Something you should know about pizza delivery

[AdamCrock]

I need pizza now ..............

 

[GoodGame]

OTR truck driving. Graduate up from pizza to cargo.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I think you are getting shafted. Time to look into getting a different job.

I still do not think that a higher minimum wage is good for the economy. As you posted, it was a good learning experience and helped you move on to something better. A pizza delivery job is for teenagers doing part time work, it should not be your career. Anyway Amazon is showing the future of delivery by using drones. Prepare to be replaced with robots.

The average fast food worker is aged 36 in America and has worked only in the service industry. Given that the majority are middle aged the idea that its job of teenagers as a gateway into jobs no longer holds true and unrealistic.

 

[Crezth]

"Why don't these lazy people just work? McJobs is always hiring!"

"Pizza delivery is for teenagers doing part-time work, it should not be your career."

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

I learned something today. Thanks for posting.

No, thank you for reading.

I am aware I am long-winded. However, the absurd complexity of how I get compensated simply shouldn't be. We need a bare minimum wage.

Until we get one, and until every employed person gets one, that is enough to sustain AT LEAST that person him/herself, then we will continue to have employed persons accepting food stamps and other forms of government assistance.

No employed person who works full time should need any form of government assistance.

When that happens, the tax dollars you pay help fund an EMPLOYED person's life.

That, is theft.

The company needs to pay its worker enough to live, period. If it means increasing the price of pizza by 50 cents or a dollar, so be it.

Pizza has been the same price for decades. Fraid it costs more than that to sustain this business.

The only time I don't tip a food delivery person is if the service has been atrocious. As in this one guy kept insisting he was standing outside my house that was a actually 2 blocks away and I'd made it clear to the person taking my order at the restaurant that I lived in an apartment building.

I realize there may have been miscommunication between the restaurant and the driver, but dammit, when somebody tells you where they live, you should believe them!

You're well within your right to withhold a tip for poor service.

In defense of the driver- sometimes the order taker does not put enough information on the ticket. The situation you describe is the phone person's fault 99 times out of 100.

Not trying to throw other members of the team under the bus, but the driver is literally not responsible for almost all of the store's bleep-ups.

The only things he contributes to the issue are: Poor navigation (new driver) taking too long to do a delivery (it's supposed to take 20 minutes round-trip. All drivers' drive times are logged by the computer. Drivers with long drive times lose hours and eventually do not have a job, so this is extremely rare) or forgetting a soda, having to go back and get it (happens, this is ABSOLUTELY the driver's fault and it ticks me off as a manager) and if they drop the pizza itself (extremely rare).

Anything else is either We're Extremely Busy, Team member not properly trained gave the cook/driver wrong information, or Team member accidentally switched the orders up.

That's all the inside crew. Inside crew is responsible for almost every single mistake.

Driver just goes from A to B. If the order is late, it was late 4 minutes ago, when he arrived at the store from the previous order, got this order, and left. He's not taking 45 minutes to drive to your house. Any trip is like 5-10 minutes max. If the pizza is late, it was going to be late whether the driver moved fast or not, 99/100 times.

But hey, you're a customer withholding tip for lousy service. As much as this job sucks sometimes, and as much of the time it's not the driver's fault, I have never, ever, ever, ever said a customer needs to tip when they got lousy service.

The driver is usually just as much of a victim as the customer, but this is still your way of letting us know we did a lousy job.

I will offer a caveat- most of my customers tip nothing.

Unless you tell me you are upset with the service, tipping nothing does nothing.

You have to let me know there was a potential tip there, and it went away because of the lousy service. Tell the driver you're upset. WE LITERALLY CAN'T TELL, because half our customers treat us like dog turds anyway! That will encourage the driver to do better next time (if it was his fault) or he will tell the inside crew they're costing him money, and alert the manager that customers are getting upset due to some inside crew member's screw-up.

THAT works. PLEASE, do that. I guarantee you the manager will find out.

Even better, you are the sort of customer I encourage you to do this:

I'm a manager. Call me. Call me directly. Tell me you got lousy service and tipped the driver anyway.

Watch me BEND OVER BACKWARDS to make sure next time you order, you got a free pizza.

Why?

Because our company is great about one thing: We have a very strong policy of trying to ensure customer satisfaction.

Whether you tipped or not, doesn't matter: I need to know you had a lousy experience. You can even tell me you don't want anything, just reporting the lousy service.

Then, watch me go out of my way to ensure you order from us again, tell you you have a 5 dollar credit for lateness, or depending on how late, 10 dollar credit.

Customers LIKE YOU do not abuse our extremely generous customer satisfaction policies.

I want customers LIKE YOU to call me and tell me you're upset.

I couldn't give two turds about the customers that order every week and pretend the service was bad and immediately demand free stuff and never tip.

I don't care about those customers. I wish they'd stop ordering.

You, I want to hear from.

Call the manager on duty. It's my job to handle your complaints.

I only ever want to hear from customers like you, and I don't, because you're too NICE to call and complain.

CALL AND COMPLAIN! PLEASE!!!! I need to know that my team is screwing up! I want to make it better! I want to make sure I remember you... and next time, I want to personally cut and box your pizza and keep it in the warmer and send my best driver to you.

Customers who actually tip more than a dollar make up 80% of a driver's possible tip income.

I NEVER, EVER want to lose a customer like you. I could give a care if the twice a week never tips always rude customer orders from a rival company. I care about decent people who order pizza and have a bad experience.

I HAVE to try to help those jerkwads who never tip. I want to have the opportunity to help a customer like you.

My drivers ALL want to give you excellent service. You have to understand, you customers who tip more than a dollar?

I know you by name. I know you by address. I remember what your house frickin' looks like. You are why I deliver. You are why I manage. You're why I haven't quit in frustration.

I promise you, call the store manager. Explain calmly that your service was below satisfactory. I will do backflips to help someone like you.

And if the manager of that store DOESN'T, order from a different chain. THEY deserve your business.

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

I tip even when I'm broke. Thanks for helping me know that's justified.

I have asked around, although the situation is not EXACTLY the same at the other two top rival pizza chains, it is roughly the same.

-below minimum wage pay
-really bad driver compensation, way below what it actually costs in terms of gas, insurance, oil, tires, and especially DEPRECIATION (thats tens of thousands of dollars in just a few years, really rapid depreciation) and there's just no way 40 cents per delivery could ever, ever cover that
-Lots and lots and lots of customers either unaware tipping is not just customary, it's why it is legal to pay our drivers a waiter's wage, or are just plain selfish and never tip anyway.

