Capitalists are shameless in their entitlement

See updates through May 10, 2021, at end of post.


This has been bouncing around my Twitter newsfeed for a few days now:


The replies note that restaurants often refuse to pay a living wage or offer benefits. Restaurant workers are often subject to “tipped minimum wage,” which, depending on jurisdiction, can be as low as $2.13 per hour. In New Mexico, where this particular Sonic is located, tips can count for a maximum of $7.95 per hour toward a minimum wage of $10.50. I write this from Pennsylvania, where tips can count for up to $4.42 per hour toward a minimum wage of $7.25.[1] It has been the case for quite some time now that minimum wage doesn’t pay rent anywhere in the U.S.,[2] but Congress failed to pass a raise to $15 earlier this year.[3] Prior to the pandemic, Dean Baker calculated that, had the minimum wage kept pace with productivity, it would be $24 per hour.[4]

The sign in that Sonic, however, appeals to work as a virtue, in and of itself. In this logic, people should work, even if for nothing. Which doesn’t sound like capitalism. Which doesn’t sound like an exchange system of economics. Which doesn’t sound like the “carrot and stick” Theory X approach to management, let alone a “Theory Y” approach—some call it “conscious capitalism”—that allegedly empowers workers, treats them (more) fairly, and values their contributions in a stilted and constrained notion of “self-actualization.”[5] You might as well call slavery “virtuous,” which indeed some people did.[6] Oh yeah.[7]

In the pandemic, it is the working class, so-called “frontline workers,” now often called “heroes,” who actually assume risks to our own health and lives.[8] But instead, we see a remarkable sense of entitlement on the part of capitalists, whose guiding principle is that they should be rewarded for the risks they, allegedly alone, laid off workers[9] notwithstanding, assume, and who screamed bloody murder over and in some cases defied the lockdown.[10] Meanwhile, similarly entitled capitalists protest and defy eviction restrictions while raising the rent for poor people—and lowering it for the well off.[11] Property, a social construction, outweighs human life,[12] and in more than one way.[13] Money, another social construction,[14] outweighs human life.[15] Oh yeah, and that reward that we were told accompanies risk is really an entitlement, but only for capitalists, not for workers or the poor.

The utterly shameless mendacity in all this is beyond breathtaking. But of course, I’m being hyperbolic when I call our political system a constitutional oligarchy.[16]


Update, May 3, 2021: So if I’m understanding the story correctly, that is, in a way the reporter seemingly does not intend, Schenectady’s mayor recruited a bunch of Guyanese migrants to be slumlords. And now these slumlords are having trouble collecting the rent,[17] because tenants who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic aren’t earning any money to pay them.[18] These guys aren’t big corporations that find it easy to challenge and evade eviction restrictions.[19] But they’re far from saints:

“It’s a disaster, but what can we do? ” [Romeo] Budhoo said, and the other landlords started talking about how they dealt with delinquent tenants. Some were trading cash for keys. Some were cutting off their own heat or vandalizing their houses, hoping to make them so uninhabitable that tenants would leave. Others had stopped renting out vacant properties during the moratorium, believing it was better to lose income than to risk taking on a tenant who couldn’t be forced to pay.

Then one of the landlords started to tell the story of what he called an “involuntary eviction” that had happened a few weeks earlier in Albany, where a landlord had become incensed after trying and failing to evict his tenants for months. The landlord had broken into his own apartment early on a Sunday morning, held the tenants at gunpoint, restrained them with zip ties, hauled them out of his apartment, and then deposited them at a cemetery 30 miles from the property.

“When you kick a dog, eventually it’s going to bite,” one of the landlords said.

“That guy’s a hero,” said another.[20]

Except possibly for the kidnapping,[21] these landlords’ tactics are not unlike those being deployed around the country.[22] The simple fact is they’re capitalists. They’re losing. They’re whining. They feel entitled. They expect to be bailed out. Just like those other capitalists running fast food restaurants who think workers should be grateful for a minimum wage that doesn’t pay rent and hasn’t kept pace with productivity.[23] But the reporter, Eli Saslow, devotes most of his ink to a landlord’s whining.[24] Only a little space is given to the tenant:

Alfonzo Hill watched from inside the house until the landlord walked back to his car. “Yeah, like you need my money,” Hill said after he watched the landlord drive his Mercedes up the block, and then he came outside, lit a cigarette and sat on the porch.

