06-28-2021, 05:48 PM
(06-28-2021, 05:23 PM)Dill Wrote: Here I think you are hanging way to much on a press conference comment, probably not aimed at small businesses. If I remember correctly, someone raised the problem of a labor shortage. Businesses could not find people to work for them. Biden offered a market solution.
Are small businesses not businesses? I would argue all businesses are affected by a labor shortage and his repsonse was aimed at, and relevant to any and all of them.
His market solution was simply to pay them more. I'm not going to go though typing out everything I did earlier but that's not really a solution for a lot of business. 1.) Some of them are paying more and they still can't properly staff their businesses. 2.) Some of them can't afford to pay more. Many of the business have spent much of the last year closed or have seen their revenue and profits plummet.
Telling a guy that owns Jim's Hardware, who is hanging on by an absolute thread after this last year, that he simply needs to pay more is no solution at all. He can't afford to. And many of these people are willing to pay more than they used to but just not quite enough to fill these jobs. (Ex: Jim used to pay workers $10/hr. Now he's generously offering $14/hr, depsite being nearly bankrupt because of Covid. Jim still can't find workers unless he pays even more than that.)