Your tip is the only reason they can pay their bills. It's impossible to pay their bills unless customers tip. Exactly like a waiter, except a waiter is not about to get robbed or rear-ended by a text-n-driver, like I have.

Thank you. I promise you, your driver knows who you are. And will deliver to you first, if there's other pizzas in the car and they're headed to the notorious never-tips house. Of which there are many.

How do you tip if you have no money (having presumably spent it all on the pizza+assorted delivery charges plus tax)?

Hah.

People tell me all the time they wish they could tip, they'll get me next time, or they're sorry.

Of course, they tell me this as they're ordering 30-40 dollars worth of ONE MEAL, and they do it several times a month, and the excuses are always the same.

I can't pay my bills with apologies, thanks, or excuses. Yet that is generally what I get for delivering to people. Apologies, thanks, or excuses.

This really is utterly obscene.

You are not kidding.

I think you fail to grasp the situation here. John Schnatter needs your money so he can create more jobs and expand his great american business. Now that's the american dream! It's a real tribute to America, to entrepreneurship guys.

Schnatter can choke on his own sausage. I promise you, that rat-bastard is a humungous turd.

If you can't afford a tip at all, you don't have enough money to order pizza in the first place.

Looks at ticket, where it says the total due is over 20 dollars for one meal.

Looks at customer.

Listens to how poor they are, and that's why they can't tip.

In their house.

With their 4 cars in the driveway.

With the 5 people inside the house, all of them are impoverished.

Watching football on their 72 inch screen.

Yep, I got lots of sympathy for the sob stories of my customers who don't live in studio apartments and can afford more than 5 dollars for a meal.

Those customers can pretty much gnaw on my taint.

Even with the minimum-wage laws it still seems they flagrantly skirt the rules.

There's more. Drivers are encouraged to claim that they made more in tips than they did, because of a scare tactic called "an audit".

If they can't prove they made such a dismal amount in tips, they can lose their job, supposedly.

So drivers claim more tips than they earn, in order to avoid an audit, to the tune of 3 dollars an hour minimum, and if they do not, the drivers lose hours.

I bet you a lawyer could drag the employer to court over stuff like that. But then someone will still lose their job and/or get their hours cut anyway. The only legal solution is a better legal minimum wage,

and by the way, the actual minimum wage would be sufficient.

No one is asking for 15 dollars an hour. 8 would be a good start.

You probably shouldn't be eating out or ordering food if you have no money is probably the best solution to this.

Yeah, but we can't tell that to the customer who just ordered from us. We'd be soooooo fired.

I think you are getting shafted. Time to look into getting a different job

No kidding. I promise you if there were some available, or I could afford to move, which is thousands of dollars, or my credit were good enough that I didn't feel I had to worry about being rejected for an apartment building elsewhere... etc etc. If I could get a job elsewhere and move simultaneously, and so on and so forth.

Long story short, for almost all poor people, moving is basically impossible. It costs a lot of money to move, and it requires excellent credit.

One is forced to accept local jobs. Some areas are so poor, the only local jobs available are service industry jobs like delivery, fast food, warehouse jobs, etc. And employers in the area know it, and they know they can screw the employees and still have employees.

I still do not think that a higher minimum wage is good for the economy.

Well, here's an instance where you're wrong.

The big 3 pizza companies all made plenty of profits and employed many people and did just fine with the minimum wage.

Having drivers earn 8 instead of 4 did not hurt any of these companies.

Small businesses? Typically pay their drivers the minimum. They can afford to do so, it's often the only way they can attract drivers, since there are typically long stretches during any shift where there are no deliveries to take.

Small businesses can handle it. I promise you the multi-billion dollar pizza businesses can afford it even easier.

Not only that, it's not an opinion, it is a fact. Because it has been done BEFORE.

It's not theory. It's fact.

As you posted, it was a good learning experience and helped you move on to something better. A pizza delivery job is for teenagers doing part time work,

False. Do some research. I promise you, the median age for this job is NOT "teenager".

There is literally no one on my staff that age. Most of my workers are about 30.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Until you bring something to this discussion beyond your uninformed opinions, we're done.

it should not be your career.

Thanks for your opinion. Whatever your job is, is incorrect as well. That's about as much thought as you've contributed here.

Do you think minimum wage workers will be helped when their hours all get cut to 29 or less to avoid triggering expensive health insurance?

This is a false choice.

First of all, minimum wage workers often don't earn minimum wage because they already get a sub-minimum wage or they don't get 40 hours a week as it stands.

What will happen, is the employer will make it impossible for the employee to pay their bills, and they will quit.

Then, the business will have staffing problems.

Then, they'll give the hours to whatever employees remain. Who will then be full time workers.

The problem you describe doesn't exist. Staffing this job, which already has a turnover rate at my store of 300% of the team PER YEAR

(We go through 3 full crews, come and gone, per year)

That's the problem.

Whoever in this industry says they'll just cut employee's hours is deluding themselves. Most people cannot pay their bills on 25 hours a week and will go to whatever employer offers hours.

Then, the employer will have a staffing problem and they'll have to give the hours anyway.

Don't worry. I promise you my employer was full of it when they said they'd reduce people's hours.

We have drivers working 50 hour weeks sometimes because we need drivers so badly. I promise you it is all a big gigantic overblown corporate blowhard bluff. So easy to see through because you cannot on the one hand need to hire 5 drivers, and on the other hand, cut hours.

Laugh, laugh at the employers who threaten this nonsense. Their suits are as empty as their threats.

A few thoughts:

* Are there any unions right now in the US that represent primarily a part time work force?

Unions pretty much don't exist at this layer of society.

* Do you have any idea of the % of food delivery drivers that work full time? My gut is that the vast majority of this workforce is PT, compared to others who work in kitchens. When I delivered pizza (which was, admittedly enough, like 8 years ago), I know we wouldn't hire anybody full time.

Those who work part time do so voluntarily. We never have enough staff. We always have hours for hard workers who learn/cross-train/ or simply drive.

*Paying by miles rather than a flat fee sounds like a royal outrage, and given the damage that will do to your car, you'd probably be better off straight up going on unemployment rather than working there, or taking *literally* any other job.

I literally dropped my hours down deliberately to avoid driving at all.

