Tag Archives: businesses

NOT ALL WHO SEEK HELP ARE ‘LAZY’

Posted on by
Reply
#jobs #work #wages #salaries #CostOfWork #CostOfLiving
Lazy. Freeloader.
Don’t you just hate those people?
Throughout history, it’s been presumed that people who need aid to live, be it from government or charity, are lazy freeloaders.
They are able-bodied, but refuse to work. So, we should stop giving them aid and make them more self-sufficient.
But, with today’s high prices, relatively low wages and salaries, not all those who seek help are lazy freeloaders.
They just can’t meet their life needs on what they are earning.
Besides high prices and low salaries, many others also have to fight the ever-changing business environment. They can’t do anything about downsizing, businesses going belly-up or technological factors that remove, or reduce the human element from business tasks.
You even have people facing the cost of going to work vs. the benefits. If one does not get from a job enough to cover the cost of getting there and other work necessities – never mind whether the job meets all other life needs – it’s cheaper for them to stay home.
They are not lazy freeloaders. They want to work, but they want their job to cover all their expenses – and then some.
Not all jobs can do that. To wit: try to make a living with a $7.50 per hour minimum wage job. Therefore, not only are people staying home, there are worker shortages in the business world.
Add to these factors the cost of child care for working parents and you complicate the work-life matrix further.
Someone – or some entity – has to step in to bridge these gaps, if the goal is to get everyone who is able into the work force.
No amount of force, hardship or other external requirements is going to solve this problem.
It requires a society as a whole to create solutions, be it from employers, government or a combination of those factors.
It also requires business patrons to realize that businesses have to pay their workers living wages, therefore the goods and services will cost more.
There’s also the desire among the well-heeled elites to create a permanent underclass to keep wages low. Some immigrants gladly are part of that underclass, because where they are coming from is much worse. Yet, some in power don’t want immigrants to come here.
The problem will not be solved by applying sticks and stones to force people to work. It requires a comprehensive approach. Labor unions, in previous decades, helped provide elements for that overall approach.
Hardscrabble policies do not create hardscrabble people. Creative policies can help people through hardscrabble times.
So, the next time you see someone asking for financial help, do not presume he or she is a lazy freeloader. More likely, he or she is not.
He or she is just trying to survive in a world unkind to them.
Peter

SUPPLY-CHAIN ISSUES; THERE’S ONLY SO MUCH PEOPLE WILL PAY

Posted on by

#SupplyChain #inflation #IncreasingCosts #businesses
A burger chain is taking on increased costs caused by supply-chain problems.
But it realizes that people will only pay so much, so increasing prices too much will hurt more.
In an interview with Alexandra Canal for Yahoo Finance. Smashburger President Carl Bachmann said he is trying to manage his costs with great precision. The article was published Feb. 21, 2022.
“You have to take some small price increases, but we were very strategic about that,” Bachmann told Canal. “The key thing here is … managing your freight costs,” he said. “… all those little pieces of the puzzle behind the scenes to counteract the commodities as they continue to rise.”
Bachmann has utilized redundant vendors and global partners to ease supply-chain issues, which has helped curb price pressure, the article says.
Bachmann’s efforts may be easier said than done for some businesses. Because of a worker shortage, labor costs, as well as material costs, have risen. In fact, many of the increases in material costs can be attributed to labor shortages.
If there are not enough folks to load and unload ships at ports, and drive the containers to wherever they need to go, that will increase costs.
In a Feb. 25, 2022, article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, business reporter Michael E. Kanell reports that the backlog at the Port of Savannah appears to be easing. There are no more ships queued up in the harbor waiting to be unloaded, he writes. That port, the second-largest on the East Coast, is continuing to expand, which is also helping it move more goods, the article says.
All of these problems were largely activated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers who were shut out of jobs for a good while are giving second thoughts to going back to them.
If there are fewer people producing or moving goods, prices will rise.
The news from the Georgia ports gives one a degree of hope that the end may be near.
But, the Russian invasion of Ukraine could put a damper on that hopefulness.
The pandemic may not have brought the world entirely to its knees, but it came very close.
Now, as the disease eases, record numbers of people are going back to work – many under better conditions than they had before.
That has to be considered great news, even though we are all paying more for that to happen.
But, as Bachmann points out in the Yahoo article, you have to manage EVERYTHING. You have to decide whether buying this or that is worth the cost. You have to decide whether taking this job, or that job, will leave you better off than you were.
A lesson here is to learn to make good decisions as early in life as you can. That means that no matter how much you earn at any given time, some of it should be saved for later in life. As your savings grow, they should be invested wisely, with the help of an adviser you trust.
As discussed previously here, you can bring your own coffee to work, as opposed to buying it by the cup. You can bring your own lunch to work, instead of buying it etc.
The little things, as Bachmann says, can make all the difference. To add to that, you can save on little things without always depriving yourself of life’s pleasures. Those pleasures can make life worth living.
Peter