"But I think the more likely candidate is full-service restaurants. That’s because restaurants with servers and bussers already compete fairly directly with fast-casual restaurants that serve food in a less labor-intensive manner. We know how to feed people with fewer workers, food service jobs are not particularly desirable, and even though full-service restaurants have a halo of quality around them, nothing about the table service aspect necessarily speaks to the quality of the meal. An America where a larger share of the population is working in the care economy is probably one where a smaller share is working in the foodservice economy. And that would plausibly be a change for the better."
I got out of restaurant management about 2.5 years ago after about 15 years in the trenches at your average casual dining chain, but my wife still works in them so I have a pretty good picture of what things are like both pre- and post-pandemic.
My take is that your average American chain restaurant is too damn big and closes too late. It was too big before COVID, and it's certainly too big now with so many sales dollars moving from dine-in to carry-out. Most casual dining chains could probably get away with being half as large as they currently are....chop off the parts of the restaurant that aren't the lounge/bar area, hire less servers and more to-go staff, and close an hour or two earlier. You'd still have space for folks wanting to dine-in, but you'd avoid those Mon-Thur nights when your restaurant is 2/3 empty at 6:30, but you don't want to send too many people home because you're still open for three and a half more hours.
The restaurant I managed was notoriously slow from 8-10 pm basically every night of the week....seldom was there a compelling reason to pay multiple employees to work for two extra hours, yet we were required to stay open until the posted time, because....duh. I was always told that closing that earlier (meaning, changing the posted hours, not doing it randomly) would scare customers off.
I think that COVID has challenged many assumptions about the sorts of tightly-held beliefs about the consumer that the people making decisions in certain sectors put forth as gospel, and it's a good time to re-evaluate some of those.
It's notable how out of touch the Democratic Party is with the reality Matt describes. The federal deficit is at 5% of GDP. Inflation is above target. The Fed is discussing raising rates. Job openings are at record levels.
Joe Manchin is refusing to increase federal spending by more than about 0.75% of GDP and this is presented as literally incomprehensible on Pod Save America. He might be wrong but it's not a crazy view that now is not the time for major increases in federal spending.
“ On some level, you can either sell people on the idea that the transformation is good or you can’t.”
I think we might consider focusing on doing a few things well before we talk about transformation. I’ve gone from being quite in favor of at least German-style involvement in the economy to doubting the government can do it right at all in the span of 2-3 years.
If it proves able to tackle rent-seeking in healthcare, develop policy to lower construction costs, curtail professional regulations and protectionism, and break the university admin-eoisie, then we can talk about “transformation”.
It’s kind of hard to not think that America is fine and Americans are actually the problem. There’s plenty of work available, wages are rising, and people just don’t want to do it. Red state Americans don’t have any sort of ambition to move to opportunity, they stay where they are and blame immigrants and environmentalists for taking their jobs or closing the mine. Blue state Americans want jobs, but eww, not those jobs! It’s not all fast food openings btw, corporate America is desperate for employees too. Hopefully Biden ramps up immigration soon so the people who want to contribute can take care of the rest of us.
I'm sensing a theme in Matt's commentary. With covid, people are stuck with policy preferences based on the circumstances of 2020 rather than today. With the economy, people are stuck with policy preferences based on the circumstances of 2008-2014 rather than today.
The vast preponderance of the evidence says that does no good and in some cases it’s actively damaging. Child care is important. Trying to force kids to learn things before they are cognitively ready is not.
I am interested in thoughts on the practical aspects of moving people into new fields. In Missouri, it is hard to get people to even participate in free training programs. Then when those few people do get trained, it continues to be hard to get them employed in jobs based on their new skills. This just generally seems to be the case with public training programs.
Beyond that, how does the practical expansion of healthcare work? Right now (again in Missouri), people who get health care job skills AND get employed in health care definitely go to cities where they make more money, leaving a huge gap of health care workers in rural areas. Also happening for lawyers and many other professions. But we need these people in rural areas too.
If you want to understand why we millennials are… like that, I think a good place to start is with the realization we have not seen a tight labor market until maybe 2018-2019.
(Also the internet, but the job market being soft for twenty years will change your outlook.)
Maybe it's time for Oregon to let people pump their own gas.
It might be better to structure the Civilian Conservation Corps as a job guarantee instead. Set it up so it's an employer of last resort, and thus not taking people out of the labor force.