I lose money when I'm on the road, or I earn way less than 8 dollars an hour after expenses, wear and tear, maintenance, depreciation, etc.

They need me, badly, and I told them I'd only work X days per week.

I need the money, and I still would rather be at home. Why? I can't earn while I drive.

*Why the heck are you still delivering pizza after a decade?

Speaking for myself, I went to college and moved away after 2005, was in college for a couple years, and worked whatever jobs I could until the economy crashed, then no one was hiring, then I was unemployed for 2 years and couldn't finish college.

Others simply cannot do anything else.

I have a driver who cannot add, and a driver who cannot read.

Not everyone can be a manager or a doctor or a lawyer. Some people literally need jobs like this.

I refuse the excuse of "it's not supposed to be a job you can pay your bills with" as some have suggested (not saying you have) because any job that is an actual job, and I promise you, this is not a pyramid scheme or a cold-call telemarketing scam job, this is a real job, any real job should allow a person to live.

What is the point of paying a person to do a job so little money that they cannot afford a studio apartment and FOOD?

I wish the right-wingers could answer me that, and have the answer make any kind of freaking sense.

But I have long since given up on that.

From the first post:

Actually, in a lot of states (including labor-friendly Illinois), they can legally terminate you for no reason at all.

Plus there are loopholes, and you can essentially write someone up for almost any reason, 3 writeups and you're fired.

Plus you can cut their hours or make their work miserable until they quit. My employer is a wizard at this sort of chicanery, which prevents workers from any kind of unemployment compensation.

Why do people still believe the budget was legitimately balanced? It was done so by taking money from off-budget items. Tell me if that sounds like balancing to you.

Tell me if the current budget is better than Clinton/Gingrich's budget.

Tell me if higher taxes mean more income for the government.

Tell me if the wars were paid for, or necessary to begin with.

I guarantee you, not only can the current budget be better, it WAS better. If you want to nit-pick and say it wasn't perfect, all I have to say is this:

Perfect should not be the preventer of "better".

Better is better. Period. Perfect is a pipe dream.

I also think the question here is why are people tipping less?

Ask the customer. The answer is delivery fees. Half think the driver gets it.

I feel bad for you and your situation; I've been in bad financial straits before(my family filed bankruptcy at one point). But what, precisely, makes you think government can make businesses "strictly" adhere to a minimum wage law?

The fact that the government can literally shut down a business that doesn't adhere to regulations and laws.

Why haven't they been doing that from the beginning? Is the legislation going to try and cover every possible end-around?

This is just an excuse to do nothing.

I promise you, having a law that says employees cannot earn less than $7.85 an hour means drivers will earn that much.

I don't accept the shrug and defeatism response. You're entitled to have one, but it's not a legitimate point of view IMO.

The one place I'll sympathize is the people who just bluntly tell people "GET A BETTER JOB"

Those people are morons.

Universal healthcare. Boom. Done.

Yes. But it won't pass with middle of the road democrats and republicans of any flavor at all.

Only about a third of democrats would ever support it, and republicans never would, because they're stupid and cannot recognize the fact that many other wealthy first-world nations have far superior healthcare systems that work, and the working class can *gasp* see a doctor instead of waiting in line in the emergency room jacking up everyone else's costs.

Because that's what you get- a socialized system by default, when everyone else has to pay more because the poor can't pay ANYTHING.

That's the stupidest bleeping system of them all, and some people are utterly convinced that's good enough because fingers in ears, hands over eyes, and lah lah lah lah lah lah lahdee dah. That's why. And it's the only reason they can articulate that is actually honest.

Because minimum wage laws allow businesses to incorporate expected tips into worker compensation. It's why gratuity-based professions such as pizza delivery and waiter/ress get so consistently shafted and waiter/resses get so chippy about their tips. Possible government solutions: prohibit businesses from incorporating expected tips into their payroll. Require a fixed gratuity to be automatically incorporated into a customer's bill, as it is in most of the rest of the world.

An employer shouldn't be able to LOWER YOUR WAGES when you get a tip anyway.

That's theft, in my opinion.

Pay me enough to live, and my customers will pay me enough to live well.

Is that so selfish? Really?

Anyone who can use the word "fungible" in a sentence, and make sense, is probably underemployed delivering pizzas.

I was promoted rather quickly and now I help manage the store. I do everything the general manager does except hire people (or the truck order, he likes to do that one himself)

Of course I am under-employed. A lot of people take these jobs because that's what's hiring.

Pizza delivery will always be hiring until the wage structure goes back to where it belongs.

Most of the senior members of my crew have been there for almost a whole year.

That wasn't the case in 2004. 300% turnover was not always the norm.

It's not normal. How are my customers supposed to get great service when we get new people every other week? And lose someone every other week?

I was a pizza delivery driver in 1991. I was paid $4.25 an hour, plus $.50 per delivery, plus tips. My rent was $150 a month and my other expenses were low so I lived pretty well. What we have seen from then until now is the constant erosion of the living standards of the bottom half to two thirds of American society in the name of enriching those who were already comfortable. Many factors have gone into bringing us to this situation, but ultimately this is what happens when you have a government that governs in the interest of Wall Street and ignores the interests of the rest of society. Without change, revolution will come, in time.

You're right about a lot, but the folks in this situation are too poor to move. They can't even take time off to protest.

I look at the folks protesting for a 10 dollar or 15 dollar wage, and I think.... how did they get the money to afford such time off from work?

How can they risk losing their jobs? I certainly can't.

The guy's video-game forum username is about his identity as a pizza delivery man, so we can assume it's no mere job switch. That dude has educated us about pizza delivery in his multiple threads in a way that taught me a lot about a lot of things. When someone's in their zone they're in their zone.

I'd much rather have an experienced driver delivering my pizzas than teenagers. Fewer people die this way.

You are so completely right.

You do not want lost drivers, kid drivers, or people who are inexperienced doing this.

1) Lost? Stopping, pulling over, looking at a map, typing in a GPS, in a car? That's either a late pizza or an accident waiting to happen.

2) Kid drivers? This job is not for kids. We get robbed at gunpoint EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Our store has been robbed so many times that we have way, way, way more security features inside our store than your average 7-Eleven.

The people who insist this job is for teenagers are literally insane. Just join the army, you'll at least get hazard pay.

3) I have never hit anyone's car, anyone's kid, or anyone's mailbox. I anticipate the dumb people walking around my neighborhood, on a road with a 45 mile per hour speed limit and 5 lanes, in the middle of the road, at night, wearing zero reflective clothing, nowhere freaking near a pedestrian crossing.

