COVID-19 Outbreak Information Updates (Reboot) [over 150.000,000 US cases (est.), 6,422,520 US hospitilizations, 1,148,691 US deaths.] (10 Viewers)

[Saint_Ward]

Another look at the whole "unemployment vs unemployment insurance / labor shortage" issue.

'The final straw': Pandemic pushes restaurant workers over the edge

Jim Conway started working in restaurants in 1982, making $2.13 an hour, plus tips. And though the world has changed significantly in the nearly 40 years since then, his hourly wage has not. At the Olive Garden outside of Pittsburgh where he worked when the pandemic hit last year, he was making...

www.yahoo.com

Allan Creasy, 39, had worked in restaurants and bars for more than two decades, most recently as a bartender at Celtic Crossing, an Irish bar in Memphis, where he was voted the city's best bartender three times over the years by readers of the city's alt-weekly newspaper, the Memphis Flyer.

Like others, Creasy said the pandemic proved to be the tipping point for him, exacerbating long-standing labor issues in the industry and drawing attention to how low his wages were: $2.13 an hour before tips - the minimum wage for tipped positions in Tennessee and at the federal level.

After three months back at the bar after the initial lockdown, Creasy decided to quit and pursue a career change.

"I didn't come back to the same job I left previously," he said. "It was very difficult to constantly have to police people about mask-wearing. It was very difficult to try to bartend and run out to the back parking lot to deliver to-go food, and to deal with Uber Eats drivers and the like, while making significantly less money than I'd been making previously."

And the pay had gotten worse - with his income dropping from about $60,000 a year around 2011 to less than $40,000 before the pandemic, he said.

"I've seen the number of people who are passionate about the restaurant industry slowly ebb away over the last 20 years," he said. "In my opinion, it's because the server's minimum wage hasn't changed. There is this belief that servers and bartenders are interchangeable."

Creasy, who has a bachelor's degree in history, has been doing fundraising and social media work for a local political action committee since. He's making about the same amount of money he did at the bar but doing something that feels closer to his heart with less risk.

"You had so many folks working in the industry because they loved it, but now so many folks found a job in a warehouse making $15 an hour, or making as much money driving for Uber Eats, all these different businesses," he said. "It's not that we're on unemployment. We did our unemployment stint, and we found something else."

A lot of people just moved on to different types of jobs.

A lot of the rest is talking about leverage. Many workers have leverage right now, so they are totally going to use it. The more desperate the industry, the more leverage they'll give away.

 

[jrdbrn]

Another look at the whole "unemployment vs unemployment insurance / labor shortage" issue.

'The final straw': Pandemic pushes restaurant workers over the edge

Jim Conway started working in restaurants in 1982, making $2.13 an hour, plus tips. And though the world has changed significantly in the nearly 40 years since then, his hourly wage has not. At the Olive Garden outside of Pittsburgh where he worked when the pandemic hit last year, he was making...

www.yahoo.com

A lot of people just moved on to different types of jobs.

A lot of the rest is talking about leverage. Many workers have leverage right now, so they are totally going to use it. The more desperate the industry, the more leverage they'll give away.

Do they only have leverage because of the UIB? I assume once that money runs out, the leverage will be gone.

 

[superchuck500]

Do they only have leverage because of the UIB? I assume once that money runs out, the leverage will be gone.

I think that might be missing other dynamics. Another aspect of today's labor market that is quite new is competition from the gig economy. It was growing pre-pandemic, but I think many workers were comfortable enough with their hourly wage jobs to not feel the gig lure. But when those jobs were lost, even temporarily, many workers looked elsewhere. We know that food delivery (Uber eats, Doordash) saw massive increases, and other sectors looked to hire gig contractors when they had to send their workforce home. (See article below, Jan. 2021).

Many workers may have found that they can make as much doing that kind of work as they did in their hourly jobs. Or perhaps many found that while it wasn't as much income, the flexibility these jobs offer end up being a net-positive on their lives or even their budget (for example reduced childcare costs). It may be that these workers would return to their pre-pandemic jobs but it might take higher wages to get them back.

Employee leverage comes from having other options. Yes, some of that could be influenced by government benefits. But to think that's the only driver is probably missing part of the story.

