Said New Orleans chef Jason Goodenough, quoted in "Opinion: Those $300 pandemic checks aren’t the only reason restaurant employees might not want to go back to work" (WaPo).
Child care is about the last sector in which you want to see high churn and programs scraping for warm bodies.... Child-care programs don’t obey the classic rules of supply and demand; many experts consider the sector a failed market.... Unless we want child care to become a luxury good or a low-quality morass, public money is necessary.... Do we really want programs caring for toddlers and their rapidly developing brains to be competing for staff with fast food joints and big box stores...? Do we want market forces determining whether parents have viable, quality options for their care/work arrangements?
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2 comments:
Temujin writes:
I started out working in a restaurant in Detroit in the late 60s. I worked hard in that business for 25 years before moving into sales to the industry (and related industries). What I saw in the later stages of my time while in restaurant operations, was a different level of applicant. An applicant less driven to work, less caring about the work they performed, less interested in actually learning about what was going on around them. They just thought they needed a job.
Fast forward 20-30 years and today's applicants are less likely to feel like they 'need' a job. They need money, but don't want a job to get it. They see countless stories about people creating apps, or working for a tech giant and making ridiculous money with ridiculous benefits. Stories about others making a hit investing in cryptocurrencies, or simply becoming famous and wealthy being an 'Influencer' (arrgh...the best example of our society failing).
Shame on that so-called 'chef' in New Orleans. It doesn't suck to work in restaurants. It's hard work. And it's also a path for many to have a fine career. Or just earn good pocket cash while being a student or working on something else. I did it. Millions of others did too over countless decades. But now, suddenly, for our Diva Generation, it's too hard, it sucks, it's dirty, and it doesn't pay millions.
Food & Wine at the higher level is intensely interesting, difficult to master, and coupled with fine dining, banquets, corporate meetings, it is a learned skill, with knowledge that has to be acquired through years of hard work and apprenticing under those with the knowledge and skills. It starts at a lower level, not at the top. And I think this generation has the idea that they deserve to start closer to the top, if not AT the top. Restaurant work was always entry level, a way to climb toward a career, a profession. But you had to love it, to want it, because it's just too hard to dabble in it.
That said, millions of college students subsidized their way through school by working in restaurants. Others, older and younger, also made extra bucks working in that industry. Are there no longer young people who need to work for money? Cash in pocket for a few hours a day?
Many of the young don't even go to restaurants any longer, even as Wuhan virus restrictions are lifted. They are used to, and accept ordering bad food, delivered to them by Uber Eats or Grub Hub or some other 'Bring me my Food' business. They don't have to drop the video game. They simply order their food online and it shows up- just like government checks. Who would want to clean a fryer when they can order in and have the Gummint pay for it?
The interesting end path for all of this is shown in Silicon and Napa Valleys. In the Bay Area, the tech giants and their employees- who never worked a day in a restaurant- have made so much money, they've suddenly gone from ordering crap through Uber Eats to eating at the finest restaurants in Napa and Sonoma. They've taken a shine to fine wines and not only drink it, but now buy and own wineries and vineyards. Big Tech is buying up Napa. Just look at the number of luxury resorts now opening up all over that once sleepy agriland. And that's why you see Governor Newsom, dining out at The French Laundry (while also owning 3 wineries, a few restaurants, and a hotel.) None of the Bay Area kings and queens worked in the restaurant biz. They know nothing of it other than they now love it and want to own it.
And that's where our young, who live on TikTok, Instagram, and Call of Duty want to end up. They just cannot even conceive of the path to get there.
Gospace writes:
"Do we want market forces determining whether parents have viable, quality options for their care/work arrangements?"
Why not? I don't particularly care to subsidize child care for others. My wife and I managed to bring up 5 children with- amazingly- with her being a stay at home mom! The youngest graduated and commissioned last week, reports to his first duty station later this month. 5th in a line of successful child raising. We didn't receive any subsidies. For the first time since we married we now have 2 new cars instead of one new one and one over 5 years old. One of the sacrifices of having one income and raising children.
My second child now has 4 children of his own- and full time childcare is being provided by- his wife! A stay at home m0m! Who is also home schooling. They don't particularly care to subsidize child care for others.
Also the opinion of all my family- we should stop subsidizing single parenthood, moms or dads. Changing Aid for Widows and Orphans into Aid for Families with Dependent Children has wrought exactly what Daniel Moynihan predicted- an explosion of single motherhood. You get more of what you subsidize, every time. And while newspapers constantly find the one single mom of the year who has a valedictorian for a child- reality 101 is children of single moms are more likely to be in jail than children of 2 parent families- with mom and dad, not mom and mom or dad and dad, and valedictorians are more likely to come from stable 2 parent families. Since moving to this small rural town 25 years ago the top of every high school graduating class has been from stable 2 parent families, most, not all of them, in which mom was a stay at home mom. The bottom of the class has been from single mom or multiple marriages mom. Every time.
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