I anticipate the children chasing balls from between parked cars.

I anticipate the behavior of dogs and cats.

I assume literally everyone in my field of view is suicidal, and I literally assume, at all times, there's someone not in my field of view who is about to step in front of my moving car.

My anticipation and my reflexes are the only reasons why several children and several animals are still alive.

Because I am a professional and I take this stuff seriously.

A 300 percent turnover rate will get people KILLED.

That's disgusting. I feel sory for you.

Seems some governments forgot that raising workers' wages actually increases consumption too.

What percentage of food stamps, unemployment checks, subsidies for housing, and tax rebates to the poor get spent in their local economy?

Almost 100%

What percentage of tax cuts to the wealthiest 1 percent go back into the local economy?

Almost zero.

Interesting dynamic. It is because the poor spend everything they have- reason being, all they have is whatever their current paycheck is, and they owe all of it in bills and debts. And what the rich do with their money, since they have so much of it, is stack it on top of the rest in a nice shiny pile and then brag about it to their fellow rich.

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

We are talking about a pizza delivery job not being a pathway to financial success and many of you appear to believe that it should be. If you make their pay $15 per hour, who is going to want to pay an extra $5 or $10 per pizza just for the delivery?

I might be missing some context, but this is ludicrous.

Who is suggesting pizza delivery drivers get 15 dollars an hour in wages?

First of all, if I was getting 10 bucks an hour in the FIRST PLACE, no one would need to tip me and I wouldn't need a tip.

Some people would like a minimum wage of 8 dollars whether customers tip or not. Which they will not if the company charges them 3 bucks for delivery and then keeps it for their own profits rather than giving it to the driver who earned it for them.

That's the extreme I'm going for, which is not actually an extreme, it was the fact of life for..... decades. Minimum wage was the rule. Now it's not. I'm suggesting to put it back the way it was, when things worked, and it was a fair and equitable arrangement for the customer, worker, and employer.

What you're talking about is slippery slope fairyland nonsense.

In what way is a previously equitable arrangement for the employer, consumer, and employee outrageous to suggest returning to?

Yeah, I almost always tip decently(usually 20% unless the service was just horrible). A huge percentage of the service problems actually originate from people in the kitchen, e.g. the order was written down properly but the kitchen messed it up. That being said, there is no way in helllllllll you are mandating that I tip bad servers a certain percentage.

Correct on all these points.

As an aside, am I the only one who think it's obnoxious for there to be tip jars/a "tip" section on the receipt at carry-out places? I have no problem tipping delivery people and waiters, but I had to get in my car and drive to go get my pizza or whatever. All you did was turn around and get it out of the oven thing. There's not even a dine-in area so it's not like I took them away from customers. I don't get it.

Perhaps. But....

Sometimes those people are getting paid under the table, illegally, because they're working for their parents (at say, a family owned chinese food restaurant).

I routinely tip a dollar.

Why?

Because it's just a dollar, and it is going to someone who very likely is not getting paid a legal minimum wage.

Just.... like..... me.

The economy sucks and I wouldn't belittle anyone for the job they take. That being said, am I to understand the OP has been at that job continuously since 2004, nearly a decade? That kind of job was never meant to be held that long.

Well.... wrong on the first point, and on a more philosophical level, you're wrong about how long someone should be "meant" to hold a job.

I point to two of the hardest working people on my staff. One can't add, one has a hard time reading, probably dyslexic. They work hard, and do their best. But, they literally cannot do other jobs. No one should tell them that they cannot hold down a job when they do their job phenomenally well, just because of some thought one has in their head about what jobs are appropriate for people to have.

Someone has to bring you your pizza, if you order pizza for delivery.

Someone is going to have that job.

If you want that job to always be held by someone who either doesn't need the job and therefore doesn't care about you or your food, or someone completely untrained, inexperienced, and dangerous behind the wheel.... Well, that's your prerogative I guess. But it's wrong. It is not for you or anyone to say which jobs people are allowed to have- people are unemployed for years at a time because there aren't enough jobs to employ every person in the country who wants one. Many jobs are also too far away or require education or experience that people do not have.

In an ideal world, everyone should have a job and everyone should have the education and experience requirements for that job, and every job should be available nearby someone who needs one. However, that world is not the one we live in.

There's a difference between needing a gap job during tough times, as many people are doing right now, and holding it for 9 years.

So long as there are millions of unemployed and underemployed people who are literally unable to gain experience, or education, to better their circumstances, it is not for you to judge them for not holding an ideal job for much of their lives.

It is thoughtless and a little condescending, and quite unrealistic.

What I have noticed is that there are people who believe the world ought to adhere to their view of it, that way their solutions would solve the problem.

They will say, if only those people would just simply get off their butts and get another job? Why not just get an education? Oh silly poors, why not stop whining and ask for a raise? If you earned one, the free market dictates you'll get one. Obviously the market has determined you haven't worked hard enough to get one.

Why, in my day, I worked hard and I earned everything I got. Luck or circumstances had zero to do with it. And so on.

People with an unrealistic grasp on the world suggest unrealistic solutions which feed into their predetermined political viewpoint. It's always the worker's fault for his circumstances, and there are no solutions except tax cuts for the wealthy, and pulling oneself up by their bootstraps etc. The employer never does anything blatantly unethical or completely inequitable.

And there wouldn't actually be a solution where a minimum wage would solve everything. That involves a solution that conservative philosophy says is wrong, despite all the facts which show it is the only solution here.

But I say, instead of the offering non-solutions which only work in the ideal free market perfect world where the market is actually fair, and only work in conservative fantasyscape, why not simply fix the actual real-world problem?

Problem was: Those with a minimum wage had their wages slashed to below minimum wage for no other reason than it was legal to do so.

Therefore remove the loophole which allowed that, and restore wages to 2004 levels.

That fixes the problem, and a rational person not concerned with the triumph of their political ideology would suggest it.

This is why certain people refuse to even accept that there IS a problem, and rationalize everything and say well, there's no problem, or if there is one, it's the worker's fault. Blatantly grabbing the worker's wages is not a real problem.