He resented many things about life at 1042 Cutler: the two-foot hole in the bathroom ceiling, the lingering smell of the previous tenants’ dogs, the broken toilet that flushed only after he poured in a bucket of water. But what bothered him most was always having to repeat the same humiliations to the landlord about why he hadn’t paid, couldn’t pay, didn’t have any money to pay.[25]

Whine, mother fucking capitalists, whine. Because your investments are so much more important than human lives.[26]


Update, May 8, 2021: I’m seeing in lots of places an idea that, by making it easier for the unemployed to remain unemployed, Joe Biden’s stimulus is to blame for low wage companies’ failure to hire more workers, despite highly visible advertising around retail establishments. The idea that maybe these companies should actually pay higher wages—you know, supply and demand[27]—is clearly heresy and I should be struck down by the great god of capitalism with a bolt of lightning for even thinking the thought.

[M]uch of Friday’s data is inconsistent with the “labor shortage” story. For one thing, the labor supply actually expanded last month — the number of Americans looking for work increased by 430,000. If the primary constraint on job growth was the welfare-induced shiftlessness of America’s non-employed, we would expect to see labor-force participation remain stagnant or fall. For another thing, leisure and hospitality — the sector most sensitive to a welfare-induced labor shortage, due to its relatively low wages and the large number of former food-service workers eligible for UI — added more jobs in April than it had in March. The headline jobs number was not depressed by tepid restaurant hiring, but by large job declines for couriers and grocery-store workers, and small ones in manufacturing and retail. Finally, although wages rose in April, they didn’t rise by much. Were employers suffering from a severe labor shortage, we’d expect to see more upward pressure on both wages and prices.[28]

On the other hand, supply chain problems and the lack of available child care might be real problems.[29] But you know, capitalists just want to fucking whine[30] and it isn’t like they’re willing to hire me. Even now.[31]


Update, May 9, 2021: As COVID-19 vaccines have become increasingly available and “normal” life begins to return,[32] but an economic stimulus package passed early in Joe Biden’s presidency bumps up unemployment benefits, employers have been complaining that they can’t find workers, that there is a so-called “labor shortage” that isn’t actually borne out by the evidence.[33] It turns out this is an old game that capitalists have been playing, well, since slavery, and it’s all pretty bluntly about keeping workers subordinate.[34]

Today, with the additional unemployment benefits from the recent Covid-19 relief bill, business owners are living their greatest nightmare: workers with genuine leverage over their wages and working conditions. The owner of a Florida seafood restaurant recently explained this straightforwardly: “You need to have incentives to get people to work, not to stay home. You’ve got the hard workers who want to have a job, but the others need that motivation.”

In theory, there are many possible such incentives: better pay, better working conditions, even a slice of ownership of the company. But the owning class hasn’t been interested in those incentives at any point in the last few centuries. There’s only one incentive that makes sense to them: You work or you starve.[35]

This actually dovetails neatly with my interpretation of employers’ demands that workers all fight traffic simultaneously to be at the same places at the same times for work, that as we’ve seen in the pandemic, can often be done from home. This can’t, I reasoned, really be about productivity. It has to be about control.

And it’s about keeping workers working for as close to nothing as possible:

[B]usiness turned to a two-fold strategy: first, lobbying to keep unemployment benefits at the lowest level possible, and second, preventing the unemployment rate from ever getting too low. It may seem counterintuitive that businesses would not want the economy operating at full capacity. But low unemployment alters the balance of power between owners and workers just as unemployment insurance does — and when workers can easily quit and get another job across the street, the dreaded worker shortage simply appears again in a different guise.

The battle against low unemployment was eventually cloaked in scientific jargon. In 1975, two economists announced the existence of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, or NAIRU. If unemployment fell below NAIRU, inflation would start rising uncontrollably as businesses were forced to pay workers more and more. At the time, NAIRU was purportedly 5.5 percent, while later estimates placed it somewhat higher. This meant that whenever unemployment was getting too low, the Federal Reserve had to step in and strangle the economy until lots of people were thrown out of work.[36]

Naturally, that “non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment” (NAIRU) was set at a level higher than that actually proved necessary to avoid inflation.[37] And the idea of long-term unemployment is to ensure that workers are terrified of ending up in,[38] well, a situation pretty much like mine, consigned to lifelong poverty and financial insecurity.[39] The very fact of my misery reinforces conformity[40] and helps the rich to feel more secure.


