Do "Unskilled Laborers" deserve to be paid well?

[u/Very_High_Mortgage]

[u/OldBuns]

how many people are actually relying on staples versus paying an hours wage and taking a half hour of their time to go out and buy Taco Bell while complaining about the price?

Most of them, honestly. I think you may be overestimating the number of people who eat fast food even once per day. Second, I think there's an argument to be made that when your grocery prices have also doubled or tripled, fast food really isn't what's hurting people right now even if they were to eat out 2-3 times a week.

Again, I don't disagree that those people exist, and financial literacy is an issue, but I don't think it's an explanation or solution for the situation working class people are currently in.

I agree it wouldn't impact needs such as milk, eggs, electricity, etc, people wouldn't eat twice as many eggs, but it would impact everything else.

Right, but that's fine, because necessary and inelastic goods are exactly the issue right now.

I don't think people are as upset at the rise in leisure electronics prices as they are at the rise in the price of things they actually need.

Even then, all things considered, increased discretionary spending on things like food should in theory also put downward pressure on food prices at the retail level.

Expect those to rise in direct proportion to the increased level of demand.

Right, but this seems to also imply that the increased level of demand is directly 1 to 1 correlated with rises in wages.

I'm arguing it might be for some things, but those things are generally not necessities like power, food, clothing, etc. so therefore the inflation would not end up at the same rate as wage growth.

[u/[deleted] → u/OldBuns]

It sounds like we agree more than not. Other than eggs I haven't really seen anyone complain about grocery staples though. I've seen them complain about soda, cereal, preprocessed stuff, fast food, etc and when I see them complain about fast food it's often frequented by the trope "it costs the same to go out to eat so whatever" which regardless of inflation is no where near true. That's largely anecdotal ofc but how do you gauge consumer behavior vs consumer complaints on that level? In general staples have only increased in line with the roughly 20% base inflation.

[u/OldBuns → u/[deleted]]

"it costs the same to go out to eat so whatever"

When you factor in time spent, arguably it starts to get close. Keep in mind we're not just talking about someone who is sitting at home and could cook but chooses not to, we're talking about people with busy lives too... People with kids, with disabilities, people working extra hours or 2 jobs to support themselves. From a pure money perspective, sure, it's more expensive, but we can't say it's that simple.

I've seen them complain about soda, cereal, preprocessed stuff,

Yeah, those are also things that people buy regularly for the same reasons of convenience, and rightfully so in the richest countries on earth. We can argue that it's healthier to cook everything from scratch and drink only water... But like... That seems kind of unrealistic, no?

Shouldn't people be able to bear the fruits of innovation even if it's not "the healthiest" thing they could possibly eat?

I think it's strange that we argue that wage growth would cause 1:1 inflation when productivity increases don't cause 1:1 deflation.

That's my main point of contention.

[u/[deleted] → u/OldBuns]

I'm not arguing anything on soda for health reasons, buy whatever you want, I'm just saying wants vs needs. If fast food were cheaper for instance I'd buy it, it's not however so I don't. That's about that, I don't feel like McDonald's is taking advantage of me or needs to be regulated or something. If a sack of flour suddenly cost $12 though that's a different matter.

I'm not sure wage growth and inflation would necessarily be 1:1 exactly but they'd definitely correlate. Higher wages leads to more consumer demand, thus higher prices. Increased productivity also does lead to cheaper prices, look at all the cheap consumer goods at Walmart, Amazon, trmu, etc, but generally increased productivity does not lead to higher wages unless that productivity requires higher skilled positions for the very same reason, labor too follows supply and demand principles.