Or here's a non-solution which demonstrates your problem isn't really an issue, because in imaginationland there are simple solutions which always work, and if they didn't, it would kind of suggest that I'm talking out of my butt. Which, is pretty much always the case when it comes to supply-sider's opinions on how to save an economy, manage one, or help any class of people, particularly the bottom rung of society. Continue doing the exact same things. Which is simply ignoring problems and pretending everything is okay or easily solvable.

That's why supply siders should never, ever, ever be allowed to govern. Because they do not understand how to use critical thinking. They only understand how to try to force square peg into round hole, because in their philosophy, there's no such thing as a round hole. Such a thing is preposterous. And acknowledging there are round holes would undermine the entire house of cards which is conservative ideology.

But what is a living wage? A living wage for a full time student working part time is different than the couple with the mortgage, dog, and 2.2 kids.

No one is required to have a mortage.

I am required to eat and have a roof over my head.

I am not required to have children.

Pay me enough to eat, have a roof over my head, and not have children.

But pay me enough to see a doctor as well. I do get sick and need medical attention.

After calculating that amount, I can tell you what I need to live is just above the current minimum wage for a 40 hour work week.

Whatever that amount is, pay that much. Because that is the bare minimum someone needs to survive.

The fact of the matter is that some jobs will always pay more than others. Always have, always will. There's no reason to expect anything different.

Who has suggested that we all get paid the same?

Random stuff like this usually comes from a situation where someone has no actual knowledge of what is being discussed, or is forced by their ideology to conclude there are no problems with the system, because if the system isn't working, that means their ideology has failed.

I don't know if that is the case here.

Now maybe minimum wage should be raised, but there will always be lower paying jobs that, quite frankly, won't pay enough for certain families to make ends meet. I don't expect that to change until we evolve into a Star Trek society where currency no longer exists.

This is really far off the deep end.

Families usually involve more than one person who might be able to earn an income.

Let's begin by paying a single person with no cable bill and no cell phone bill and no budget for movies or restaurant visits or anything besides groceries enough to cover those groceries, the rent for the roof over their head, and enough left over for utilities and vehicle maintenance. One needs one to deliver pizza, after all.

After we do that, we can talk about a higher budget which would allow for, I dunno, procreation.

Maybe I want to have kids, maybe I don't. All I'm concerned with right now is food, roof, and electricity. Can we get enough for that first?

The embellishments concerning the dope smoking and basement dwelling were added by myself for humor.

Clearly needing no creativity, novelty, cleverness, accuracy, or even humor.

They might or not be true. Whenever I think of an adult delivering pizza for a living it makes me think of Talladega Nights when Ricky Bobby is riding the bus delivering pizza.

This might explain what reality you base your political beliefs off of: One that isn't real to begin with.

I still do not see the salt mine style slavery that is endured by pizza delivery. As I said in an earlier post it sounds like it is not worth the pay. In that case you should go somewhere else.

In this quote, you state your ignorance on the subject, then you offer a non-solution.

Thank you for not taking the time to think about what you're talking about. Helps prove my points about supply-siders.

So dissenting opinions are deemed to be worthless? I did not realize that this was a free speech zone on a college campus

You are allowed to voice opinions. No one has stopped you from doing so.

This is the common fallacy some think free speech means.

Others are allowed to find your opinions to be worth exactly as much time, effort, and thought you put into them.

That's not the same as being censored. It is the precise level of respect your offerings to the debate are worth.

All you offer is a return to your original premise:

A) There's no problem
B) There's no solution
C) It's the worker who is at fault for having a job to begin with. Find another one.

Thank you. Your opinion has been noted. Into the circular file it goes.

So nobody would be laid off because of higher wages being imposed on all businesses?

Correct. If they want to stay in business serving, say, 250 customers a day, laying off half their crew will result in: upset customers and loss of revenue.

What then?

Raise the cost of food by about 3-4 percent, and pay the employees what they're worth, like they always do in this situation, and life.... goes........ on.

Fraid lower taxes and stagnating wages aren't helping get people employed to begin with, friend. That's the trickle-down lie that has been exposed through actual real-world practice.

Higher mandated wages would not hurt any small business in America?

It would hurt the ones who are too dumb to raise the price of pizza from 10 dollars to 10.50.

Others will adapt, and for the very first time in decades, you might pay over 10 bucks for a pizza.

Inflation! It is a thing! Pretending it doesn't exist is bad!

I guarantee you the same number of people were employed per store when the minimum wage for drivers was the actual minimum wage, and not below it.

So yes, nobody would be laid off. We're still hiring, constantly, because we cannot keep people.

We have to give people 40+ hours a week because we are CONSTANTLY UNDERSTAFFED.

No one, I repeat, no one is getting laid off due to higher wages.

Again, we're not even TALKING ABOUT higher wages. We're talking about restoring our wages to the minimum it was in previous years, when the employer was still quite profitable.

It is a fantasy that this discussion was ever about 15 dollars an hour or some ludicrous amount for a delivery driver.

No one's even talking about higher than minimum wage. We're asking for the minimum.

Oooh, minimum. Who could possibly afford the bare minimum? That's way too much to expect from a business who used to pay that much.

I just do not accept that every job out there in existence is one that is supposed to be a living wage for someone on their own or for their family.

That is.... quite telling.

Who, pray tell, do you believe is in the position of wanting a job that pays less than what it takes to live, and is also in the position of being independently wealthy enough to not need the income?

I realize this may lead to another reflexive "why that job is not a real job, it's for kids to do after school and yadda yadda yadda"

Yes, kids in grade school should be out delivering pizzas at 1am to shady neighborhoods.

I hate to harp on this point, but I notice there are two kinds of posters in this thread- ones who suggest real world solutions to real world problems, and others, who simply deny what is real and live in a world of this is how it should be, if everything were perfect and how I imagine it.

Pizza delivery is not a paper route.

Once you accept this, I'll listen to what else you have to say, because it will begin making sense.

(cue "it is the business's fault for being a crappy business")

No, they're being a profitable business.

However, in a society, we have a duty to people besides those who own businesses.

Once we accept that premise, we can have a dialogue.

To the OP:

While I'm by no means condoning or supporting the majority of what you describe, I must admit that I find it an odd complaint to make when you say that your employer makes more money out of you than they pay back to you in wages, or that they are employing you at a negative cost, or however else you phrased it. Isn't this essentially true for any employee of any profit-making business anywhere in the world? Isn't the whole point of hiring an employee that they will generate revenue for your company above and beyond the cost of their remuneration? If that weren't true then they would be running at a loss... I don't understand how you have a problem with this.