Update, May 10, 2021: When, I first wrote in my page on my job hunt that the job hunt process seemed to be a scam, I did so based on my own experience, in combination with a recognition that, then, nearly twenty years of failure could not solely be my own, that something else had to be going on.[41] Even when I first wrote yesterday’s blog post, noting the discrepancy between capitalist cries of a “labor shortage” and my own ongoing experience of the labor market, I was really rather mystified as to what that something else was.[42]

Then I found Jon Schwarz’ article in the Intercept, making clear that capitalist cries of a “labor shortage” or a “worker shortage” date back to slavery, that they are not so much about an actual shortage of workers as they are about ensuring that those workers will be paid as little as possible and about maintaining the power relationship that ensures worker devaluation. Schwarz[43] is not the first to draw a connection between capitalism and slavery; indeed, the former has its roots firmly embedded in the latter.[44] Nor would Schwarz[45] be the first to point to a stigmatized class of people, preserved in destitution, as a means of social control,[46] ultimately to protect the position and power of an economic and political elite.[47]

My failures remain my failures. I cannot sell; anything I attempt to sell or market is doomed. Which, even as this only partly explains the failure of my job hunt, also dooms any attempt I might make at entrepreneurship, including, by the way, writing a book, an action which these days requires authors to market their work.

So even as I now understand the labor market as intentionally rigged to keep me, as a member of a class of people, destitute, I remain stuck in a situation I find intolerable and, with a Ph.D., profoundly unjust. I need to do something, even as with Robert Merton, I understand that I am being denied socially approved means to socially approved ends.[48] I have to do something. Because this is not okay.