Demand for Gig Workers Is Soaring During the Pandemic

Contract work is even more sought after during the COVID-19 pandemic, but such laborers often lack benefits that come with traditional jobs.

www.5280.com

 

[Saint_Ward]

Do they only have leverage because of the UIB? I assume once that money runs out, the leverage will be gone.

No. The extra unemployment doesn't really factor for most of them, if you read all that. I think you'd have a better understanding if you read the article.

It's that they have better jobs, more stable hours, bosses, etc. But those folks likely aren't coming back.

So the leverage is the feeding frenzy on the folks that are still out there, that's why they're offering bonuses in some cases. A $3000 bonus is a lot better than a few more weeks of $300/week.

This might squeeze out some smaller places, as the big guys go crazy fighting over the talent pool.

Everyone else who is hiring (like businesses that have mostly chugged along, or got a little leaner) have found that openings don't have enough people applying, because they don't exist for what they're asking for, or they're already working and not willing to leave for chump change.

 

[faceman]

I saw a brief report on the NBC Nightly News last night that right before everything started spreading in Wuhan, a few scientists from the virology lab there went to the hospital with flu-like symptoms. Seems like that whole "it came from nature" thing may not be entirely true. I've had a sneaking suspicion that it may have been found in nature, but was supercharged in a lab.

This was discussed on the locked thread. An altered virus would have "human fingerprints". None have been found on the
"Novel" virus. Novel means never been seen. It's a conspiracy theory that needs to go away and the sooner the better.

 

[Eeyore]

"Labor Shortage"

Employers in my area are slow to adapt to the changing environment and they seek to blame people rather than themselves.

Waitstaff minimum wage here is $2.13 per hour.

About half of the seats are blocked off due to restrictions.

Many employers decided decided to big-brain it and they've rid themselves of table bussers, and hostesses who are to be paid $7.25. The waitresses have been expected to seat customers, bus tables, clean the area, and the bathrooms, answer the phones, take to-go orders, help with Uber Eats/door dash orders in the kitchen, and deal with entitled, loud-mouthed, customers for $2.13.

And the employers scream "Nobody wants to work anymore!"

Nobody wants to work full-time for $17 per day.

Pay rent with $17. If, by some miracle, you can, consider that you haven't eaten yet. Don't get sick, walk to work. The guy on the street with the hand-written, cardboard sign asking for change will probably do better day to day.

A mile away is Illinois where waitstaff minimum wage is $6.60. The same problems exist but to a lesser extent. My Godson busses tables for $11 per hour in Illinois (minimum wage there). I represent employers with contracts that pay entry level employees $15. The McDonald's that sits a mile away has a sign paying $50 just to interview, and paying $12 to lure people away from Illinois. Minimum wage goes to $12 in Illinois on January 1. $15 isn't quite so attractive to work in heavy industry at that point.

 

[tomwaits]

My friend's son is a waiter at a Mexican restaurant and the other day he was the only waiter. He said he cleaned up in tips ($400+), but it was a rough day.
I think the minimum wage here is still the same as federal, but all the restaurants are hiring and I regularly see signs that say starting at $12 for the non-tipping places but they still can't get people to work there.

 

[Infoman]

I started, owned, and ran a restaurant and catering business for 4 years - I paid good (more than minimum wage) to get good / better people, and when they were showing up for work, or not stealing from me... It was well worth it. That said, better wages means higher prices... Some customers were fine with that, and others weren't. I never took a salary or profit personally - I put all the money back into the business or the people I hired... Eventually I had to sell it because that was not sustainable long term. It's all good until your nachos al cabron goes up $10 a lick... These jobs are what I call starter or supplemental jobs... They are meant for people that are part-time employees, young people starting out, and supplementing overall income... Many times they come with the added bonus of non-taxed tips (I actually had my wait staff and bar staff tip out to the kitchen staff at 15% also)... They are not meant to be a full time career, or primary income source to live on... But that's just me.

IMO - If small businesses are forced to pay wages that equate to "career wages"... They (mostly) will not be able to compete with Big Chains and Places with franchise and Corp backing... and all the great little places you love to eat at now that are a "that hole in the wall" will slowly but surely disappear as they can no longer afford employees.