Mmm mmm mmm mm mm. No.

The business ran, at a profit, and at a rather decent one at that, when they paid their employees minimum wage regardless, and charged the customer a whole dollar per delivery, which largely went to the actual driver's expenses.

Now the business charges triple that amount, pays half the amount in wages, and pays a third (at best) of that delivery charge to the driver, and in certain circumstances (like triple-dispatches) they compensate the driver a whole dollar and keep the other 8 dollars for the delivery fee.

The business ran at profit while paying the employee's full wage and charging 1/3rd what they do now for delivery, most of that going to the driver's very real driving-related expenses which are far, far beyond what you spend commuting to work or bumming around town looking for a chinese restaurant, hence, should be compensated because these are job-related expenses.

Now they run at higher profit while not paying the employee a wage at all, and charging the customer three times what they used to for delivery, almost all of it going to the company, NOT the driver, and then expect the customer to tip on top of that, and if they do not, the driver earns 4 dollars an hour.

That's the difference. It is one of pure greed, not necessity.

A business has a right to earn a profit. They always, always have. And always will.

If they want to earn a bigger profit legitimately, why not raise the price of the pizza, instead of stealing the driver's wage. How about that? Would be a lot fairer and transparent.

Sure, I get that you have a problem that they're screwing you out of the money you used to get and making it hard for you to survive on that wage, but it also seems like you just have a general problem with the principle of a company making a profit out of its employees, when that's surely just a given?

Big What.

What you're talking about has absolutely nothing to do with me, this discussion, or reality.

This bolded part is wholly a creation of your mind.

Again, and again, and again, I see examples of people discussing fantasy worlds instead of reality. This is why political parties cannot agree, because at least one of them lives in total la-la-land most of the time.

So, firstly, to those whose instincts are the same as mine with regards to minimum wage (that it decreases employment). It's actually been a fairly big deal in right-wing economics, because the theory is astoundingly intuitive ... and the data just didn't agree. Time after time, people scratch their heads, because it just didn't work out as expected. Honestly, blew me away too. I am entirely sure I've posted on CFC regarding minimum wage causing unemployment.

Well, keep in mind that the employers are also getting increased business due to having a delivery service. So, they get the profits on the pizzas they wouldn't otherwise have sold. ATPG is just pointing out how the 'boss' has changed the system ("innnovation") to just get more money while ATPG gets less. So, what used to be a mutually beneficial arrangement has been changed just to shift the take-in ratios.

Yep.

For those who just don't get it, imagine if you will: Any of you reading this works for a company, who slashes your wage in half, and gives it to the CEO, and then wonders why you have a problem with it.

The other businesses in your industry do the same. There's no other competitor to jump ship to.

Now you explain the inequity of this to people, and they go:

It's just a business earning a profit, why do you hate freedom, etc.

A worker asks to restore a previously equitable arrangement back to its previous equitability, and I see people equating that to I hate freedom/capitalism, or saying they don't understand the issue (probably the only rational thing they've said so far). There is never any gray area, middle ground, or opposing side ever being correct. There is only "what, worker asking for higher wages? Preposterous!"

Even when it is simply a worker going "hey, restore my wages to where they were previously and you still made a ridiculous profit margin"

That's still asking too much, for some people. Communism, that's what that is, apparently.

Holy good gravy.

The average fast food worker is aged 36 in America and has worked only in the service industry. Given that the majority are middle aged the idea that its job of teenagers as a gateway into jobs no longer holds true and unrealistic.

Hi-five.



Hey guys! What's that about "unrealistic"?

What's that about people not having any clue what reality is and yet talking about it anyway, puzzling about how reality should fit their illusory world?



Oh my!

"Why don't these lazy people just work? McJobs is always hiring!"

"Pizza delivery is for teenagers doing part-time work, it should not be your career."

Indeed.


Yes, no matter which path you take, there's a supply-sider telling you how it's your fault for choosing to be screwed over.

Why didn't you just inherit money, like most of the wealthy people in this country? Just find better jobs, silly! What's that about a slowly recovering from a depression economy holding you back? What's that about millions of unemployed? What's that about not being made of cash that you can uproot whenever you feel like? What's that about not being able to afford that college education anymore?

Exhibit A of the supply-sider's problem: Being unable to even recognize the realities of what they suggest being completely unworkable and beyond the reach of most people in this situation.

Clue: Those who can move and improve their situation and attend college DO.

Example ME.

I did. I moved. I went to college.

Now, I earn way, way less than I did in 2004, at the same job + a promotion. To the tune of about a 1000 dollars a month less.

I did what the supply-siders told me to do. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and attempted to get an education. Not only that, I tried to do it with my own money. No government help.

I bought the kool-aid and I drank it. Then the economy collapsed, and no one could find work. No one.

No matter if they were 17 or 37 or 57. College educated or not. Tons of savings, or none left over, or in deep debt.

Some people managed to avoid serious problems and got hired again right away. Most did not.

Most of those didn't have thousands of dollars in savings to survive after the unemployment ran out.

Many people lost their cars, homes, and possessions.

Recover quickly from that, and then lecture me about how the easy solution is to move and "get a better job" and how my job wasn't supposed to pay me enough to eat anyway.

Now, when the worker gets the job that is available, works hard enough to earn promotion and SEVERAL RAISES, those raises get wiped out completely by greedy corporate decisions which literally steal funds from the worker, and what happens?

Supply-siders refuse to recognize this is a problem, lecture me on how businesses should be allowed to make a profit lol: because THAT IS TOTALLY WHAT THIS DISCUSSION IS ABOUT) and implore me to merely spend the thousands of dollars I surely have in my savings and rely on my 700 credit score and uproot, and move someplace else which requires zero college education to earn the big bucks. And oh yes, by the way, why should you workers be able to earn enough to pay rent and eat anyway? Why should one expect a fair wage in the first place? It's more important that the richest 1% get to steal literally half of their lowest-paid worker's wages, and stuff that money into investments for themselves so they can get a third home or a 12th sports car.

Because that's what Merica is all about. Not working hard, getting fair pay, and getting ahead.

It's working hard, getting fair pay, getting ahead, getting promoted, and attempting to go to college, only to have financial speculators and shady business dealers implode the economy with risky and downright bogus investments, put millions out of work, and slash the wages of the under-employed simply because they can, and provide the obvious solution:

Why don't you just get a better job?​

Ask a silly question....