  1. [1]Department of Labor, “Minimum Wages for Tipped Employees,” January 1, 2021, https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
  2. [2]Kate Gibson, “Minimum wage doesn’t cover the rent anywhere in the U.S.,” CBS News, June 14, 2018, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-doesnt-cover-the-rent-anywhere-in-the-u-s/
  3. [3]Burgess Everett, “8 Democrats defect on $15 minimum wage hike,” Politico, March 5, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/05/democrats-15-minimum-wage-hike-473875
  4. [4]Dean Baker, “This is What Minimum Wage Would Be If It Kept Pace with Productivity,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, January 21, 2020, https://cepr.net/this-is-what-minimum-wage-would-be-if-it-kept-pace-with-productivity/
  5. [5]Yvon Chouinard and Vincent Stanley, The Responsible Company: What We’ve Learned From Patagonia’s First 40 Years (Ventura, CA: Patagonia, 2012); Chip Conley, Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007); Gary Heil, Warren Bennis, and Deborah C. Stephens, Douglas McGregor Revisited: Managing the Human Side of the Enterprise (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000); Art Kleiner, The Age of Heretics: A History of the Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008); Carol Sanford, The Responsible Business: Reimagining Sustainability and Success (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011); Marvin R. Weisbord, Productive Workplaces: Dignity, Meaning, and Community in the 21st Century, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012).
  6. [6]Colin Woodard, American Nations (New York: Penguin, 2011).
  7. [7]Sven Beckert, “Slavery and Capitalism,” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 12, 2014, https://www.chronicle.com/article/SlaveryCapitalism/150787/
  8. [8]Leila Miller, “Low-wage workers face retaliation for demanding COVID-19 safety measures at work,” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-15/coronavirus-workers-retaliation-claims; Funda Ustek-Spilda et al., “The untenable luxury of self-isolation,” New Internationalist, March 18, 2020, https://newint.org/features/2020/03/18/untenable-luxury-self-isolation
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Wolf,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 6, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-allegheny/restaurants-back-down-from-ultimatum-request-meeting-with-gov-wolf/; Dillon Carr, “As deadline approaches, restaurants vary on defying Wolf’s capacity order, other restrictions,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 13, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-allegheny/as-deadline-approaches-restaurants-vary-on-defying-wolfs-capacity-order-other-restrictions/; Dillon Carr, “Some tavern owners make their own pandemic rules, call on governor to adjust state’s,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 14, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/south-hills/some-tavern-owners-make-their-own-pandemic-rules-call-on-governor-to-adjust-states/; Megan Guza, “Gov. Wolf orders nonessential Pennsylvania businesses to shut down,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, March 16, 2020, https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/gov-wolf-orders-all-nonessential-pennsylvania-businesses-to-shut-down/; Megan Guza, “Allegheny County restaurant task force shuts down 2 repeat offenders for covid-19 violations,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 22, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/allegheny-county-restaurant-task-force-shuts-down-2-repeat-offenders-for-covid-19-violations/; Megan Guza, “Allegheny County lifts covid restrictions in favor of state mitigation orders,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 24, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/allegheny-county-lifts-covid-restrictions-in-favor-of-state-mitigation-orders/; Megan Guza, “Judge: Crack’d Egg can’t flout covid rules while waiting to appeal ruling,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, April 2, 2021, https://triblive.com/lifestyles/food-drink/judge-crackd-egg-cant-flout-covid-rules-while-waiting-to-appeal-ruling-on-covid-rules/; Royce Jones, “COVID-19 In Pittsburgh: Several Restaurants Defy Statewide Restrictions, Stay Open For Indoor Dining,” KDKA Television, December 20, 2020, https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/12/20/restaurants-defy-statewide-restrictions/; Dillon Carr, “Restaurant and bar owners decry Gov. Tom Wolf’s orders, encourage others to open,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, December 21, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/westmoreland/restaurant-and-bar-owners-decry-gov-tom-wolfs-orders-encourage-others-to-open/; Teghan Simonton and Joyce Hanz, “4 Allegheny County restaurants defy orders to close for violating covid restrictions,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, December 23, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/valley-news-dispatch/4-allegheny-county-restaurants-defy-orders-to-close-for-violating-covid-restrictions/; Paula Reed Ward, “Crack’d Egg flouts shutdown as deputies quarantined for dining, taking photos with owner,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, December 14, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/south-hills/crackd-egg-flouts-shutdown-as-deputies-quarantined-for-dining-taking-photos-with-owner/; Paula Reed Ward, “Restaurant owner sues Braddock mayor, claims defamation,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, December 14, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/restaurant-owner-sues-braddock-mayor-claims-defamation/; Paula Reed Ward, “Allegheny County argues Crack’d Egg can’t hide from covid restrictions under bankruptcy filing,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, January 5, 2021, https://triblive.com/local/south-hills/allegheny-county-argues-crackd-egg-cant-hide-from-covid-restrictions-under-bankruptcy-filing/; Paula Reed Ward, “Judge rules against Crack’d Egg, health department case can proceed,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, January 7, 2021, https://triblive.com/local/south-hills/judge-rules-against-crackd-egg-health-department-case-can-proceed/; Paula Reed Ward, “Judge to rule on Crack’d Egg restaurant closure order next week,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, January 29, 2021, https://triblive.com/local/south-hills/judge-to-rule-on-crackd-egg-restaurant-closure-order-next-week/; Paula Reed Ward, “Crack’d Egg restaurant asks to withdraw bankruptcy filing,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, February 2, 2021, https://triblive.com/local/south-hills/crackd-egg-restaurant-asks-to-withdraw-bankruptcy-filing/; Paula Reed Ward, “Judge orders Crack’d Egg to follow covid rules or