Also, I'd like to know who is specifically paying their employees only a total of... $17 a day, and keeping them from laughing their way out of the door on the first day...? Because I am going to have to see their books, and have a close inspection of that operation. LOL

 

[SaintInBucLand]

IMO - If small businesses are forced to pay wages that equate to "career wages"... They (mostly) will not be able to compete with Big Chains and Places with franchise and Corp backing... and all the great little places you love to eat at now that are a "that hole in the wall" will slowly but surely disappear as they can no longer afford employees.

This is so very true, it almost sounds like people want to see nothing but huge corporations running everything, because there is no way on earth a small business with 5-6 employees can afford to pay everyone a career wage. It's simply not possible.

 

[Saint_Ward]

"Labor Shortage"

Employers in my area are slow to adapt to the changing environment and they seek to blame people rather than themselves.

Waitstaff minimum wage here is $2.13 per hour.

About half of the seats are blocked off due to restrictions.

Many employers decided decided to big-brain it and they've rid themselves of table bussers, and hostesses who are to be paid $7.25. The waitresses have been expected to seat customers, bus tables, clean the area, and the bathrooms, answer the phones, take to-go orders, help with Uber Eats/door dash orders in the kitchen, and deal with entitled, loud-mouthed, customers for $2.13.

And the employers scream "Nobody wants to work anymore!"

Nobody wants to work full-time for $17 per day.

Pay rent with $17. If, by some miracle, you can, consider that you haven't eaten yet. Don't get sick, walk to work. The guy on the street with the hand-written, cardboard sign asking for change will probably do better day to day.

A mile away is Illinois where waitstaff minimum wage is $6.60. The same problems exist but to a lesser extent. My Godson busses tables for $11 per hour in Illinois (minimum wage there). I represent employers with contracts that pay entry level employees $15. The McDonald's that sits a mile away has a sign paying $50 just to interview, and paying $12 to lure people away from Illinois. Minimum wage goes to $12 in Illinois on January 1. $15 isn't quite so attractive to work in heavy industry at that point.

My son applied to a job at Bento Box. He's still waiting, but they said, the "exhibition person", the one who makes it look pretty, makes $13/hr starting.

I told my boss, dude, we pay our lab technicians $15-17/hr. Umm.. we need to fix that. (Yes, with benefits, and all that, so it's worth more, but still.. they're skilled labor.)

In the article I posted earlier, there we some folks who realized it was a lot better for them to become an Uber Eats driver and deliver food than to still be a waiter/waitress.

 

[Saint_Ward]

This is so very true, it almost sounds like people want to see nothing but huge corporations running everything, because there is no way on earth a small business with 5-6 employees can afford to pay everyone a career wage. It's simply not possible.

I agree with this, but I also know that a lot of small businesses are run like crap and they don't deserve to keep being in business.

 

[Eeyore]

Coronavirus: Influencers offered money to badmouth Pfizer vaccine

The strategy is being described as "pathetic" and "irresponsible".

www.newshub.co.nz

 

[Optimus Prime]

Interesting article
================

See if this sounds familiar: a hypothesis is articulated in national security circles that sounds pretty “out there.” When it is first proposed, an avalanche of experts react with easy dismissals. Commentators quote those experts and add their own dismissals. Indeed, the rejections are so swift that they contain elements of mockery.

Time passes, and a funny thing happens. Unexpected voices begin to articulate the renegade idea yet again. The dominant alternative explanations that most experts believed to be true find no evidentiary support. The heretofore crackpot hypothesis no longer seems so crazy. It has not been proven true, mind you — to paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle, it is simply the best improbable hypothesis remaining after alternatives have been rendered impossible.

Quick, what am I talking about: the claim that UFOs are a real phenomenon or the theory that the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory accident from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

The answer is both — but there are some differences between the two narratives that are worth contrasting...........

Glenn Kessler offers a useful primer on the evolution of this story with lots of useful links. He proffers two reasons for the growing acceptance of the lab theory:

For one, efforts to discover a natural source of the virus have failed. Second, early efforts to spotlight a lab leak often got mixed up with speculation that the virus was deliberately created as a bioweapon. That made it easier for many scientists to dismiss the lab scenario as tin-hat nonsense. But a lack of transparency by China and renewed attention to the activities of the Wuhan lab have led some scientists to say they were too quick to discount a possible link at first.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) from the start pointed to the lab’s location in Wuhan, pressing China for answers, so the history books will reward him if he turns out to be right. The Trump administration also sought to highlight the lab scenario but generally could only point to vague intelligence. The Trump administration’s messaging was often accompanied by anti-Chinese rhetoric that made it easier for skeptics to ignore its claims.

