adjustments (e.g. change menu, move to a different location, etc).
A restaurant which can't turn a profit is a hobby, not a business.

I imagine that at some point a UBI will be necessary, due to the lack of jobs lost to automation, but the purpose of UBI should never be to support the exploitation of workers. In fact it's thought processes like that which make people argue against implementing UBI "Well if my landlord knows I get 1000 a month from UBI he will just charge me 1000 more for rent" or "If my boss knows I get 1000 a month from UBI then he'll drop my salary by 1000 a month".

[-] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Yes, this is why 100 restaurants opened in 1854 and there are only six left.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

If a business can't afford to pay a living wage then it shouldn't really be in business.

[-] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago

Of course it's Wisconsin lol. I grew up in Wisconsin. I remember seeing people get arrested for their 14th DUI. The amount of of people with 5+ DUIs I'd see in the news was crazy. I moved down to Illinois closer to family and they don't fuck around with DUIs. First one is 10k in fines. Second one is prison.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

We already passed this dumb shit in Iowa.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

That's changed since I grew up in Illinois. We took a field trip to the Dupage county court in high school and the case I sat in on was a man on his 7th DUI.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

As a former bartender, please, for the love everything good on this earth, do not let this happen.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Not even counting all the danger those kids would be in being around drunk adults...they'd also do so much dumb shit, like get their friends dangerously wasted.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

I'm up for a 'if you cant engage in it, you can't sell it rule.'

I mean if you'd ask your car salesman which car drives best, you don't want them to say: 'Dunno, I can't drive'.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

It's never about making our lives easier just those who have money.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Hey if you're allowed to drink it with your parent or guardian then you should be able to serve it /s

I did find it kind of strange that at 16 i was able to take the bartending class at NWTC back in the 90s. But i was working as a line cook and a waiter in the summers at 15 so being around all that stuff was normal.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

First thought was "Gee... I wonder what toxic mindless political entity could be possibly pushing for such a hell's waterless toilet of a society".

And STILL there are mentally deficient and broken people allowing these parasitic hate-filled shitheads into power, either by voting for them or by fondling their ~~lazy ignorance~~ purity then lovingly sniffing their ~~blood-stained~~ purity fingers, bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe WhY bOtHeR vOtiNg.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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