I live in Port Douglas, a rainforesty peninsula stabbing the
Pacific. We’re getting pretty northernly now, not too many towns any higher up,
though there’s plenty of land. Most of the area surrounding is a protected Wet
Tropics conservation area, and up at Cape Tribulation (named because Captain
Cook had some trouble up there, they also coined “Depression Bay” and “Mount
Sorrow”) the beach almost touches the Great Barrier Reef.
Port Douglas is another resort town. There’s three classes
here. The travelers supply all the labor. We fill up the bars, kitchens, and
hotels as servers, cooks, and cleaners. We make decent money. The managers of
those places. They gotta be living well. And then the ultra rich, who own the land
and have supervillain like homes on the beachfront property that’s not taken up
by hotels and resorts. It’s a nice place.
I’m a dishwasher now. Which makes it the most frequent
position I’ve held. Waffle Shop in State College, kitchen boy in Brisbane, and
now here in Port Douglas. The good news is that this is by far the least
stressful and highest paying dishie job. I make $21.65/hr AUD which is like $15
USD. A lot of that goes to tax first though. But pushing this into the highest
paid job I’ve ever had is that I get a free drinky drink and often food too.
Also, Just a heads up. The hardest job in the world is
working for the waffle shop. FACT. It is the fastest paced, worst conditions
and most people yelling at you for the least money. It’s like the 3rd
hardest thing I’ve ever done. Working at the Waffle Shop is harder than running
a marathon, graduating college, or a third thing that’s hard. I should probably
do more hard things. Innuendo noted.
Dish washing brings up another economic problem. Why do we
use the pay by the hour system? It’s a pretty slap-dash measure of work being
done. Actually, when I first heard of salaries I thought that was weird. You
just get a lump sum at the end of the week? Regardless of how long you’ve been
at work? Weird.
But an hourly rate is even weirder. You get paid just for
being somewhere. Work is obvi being done, but the reward isn’t for doing work.
In fact it often incentivizes doing work slowly. If I take an extra 15 minutes
to clean up the kitchen at the end of the night then I’m rewarded for doing so.
Instead of being rewarded for finishing on time.
You could solve this pretty easily. Put a simple scale in
the dish washer and you could weigh what’s going in and measure how many dishes
you wash. Equivalent to the value you’re contributing to the company. Then
you’ve got a pretty accurate measure of work being done and you can set a wage
by weight.
This is what a lot of farms do for fruit pickers. You get
paid by how much you pick. This benefits the pickers too, you can pick hard if
you need a lot of money. Or if you got plastered last night then you can take a
more leisurely pace.
A new problem arises then, what’s the pay per pound? If
you’re the farmer or restaurant owner you’ll get a clear idea pretty quickly on
what that should be. Farmers especially, since all the buying of fruit is done
by weight as well you can figure out what percentage should go to picking. So
managers know what to pay for labor but what should laborers expect?
That’s a lot harder for dishies and fruit pickers to know,
since it’s a lot less mental and emotional investment than owning a business.
There may be a few dish washing experts out there but it’s not a really a
“field” you know? So you wouldn’t know what a good paying dishwashing job is
until you’ve already worked a few days. Pickers are often screwed by low paying
farmers because they can’t really know how much they’re going to earn. There’s
a general rule for backpackers that you should only work on a farm if they pay
by the hour. Otherwise you’re likely to get screwed.
This information asymmetry represents a world I wouldn’t
want to live in. Imagine if you had to be an expert for every little job you do
in order to get a fair price. Imagine pay by drinks served or pay by square foot
of lawn mowed or by hotel rooms made. That’s a lot of efficiency, but I think
puts too much power in the hands of owners. It makes regular income impossible
and hard to budget.
It would also be bad for owners because workers would be
more willing to jump to different jobs more easily and never really fit in the
grain of the company. If you’re not being paid for slow days then why stay? I
like my coworkers but I’m not hanging out in the kitchen for free. If I had to
make a prediction, if we adopted this pay by work system I think we’d see a
sudden decrease in wages followed by a surge to find the best labor. And then you might be over paying just to
remain competitive. Eventually it might sort itself out.
Hourly wages are good
by me for now. You can easily figure out your earnings and compare it to other
jobs. You don’t have to be a specialist in the job to know a good wage. The
employer doesn’t have to have a measurement tool, just has to keep track of you
and where you are. It’s not a perfect system but it’s the best we’ve got so
far.
When I wash dish I think a lot about flipping political
language. Like using “republican phrases” in a left wing meaning. For example,
“We need to put American Citizens first”. Usually I’d think of that as an
anti-immigration sentiment. But really you could use that as an argument for
socialized healthcare. American Citizens
first instead of aggressive foreign policy, or anything really. Or how
Conservatives like to say they’re anti-big government. But then the bailout
happened, and both Bush, who was president at the time and Obama supported it.
So the gov “gives” 700 billion to big banks so that it can save the market and
people can still use credit cards.
Teenage me was like “I don’t give a shit about these banks,
I roll with my debit card and cash”. But I didn’t understand that if banks
stopped lending money, then my manager couldn’t take out a loan to get another
grill. If we didn’t get that grill then we wouldn’t have as much food going
out. If we didn’t have that much food going out, then we don’t have too many
dishes to wash. If we don’t have that many dishes then I don’t have a job.
This is trickle-down economics. Which is controversial or
something. It’s controversial cuz some people don’t let it trickle down. But
hey, Obama supported a trickle down plan. Though the more standard version
involves tax cuts to corporations and the rich so they can spend more. I’m
getting bored. What was I saying?
Which brings me to Donald Trump. Who I don’t like to talk
about because it’s like picking at a pimple. Really you’re better off just
ignoring it, because giving it attention only makes it worse.
Anyway, when Trump first mention he might run for president,
I was 17 and it was 2010 (Actually brief research reveals he’s causally ran for
pres a few times before). And I was like “Ok this is a business guy I’ve heard
of, the recession just happened, I’m about responsible money management, let’s
see what he’s about”. Long story short, he’s about mixed results. He inherited
a big chunk of money and business from his dad, and he’s done well with some
things and done poorly with others. He’s tanked a few casinos (a risky business
anyway) and had a few hotels go bankrupt.
So my teenage self quickly dismissed him as an economically
sound President. Here’s a clip of Gary Gulman doing a bit about him. Also he's a racist piece of shit.
