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America is dying.
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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I’m curious what kind of BBQ joints they’re talking about. Those sort of roadside, dude with a giant smoker filling up takeout boxes BBQ joints have pretty low costs. Which makes me think these are fancier sit-down places whose owners don’t get that no one is going to work for minimum wage because $7.25 an hour (or $2.13 with tips) isn’t enough to live on and they don’t have a business plan to profitably that involves paying a livable wage.
i think you’re on to a core component (beyond everyone but the top 10% being pressed for disposable income). the us is structurally and culturally ordered around accepting exploitation to become the exploiter.
unless you become credentialed and make your way into the ever shrinking pmclasses your only hope to not only a semblance of financial security but also basic social respectability (personhood, really) is to suffer exploitation and privation until you can open your own shop and become the exploiter.
many jobs and even trades, basically anything not considered a “profession” encourages this “path” which of course logically cannot work for everyone in these jobs and also conditions new owners to a mindset of “i did it, why can’t they” ignoring any other factors and allowing capital interests and politicians to order governance around what become economic truisms.
The “I paid my dues” mantra is very powerful in s capitalist economy, both in getting lower rung workers, especially younger ones, to accept bad conditions and low pay, and as a rationale for ownership/upper management for implementing those conditions. Seems that cycle is breaking as the ossifying economy means those workers are now less likely to see an upwardly mobile path and thus less likely to suffer through. No point in paying dues if there’s no middle management or petty bourgeois position waiting on the other side.
Not only that, people who haven’t had a pay rise in well over a decade (I’m from the UK and haven’t seen a meaningful pay rise since I started working, 20 years ago), aren’t spending money on stuff like a meal out.