A key to reducing cost is having less costly forms of care actually cost less to the end consumer. But with insurance copays you often pay the same price to see a doctor as to see a nurse practitioner so care ends up being rationed by how long you are willing to wait rather than how much you are willing to pay. And if I want to see someone today, often the only person available is a physician's assistant. Same out-of-pocket cost in $, but not in wait time. Unfortunately, as a provider you can't cash people's wait times to pay to increase supply.
Biden has already turned around his rhetoric on this. Now he emphasizes the efficiency improvements in the infrastructure bill, and less rigorously, the cost of living improvements from BBB social spending.
Personally I would prefer that the reconciliation bill be a little less front loaded and with less sun setting.
It seems like the progressives have been slower to adjust. But that's because demand side management is just deep in the underlying programming of the movement.
Probably the biggest progressive efficiency move would be to do something to decrease zoning restrictions on housing creation. But, that's going to be a tough political sale. Unless you, perhaps, if you tied it to job creation.
In the late 1980s I lived in France for 6 months as an exchange student. I remember the mayor of Paris shelving every street sweeper (which takes on operator) and replacing it with five guys with brooms. The goal: increase employment.
Of course, the broom crews were slower with even 5x the manpower, did a worse job, and cost much more.
May be missing something, but I always thought the reason for talking up the job creating aspects of the Green New Deal wasn’t to address current unemployment, but to address the unemployment that would be created through rapid decarbonisation? Coal miners become solar installers etc.
"Jobs" has always been the wrong metric. If I have an employee making $40,000 and I fire him or her and hire two people at $20,000 each as replacements, I have doubled the number of jobs but the world is not a better place for it. Gene Sperling, in his book Economic Dignity, wrote that a worker should be able to put food on the table and be at the table with his or her family. That's about right.
MY's pretty clear point in this post is that increasing taxes on the rich has diminishing benefits because we are (pace higher immigration) labor-constrained. I get the analysis but it leaves me with disquiet on ethical and moral grounds: the rich have made out like bandits in part because they're undertaxed. If so, what should we do with higher taxes from the rich? Reduce the deficit and national debt? Cut the payroll tax in half? What else?
"But I think the more likely candidate is full-service restaurants. That’s because restaurants with servers and bussers already compete fairly directly with fast-casual restaurants that serve food in a less labor-intensive manner. We know how to feed people with fewer workers, food service jobs are not particularly desirable, and even though full-service restaurants have a halo of quality around them, nothing about the table service aspect necessarily speaks to the quality of the meal. An America where a larger share of the population is working in the care economy is probably one where a smaller share is working in the foodservice economy. And that would plausibly be a change for the better."
I got out of restaurant management about 2.5 years ago after about 15 years in the trenches at your average casual dining chain, but my wife still works in them so I have a pretty good picture of what things are like both pre- and post-pandemic.
My take is that your average American chain restaurant is too damn big and closes too late. It was too big before COVID, and it's certainly too big now with so many sales dollars moving from dine-in to carry-out. Most casual dining chains could probably get away with being half as large as they currently are....chop off the parts of the restaurant that aren't the lounge/bar area, hire less servers and more to-go staff, and close an hour or two earlier. You'd still have space for folks wanting to dine-in, but you'd avoid those Mon-Thur nights when your restaurant is 2/3 empty at 6:30, but you don't want to send too many people home because you're still open for three and a half more hours.
The restaurant I managed was notoriously slow from 8-10 pm basically every night of the week....seldom was there a compelling reason to pay multiple employees to work for two extra hours, yet we were required to stay open until the posted time, because....duh. I was always told that closing that earlier (meaning, changing the posted hours, not doing it randomly) would scare customers off.
I think that COVID has challenged many assumptions about the sorts of tightly-held beliefs about the consumer that the people making decisions in certain sectors put forth as gospel, and it's a good time to re-evaluate some of those.
OMG guys we can edit comments now.
It's notable how out of touch the Democratic Party is with the reality Matt describes. The federal deficit is at 5% of GDP. Inflation is above target. The Fed is discussing raising rates. Job openings are at record levels.
Joe Manchin is refusing to increase federal spending by more than about 0.75% of GDP and this is presented as literally incomprehensible on Pod Save America. He might be wrong but it's not a crazy view that now is not the time for major increases in federal spending.
“ On some level, you can either sell people on the idea that the transformation is good or you can’t.”