close,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, February 3, 2021, https://triblive.com/local/south-hills/judge-orders-crackd-egg-to-follow-covid-rules-or-close/; Paul Martino, “After Defying Health Department, Crack’d Egg Follows Judge’s Ruling And Closes,” KDKA Television, February 4, 2021, https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2021/02/04/crackd-egg-closes/; Paula Reed Ward, “Crack’d Egg seeks stay to injunction while appeal is heard,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, February 8, 2021, https://triblive.com/local/south-hills/crackd-egg-seeks-stay-to-injunction-while-appeal-is-heard/; Paula Reed Ward, “Judge rules against Crack’d Egg restaurant: ‘They’ve largely chosen their fate here,’” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, February 17, 2021, https://triblive.com/local/south-hills/judge-rules-against-crackd-egg-restaurant-theyve-largely-chosen-their-fate-here/; Paula Reed Ward, “Crack’d Egg asks court to allow maskless customers in restaurant,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, March 29, 2021, https://triblive.com/lifestyles/food-drink/crackd-egg-asks-court-to-allow-maskless-customers-in-restaurant/; KDKA, “Brentwood Restaurant That Sued Allegheny County Over Coronavirus Restrictions Files For Bankruptcy,” October 9, 2020, https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/10/09/the-crackd-egg-files-for-bankruptcy/; Robert Klemko, Meagan Flynn, and Tim Craig, “Colorado restaurant that illegally reopened without social distancing now ordered to close,” Washington Post, May 11, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/11/colorado-restaurant-illegal-reopening/; Nick Matoney, “Restaurant revolution: Some owners in Pennsylvania plan to expand capacity despite mandate,” WTAE, August 14, 2020, https://www.wtae.com/article/restaurant-revolution-some-owners-in-pennsylvania-plan-to-expand-capacity-despite-mandate/33602662; Nick Miroff et al., “States begin imposing harsher measures to contain coronavirus as U.S. cases rise sharply,” Washington Post, March 16, 2020,
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/states-begin-imposing-harsher-measures-to-contain-coronavirus-as-us-cases-rise-sharply/2020/03/15/267577a6-65b3-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html; Rebecca Davis O’Brien and Valerie Bauerlein, “How Coronavirus Remade American Life in One Weekend,” Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-remakes-american-life-in-a-weekend-11584293065; Reuters, “New York and Los Angeles close restaurants to curb coronavirus outbreak,” Telegraph, March 16, 2020, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/16/new-york-los-angeles-close-restaurants-curb-coronavirus-outbreak/; Kara Seymour, “Restaurants, Bars In 5 PA Counties Ordered Closed By Governor,” Patch, March 15, 2020, https://patch.com/pennsylvania/baldwin-whitehall/s/h1utv/restaurants-bars-in-5-pa-counties-ordered-closed-by-governor; Teghan Simonton, “Braddock restaurant owner apologizes for comparing Gov. Wolf, Levine to Nazis,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 14, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-allegheny/braddock-restaurant-owner-apologizes-for-comparing-gov-wolf-levine-to-nazis/; Paula Reed Ward, “Brentwood restaurant defies order to close for covid-19 violations, faces court action,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 18, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/south-hills/brentwood-restaurant-defies-order-to-close-for-covid-19-violations-faces-court-action/; Tom Wolf, [Twitter thread], Thread Reader App, August 6, 2020, https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1291345691936198657.html; WTAE, “Allegheny County officials call on all nonessential businesses to close,” March 16, 2020, https://www.wtae.com/article/allegheny-county-calls-on-all-non-essential-businesses-to-close/31648999
  11. [11]Kriston Capps, “Landlords Challenge U.S. Eviction Ban and Continue to Oust Renters,” CityLab, October 22, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-22/landlords-launch-legal-attack-on-cdc-eviction-ban; Michelle Conlin and Christopher Walljasper, “Time’s up: After a reprieve, a wave of evictions expected across U.S.,” Reuters, October 19, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-housing-eviction-insight/times-up-after-a-reprieve-a-wave-of-evictions-expected-across-u-s-idUKKBN27415U; Andrew Khouri, “Depleted savings, ruined credit: What happens when all the rent comes due?” Los Angeles Times, February 2, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-02-02/rent-debt-worries-grow-covid-strains-tenants; Leah Litman, “A judge says we can’t ban evictions. It’s an attack on all federal power,” Washington Post, March 1, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/03/01/evictions-court-decision-constitution-commerce/; Heather Long, “Millions of Americans are heading into the holidays unemployed and over $5,000 behind on rent,” Washington Post, December 7, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/07/unemployed-debt-rent-utilities/; Gretchen Morgenson, “Large corporate landlords have filed 10,000 eviction actions in five states since September,” NBC News, October 26, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/business/personal-finance/large-corporate-landlords-have-filed-10-000-eviction-actions-five-n1244711; Will Parker, “Struggling Rental Market Could Usher in Next American Housing Crisis,” Wall Street Journal, October 27, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/struggling-rental-market-could-usher-in-next-american-housing-crisis-11603791000; Catherine Rampell, “Rents for the rich are plummeting. Rents for the poor are rising. Why?” Washington Post, March 22, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/22/rents-rich-are-plummeting-rents-poor-are-rising-why/; Kyle Swenson, “Renters thought a CDC order protected them from eviction. Then landlords found loopholes,” Washington Post, October 27, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/10/27/trump-cdc-eviction-moratorium-loopholes/
  12. [12]David Benfell, “Evictions in a pandemic,” Not Housebroken, March 11, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/03/11/evictions-in-a-pandemic/
  13. [13]David Benfell, “The lethal dishonesty of ‘intellectual property’ in a pandemic,” Not Housebroken, April 4, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/03/21/the-lethal-dishonesty-of-intellectual-property-in-a-pandemic/
  14. [14]David Benfell, “Cats are smarter than we are. Really,” Not Housebroken, April 5, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/10/30/cats-are-smarter-than-we-are-really/
  15. [15]David Benfell, “The capitalist death cult,” Not Housebroken, March 22, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/03/27/the-capitalist-death-cult/
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