WHY CERTAINLY!!

ARE YOU HIRING?

AND HOW MUCH BETTER ARE YOU WILLING TO PAY ME?




....What, you're not?​

Guess what, no one else is either. But I really appreciate the input. Thanks for the non-help with your non-thinking non-solutions designed for some unperson in a different reality.

Much obliged.

 

[bhsup]

Correct. If they want to stay in business serving, say, 250 customers a day, laying off half their crew will result in: upset customers and loss of revenue.

What then?

Raise the cost of food by about 3-4 percent, and pay the employees what they're worth, like they always do in this situation, and life.... goes........ on.

Fraid lower taxes and stagnating wages aren't helping get people employed to begin with, friend. That's the trickle-down lie that has been exposed through actual real-world practice.



It would hurt the ones who are too dumb to raise the price of pizza from 10 dollars to 10.50.

Others will adapt, and for the very first time in decades, you might pay over 10 bucks for a pizza.

Inflation! It is a thing! Pretending it doesn't exist is bad!

I guarantee you the same number of people were employed per store when the minimum wage for drivers was the actual minimum wage, and not below it.

So yes, nobody would be laid off. We're still hiring, constantly, because we cannot keep people.

We have to give people 40+ hours a week because we are CONSTANTLY UNDERSTAFFED.

No one, I repeat, no one is getting laid off due to higher wages.

Again, we're not even TALKING ABOUT higher wages. We're talking about restoring our wages to the minimum it was in previous years, when the employer was still quite profitable.

It is a fantasy that this discussion was ever about 15 dollars an hour or some ludicrous amount for a delivery driver.

No one's even talking about higher than minimum wage. We're asking for the minimum.

Oooh, minimum. Who could possibly afford the bare minimum? That's way too much to expect from a business who used to pay that much.



That is.... quite telling.

Who, pray tell, do you believe is in the position of wanting a job that pays less than what it takes to live, and is also in the position of being independently wealthy enough to not need the income?

I realize this may lead to another reflexive "why that job is not a real job, it's for kids to do after school and yadda yadda yadda"

Yes, kids in grade school should be out delivering pizzas at 1am to shady neighborhoods.

I hate to harp on this point, but I notice there are two kinds of posters in this thread- ones who suggest real world solutions to real world problems, and others, who simply deny what is real and live in a world of this is how it should be, if everything were perfect and how I imagine it.

Pizza delivery is not a paper route.

Once you accept this, I'll listen to what else you have to say, because it will begin making sense.



No, they're being a profitable business.

However, in a society, we have a duty to people besides those who own businesses.

Once we accept that premise, we can have a dialogue.

Apologies. I thought by that point when I posted the thread had moved beyond the specifics of your situation and the specifics of the pizza home delivery field.

 

[JohannaK]

I love your posting, Pizza. Couldn't you try to send this as anonymous letters to the papers or something of the kind so people there will learn about this?

 

[AdamCrock]

I've learned a lot abot pizza delivery today ! (this doesn't change the fact that I need pizza badly ...) I think that Pizza guys should get not one but two tips - after all They are the ones to bring us the pizza goodnes and we should be thankful ! ^^

 

[warpus]

I will offer a caveat- most of my customers tip nothing.

Really? I always tip the pizza guy about 10-20%, maybe more depending on stuff.. It's mostly habit now and not really dependant on how fast the food arrived.. I do it because I know that if I tip more, the faster my food is likely to arrive next time.

For a while I was not tipping places that charged a delivery charge - because I assumed that the delivery charge is something that went straight to the driver. I have heard of other people who do this - "either a delivery charge or a tip, not both". I'm not sure how widespread that is, but maybe you're more likely to get better tips if you work at a place that doesn't have a delivery charge - like swiss chalet.

I think it would also help if there was more awareness of tipping culture and etiquette, because I do really think that a lot of people just don't get it... But the restaurant is unlikely to do this - tipping is a bit of a taboo subject and nobody wants to talk about it. It would help though. "Here's how much you should tip, here's factors A and B", and so on. Maybe unrealistic, but the blame can't fall 100% on the customer. A lot of it lies with the restaurants, who are exploiting their employees and dumping the blame on the customer.

 

[Borachio]

I confess I've never had a pizza delivered to me. In fact, I've only once eaten pizza from a place selling them cooked (I certainly don't like the look of those I see in supermarkets). And I ate that sitting in. It was alright. It didn't persuade me to try it again though.

But all this talk of pizza is making me wonder whether I shouldn't try one again.

Still, they're just fancy cheese on toast, aren't they? And I have made them from scratch at home. What a palaver, though!

 

[AdamCrock]

Still, they're just fancy cheese on toast, aren't they?!

No no no no ! You got it all wrong ! In fact pizza is so good it should be classified as food porn ! ^^

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

To illustrate how ridiculous the fear-mongers are regarding how horribly the economy will fare if drivers get paid minimum wage, I present for your reading pleasure:

The price of pizza in 23 years, in defiance of inflation.​

Everyone remember that classic comedy Home Alone?​

Remember the part where the pizza delivery guy is standing there and everyone is ignoring him and no one could come up with the money? Lawl, right?

What was the total? Oh yeah.

$122.50. (Plus tip)

"Ten pizzas times 12 bucks!" said one of the characters.

What's that? 12 bucks a pizza for large mostly one-topping pizzas?

Current price is 10 bucks. For a five-topping pizza.

So, the price of the pizza has not only defied all inflationary effect, and has actually reduced in price since 1990.

​

Amazing.

And somehow, people still ordered pizza back then.

Frickin' amazing!

And somehow, there was no delivery fee needed.

Even more frickin' amazing!

And the coup de grace, is that somehow, the driver got paid minimum wage, not reduced "tipped wage" wage.

Unbe-fricking-lievable!

Yet capitalism somehow survived the communist hellscape that was a livable wage for a driver paid for with pizzas that were more expensive than they are now.



And what happened after that, mister pizza man?



The price of pizza went DOWN.... and the businesses still managed to eke out enough of a profit to continue their explosion of growth throughout the country, opening shop after shop after shop.

You know what we do if you order 10 pizzas?

We offer to discount the price to NINE bucks per pizza.

Yeah, a full 25% discount from 1990 prices. Negative inflation! Astounding!


Listen, I see the actual numbers behind the scenes. One of the perks of being a manager. They charge you 4 dollars for breadsticks that cost them pennies.