It would be safe to say that proponents of the lab theory are feeling somewhat bitter about the year of calumny they had to tolerate before the hypothesis began gaining wider acceptance.

In both the UFO and the Wuhan lab cases, there remains little direct evidence supporting the claim. What has happened instead is that as more data comes in, the probability of alternative explanations has declined. So it is now respectable to say that these hypotheses need to be considered without sounding like a kook.

The key difference between the two cases of Bayesian updating is the role that partisanship has played. The UFO conversation has been refreshingly devoid of partisan food fights. Once Navy pilots acknowledged that they had seen something strange, politicians on both sides were able to publicly state that further research was needed.

In the case of the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis, partisanship played a huge role in marginalizing the story. The problem with the Trump administration pushing the lab leak hypothesis was that it was coming from an administration that made many, many false claims about the coronavirus pandemic. Its nonexistent credibility on these issues made it harder to believe this argument. The Wall Street Journal’s Jeremy Page, Betsy McKay and Drew Hinshaw explain:..............

MSN

 

[Saint_Ward]

Interesting article
================

See if this sounds familiar: a hypothesis is articulated in national security circles that sounds pretty “out there.” When it is first proposed, an avalanche of experts react with easy dismissals. Commentators quote those experts and add their own dismissals. Indeed, the rejections are so swift that they contain elements of mockery.

Time passes, and a funny thing happens. Unexpected voices begin to articulate the renegade idea yet again. The dominant alternative explanations that most experts believed to be true find no evidentiary support. The heretofore crackpot hypothesis no longer seems so crazy. It has not been proven true, mind you — to paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle, it is simply the best improbable hypothesis remaining after alternatives have been rendered impossible.

Quick, what am I talking about: the claim that UFOs are a real phenomenon or the theory that the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory accident from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

The answer is both — but there are some differences between the two narratives that are worth contrasting...........

Glenn Kessler offers a useful primer on the evolution of this story with lots of useful links. He proffers two reasons for the growing acceptance of the lab theory:



It would be safe to say that proponents of the lab theory are feeling somewhat bitter about the year of calumny they had to tolerate before the hypothesis began gaining wider acceptance.

In both the UFO and the Wuhan lab cases, there remains little direct evidence supporting the claim. What has happened instead is that as more data comes in, the probability of alternative explanations has declined. So it is now respectable to say that these hypotheses need to be considered without sounding like a kook.

The key difference between the two cases of Bayesian updating is the role that partisanship has played. The UFO conversation has been refreshingly devoid of partisan food fights. Once Navy pilots acknowledged that they had seen something strange, politicians on both sides were able to publicly state that further research was needed.

In the case of the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis, partisanship played a huge role in marginalizing the story. The problem with the Trump administration pushing the lab leak hypothesis was that it was coming from an administration that made many, many false claims about the coronavirus pandemic. Its nonexistent credibility on these issues made it harder to believe this argument. The Wall Street Journal’s Jeremy Page, Betsy McKay and Drew Hinshaw explain:..............

MSN

No really. He's a political professor writing an opinion piece. It's stuff like that this that gives that story some level of credibility that it shouldn't. I want scientific investigative writing.

I think what I'm reading from the scientific community is that, now that there is more time (and maybe a lack of funding covid research, since vaccines were developed??), that they should investigate the lab issue more before it is summarily dismissed. I think one theory is that they could have been studying the natural covid virus and it got released by accident. However, that would still implicate that it was already in the wild. Seems like most don't think the "super charging" theory (my words) is likely.

A lot of it is how most scientists are. You can't say it's not something until you've fully proven it.

 

[Saint_Ward]

Here is some info on the change to the child tax credits. There will be an IRS site to update dependents, and decide to opt out of monthly payments and just get it as a check or tax credit (didn't read it all yet) later.

Child tax credit update portal: Update your income details, review your payments and more

Here's what families should know about the online IRS tools before the last remaining check comes this year.

www.cnet.com

This isn't an invitation for opinions on this. Save that for MAP.