I think we might consider focusing on doing a few things well before we talk about transformation. I’ve gone from being quite in favor of at least German-style involvement in the economy to doubting the government can do it right at all in the span of 2-3 years.
If it proves able to tackle rent-seeking in healthcare, develop policy to lower construction costs, curtail professional regulations and protectionism, and break the university admin-eoisie, then we can talk about “transformation”.
It’s kind of hard to not think that America is fine and Americans are actually the problem. There’s plenty of work available, wages are rising, and people just don’t want to do it. Red state Americans don’t have any sort of ambition to move to opportunity, they stay where they are and blame immigrants and environmentalists for taking their jobs or closing the mine. Blue state Americans want jobs, but eww, not those jobs! It’s not all fast food openings btw, corporate America is desperate for employees too. Hopefully Biden ramps up immigration soon so the people who want to contribute can take care of the rest of us.
I'm sensing a theme in Matt's commentary. With covid, people are stuck with policy preferences based on the circumstances of 2020 rather than today. With the economy, people are stuck with policy preferences based on the circumstances of 2008-2014 rather than today.
“ availability of early childhood education”
The vast preponderance of the evidence says that does no good and in some cases it’s actively damaging. Child care is important. Trying to force kids to learn things before they are cognitively ready is not.
I am interested in thoughts on the practical aspects of moving people into new fields. In Missouri, it is hard to get people to even participate in free training programs. Then when those few people do get trained, it continues to be hard to get them employed in jobs based on their new skills. This just generally seems to be the case with public training programs.
Beyond that, how does the practical expansion of healthcare work? Right now (again in Missouri), people who get health care job skills AND get employed in health care definitely go to cities where they make more money, leaving a huge gap of health care workers in rural areas. Also happening for lawyers and many other professions. But we need these people in rural areas too.
If you want to understand why we millennials are… like that, I think a good place to start is with the realization we have not seen a tight labor market until maybe 2018-2019.
(Also the internet, but the job market being soft for twenty years will change your outlook.)
Maybe it's time for Oregon to let people pump their own gas.
It might be better to structure the Civilian Conservation Corps as a job guarantee instead. Set it up so it's an employer of last resort, and thus not taking people out of the labor force.
A key to reducing cost is having less costly forms of care actually cost less to the end consumer. But with insurance copays you often pay the same price to see a doctor as to see a nurse practitioner so care ends up being rationed by how long you are willing to wait rather than how much you are willing to pay. And if I want to see someone today, often the only person available is a physician's assistant. Same out-of-pocket cost in $, but not in wait time. Unfortunately, as a provider you can't cash people's wait times to pay to increase supply.
Biden has already turned around his rhetoric on this. Now he emphasizes the efficiency improvements in the infrastructure bill, and less rigorously, the cost of living improvements from BBB social spending.
Personally I would prefer that the reconciliation bill be a little less front loaded and with less sun setting.
It seems like the progressives have been slower to adjust. But that's because demand side management is just deep in the underlying programming of the movement.
Probably the biggest progressive efficiency move would be to do something to decrease zoning restrictions on housing creation. But, that's going to be a tough political sale. Unless you, perhaps, if you tied it to job creation.
In the late 1980s I lived in France for 6 months as an exchange student. I remember the mayor of Paris shelving every street sweeper (which takes on operator) and replacing it with five guys with brooms. The goal: increase employment.
Of course, the broom crews were slower with even 5x the manpower, did a worse job, and cost much more.
May be missing something, but I always thought the reason for talking up the job creating aspects of the Green New Deal wasn’t to address current unemployment, but to address the unemployment that would be created through rapid decarbonisation? Coal miners become solar installers etc.
"Jobs" has always been the wrong metric. If I have an employee making $40,000 and I fire him or her and hire two people at $20,000 each as replacements, I have doubled the number of jobs but the world is not a better place for it. Gene Sperling, in his book Economic Dignity, wrote that a worker should be able to put food on the table and be at the table with his or her family. That's about right.
MY's pretty clear point in this post is that increasing taxes on the rich has diminishing benefits because we are (pace higher immigration) labor-constrained. I get the analysis but it leaves me with disquiet on ethical and moral grounds: the rich have made out like bandits in part because they're undertaxed. If so, what should we do with higher taxes from the rich? Reduce the deficit and national debt? Cut the payroll tax in half? What else?