I promise you, they'd somehow manage to continue making obscene profits if they paid their workers what they used to pay them, even before the advent of delivery fees adding 15 bucks an hour to their bottom line per driver.

Somehow the debate is still being framed by some as the apocalyptic end of freedom and capitalism if workers are paid properly. This is one of those there is actually a right answer debates, and one side is completely, fully, and provably wrong. There's no gray area here. It's not a theory nor an abstraction.

If you think the businesses in question or the economy cannot withstand workers earning 8 dollars an hour, you're so completely, devastatingly wrong, only through viewing the world through imagination-and-panic-enhancing goggles could you possibly believe that the stakes are such that drivers cannot get paid properly or the economy will utterly collapse. It takes a special kind of wing-nut hopped-up goofball bat-guano crazy to believe that, you might as well become a flat earth society member. There are gray areas, and there are philosophical disagreements- on other subjects. I'm afraid this is in the realm of math and recorded recent history and basic elementary school logic. There's only one correct answer and it's patently obvious which one it is, and the cognitive dissonance required to come up with a different answer is staggering.

And you'll note that even through depressed economic times, the pizza business booms. You know why? Whether the economy is good or bad, people somehow continue being hungry and wanting to not have to cook. It's almost like a law of physics or something.

So I present to you:

Pizza's first law of economic certainty: People in houses tend to want pizza delivered to houses.


And since it's been demonstrated through real-world recent (and less recent) example, the pizza business thrived even when paying workers well, so here's another, which is the only explanation for the current issue:


Pizza's second law of economic certainty: Businesses whose sole concern is profit and greed, find ways to increase both.


There doesn't need to be a reason to slash driver's wages other than greed. It's quite simple: Someone wants a bigger bonus somewhere up the corporate ladder. Why not steal the money from the worker, if it is in any way legal? What's he going to do, find a better job? Hah! The corporate masters know just as well as everyone else: There are no better jobs, and there are tons of unemployed people, and Congress is full of millionaires. No one gives two bowel movements about protecting low-wage workers in that festering pile of unrepentant avarice. They're the ones whose solutions to budget crises include stopping food stamps to needy families while extending further tax breaks to the wealthy and purchasing the loyalty of foreign governments with shipments of cold, hard cash, and more contracts for more tanks the military said repeatedly they don't need, don't use, and already have fields full of tanks they don't want.

I think they'll come down firmly on the side of the businesses who so generously fund their political campaigns in their districts rather than help the working poor. That's not just a given, that's another law of physics as far as I'm concerned.


Pizza's third law of economic certainty: Bureaucrats in power funded by greedy corporations tend to stay in power, funded by greedy corporations.


This all leads to the only reasonable conclusion one can draw, the ultimate proof of the inexorable path of poverty for some, and the event horizon leading to limitless wealth for others-


Pizza's final law of economic certainty: People who are poor tend to get even poorer. People who are obscenely wealthy invent new ways to get obscenely wealthier.


Since the rich get rich anyway, maybe delivery drivers should get paid a decent wage. That would be better for everyone.

And I promise you, if we did get a decent wage, I would shut up. And everyone would live happily ever after.




Merry Christmas, Harry.

Happy Hanukkah, Marv.​

​

 

[Borachio]

How about if I boycott pizzas?

Would that help your pain?

Because I can easily not start buying pizzas, home-delivered or not.

 

[AdamCrock]

Everyone remember that classic comedy Home Alone?[/CENTER]

Happy Hanukkah, Marv.[/I]​

Oh boy ! Home Alone ! It is constantly "on repeat" on all major TV stations during x-mas is it not ? ^^

 

[Synobun]

The gradual rise of minimum wage in Canada over the course of years didn't result in a crippled workforce or absurdly increased prices.

Every job, no matter what, should be able to sustain a human being in their current environment in a manner that doesn't require debating with yourself if you'd like electricity, food, or gasoline this month. I'd say 35 hours is a good marker to reach that figure. Ideally, I'd like to see society go towards "thriving should be a human right" instead of remaining stuck in this "having a good life is super tough and you don't deserve it unless you do x, y, and z" philosophy. This applies to all jobs, pizza delivery included. There is no good reason why a job should be more of a hobbyist income than a living income, regardless of who the target workforce is (which is, more times than not, inaccurate. Jobs just for teenagers? Please.).

 

[El_Machinae]

I confess I've never had a pizza delivered to me.

I never get them delivered either, so I don't have to pay the extra delivery fee and tip. That's something like a $6-7 difference, when I could just scoot over with the car and pick it up. I only order pizza at social gatherings anyway, and someone will always have a car.

 

[Tahuti]

Every job, no matter what, should be able to sustain a human being in their current environment in a manner that doesn't require debating with yourself if you'd like electricity, food, or gasoline this month.

No one should need to work in order to live, because, well, it is not necessary. The workforce can be sufficiently automatised for all to live of a basic income without inflating the prices.

 

[Cutlass]

So, firstly, to those whose instincts are the same as mine with regards to minimum wage (that it decreases employment). It's actually been a fairly big deal in right-wing economics, because the theory is astoundingly intuitive ... and the data just didn't agree. Time after time, people scratch their heads, because it just didn't work out as expected. Honestly, blew me away too. I am entirely sure I've posted on CFC regarding minimum wage causing unemployment.

How intuitive it looks depends on how narrowly you look at it. The typical supply-demand model says that when prices go up, people will demand less of it. How does that apply to labor?

Well there really isn't a demand for labor. There is, instead, a demand for the product of labor! The difference being, the employer wants a certain amount of work done, so that they can have sales or provide whatever service that they are providing. Now they can get that work done by labor, or by machines, and virtually always by some combination of the 2. If the costs of one go up, they may substitute more of the other. To the extent that they can. Or they may try to raise prices, also, to the extent that they can. Or they can reduce their volume of sales.

So does a higher wage immediately reduce the demand for labor? Not necessarily.

But then you get to the macroeconomics. And macro is ruled by Aggregate Demand. Higher wages mean higher AD. Certain jobs may be lost, but others created.

The thing is, that because wages are only part of production costs, any wage increase, even if it causes price increases, leaves AD higher. Just as and wage cut, even if it means a price cut, leaves AD lower. So consumers as a whole are better off with the higher wage situation. Because labor and consumers are the same people. The argument that gains to labor means losses to consumers is predicated on the belief that labor and consumers are different people. But in reality they are the same people.