Posted on 07/30/2019 11:05:25 AM PDT by Brian Griffin
Many retail employees are having a hard time making ends meet. Leftists have proposed raising wages to $15/hour, and sometimes have done so, but such wages are unrealistically expensive for most retail employers.
If retail stores had restricted occupancy apartments above their selling floor, retail employees could live in these and not need to pay for a car and liability insurance. Residential restricted occupancy is sometimes found in English agricultural regions to keep housing affordable for people working in agriculture.
Retail store residency would have additional benefits of reducing road congestion and CO2 emissions, increasing employee reliability, the amount of employee free time and the number of people able to live in an metropolitan area without overcrowding its roads.
Employees might get paid $4/hour plus usage of the apartment plus $.01/hour for each square foot of their apartment less than 600.
In some cases there might be sliding wall system in an apartment to make for either one large bedroom or two small bedrooms.
To fund adequate Social Security benefits for the employee, an added $1/hour FICA tax might be levied on the employee.
The apartment might be valued at $700/month for income taxation, welfare and health insurance subsidy purposes.
There might be a 10-day grace period to live in the apartment after quitting or getting fired from a job. There might also be a waiting period of up to 10 days to move into such an apartment.
Whether or not specific apartments are employer furnished and their exact size would be left to employment market forces.
Employees not needing or currently getting an employer apartment would simply work for the usual wages and benefits.
Excess retail store apartments might made available to nearby restaurants and their employees on a similar basis.
Good idea. Even if you’re getting flamed for it.
You’re not saying that employees would be required to live there.
You’re just saying that housing could be offered as an option.
Housing could be part of the employee package (much like health insurance is).
The same way some storage companies offer apartments to their managers, for example.
Adjusted for inflation the 1969 minimum wage of $1.60 would be $11.60 in today's dollars. So $15/hr is not "outrageous".
I guess I’m an old fart.
And, if in berzerklee, no gas allowed. Only electric on new residences. Starting in 2020 IIRC.
Gee, maybe we can throw in a “company store” and take our pay in scrip.
It’s been tried on a small scale, but never works. Back in the 70’s and 80’s, there was a shopping center in my town with stores on the ground floor and apartments above. Within just a few years, virtually no one working in the center lived there. Same as adding new employers in your suburban town. Theoretically, local folks would work right in their home town. But it never works. Soon, people are commuting in from other towns while locals commute out. Traffic increases.
All solar, baby. No sunshine, no hot water.
Ring Ring
Hey Brian, can you come down quick, we’re really busy down here and short handed due to illness and vacations?
No?
Well, you can find yourself another job and place to live.
It’s an idea. Something that isnt even new. Whole towns, and colonies were owned by companies in the previous 4 centuries to address a similar issue....to mixed results.
Certainly people screaming against it could put forward something more acceptable to their sensibilities?
Not that I would want that type of relationship with an employer, but it seems like something to be better fleshed-out, rather than ignored wholesale.
Certified old fart. I knew his entire name just did not want to say it.
You mean to create a race of morlocks? IOW. what kind of tennant would work at and live above a Walmart? Ex navy, I know what happens to people after a while who live and work in the same small space.
Even more evidence that I’m as old as dirt! :)
My thought exactly. I can hear Tennessee Ernie...
Still common in Japan and other Asian countries.
Yep...I remember that song when it was popular, had a 45 RPM record of it. lol
A proposal from the time of horses and wagons. Not happening.
Yep.
Very common in my part of the world for shops to have apartments above them.
Very often they are also rented out to non-employees.
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