Your Starbucks will be $10 cup if Baristas on strike win and make $80,000/yr

There are so many alternatives to Starbucks. It's a fry cry from the position of leverage the longshoremen and teamsters hold. People will just go to one of the other 17 coffee places around the corner.

Mechanical Engineers have made six-way robots cranes to replace Longshoremen.

Yeah they have them in Japan.

My wife would go to Starbucks if they charged $20 a cup. You don't understand the hold that Starbucks has on people.

My wife and daughter just went - just now - even though I made a big pot of strong Starbucks brand coffee at the house (Sumatra). They’ll but two Venti black coffees and it’ll be $9.

Some of the machines where you press the button taste as good.

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I am deeply sorry.

Side question, if someone works a full-time job, should they still be "poor" or should people who work full-time be able to make a living wage?

If not, then why would anyone take these jobs? I understand (and agree) with you that they are easy jobs in terms of the educational level needed to do them, but it seems like it is possible to work full time and still be poor. That feels weird to me.

Are we okay with that? Work 40 hours a week, do a good job at work each day, and still be poor?

It will happen sooner than people think. The baristas have very little edge.

No it won't. Stop boot licking these billion dollar corporations. Remember these people don't care if they kill people or if you're living in poverty, if it means making another billion dollars. The only thing giving Starbucks employees a proper wage will do is the fat cats will have to settle down with just one yacht instead of three.

you said it. who's gonna go to school if you can just get a job at 16 that will pay you to have a nice living.

And honestly, most people make 15 an hour or more these days. Many fast food type places are closer to 20. You can live off that. Problem is everybody wants what everybody else has.

Correct.

Starbucks is like Disney World: No matter how high the prices, how long the lines, or how bad the experience, people will still go.

Once some people get it in their heads that something is "The Greatest", they will never change their opinion, even if that something has turned into crap.

I suppose it is some kind of mental thing.

Who thinks Starbucks is "The Greatest" at anything? It's burned beans so it tastes consistently awful everywhere along with mass produced chemical shots of flavor and gross food produced in a factory. Yummmm

The only good thing about them, is you know what you're going to get - it's a safe option in an airport or when traveling and don't know the local places.

Heaven forbid that the workers at Starbucks who helped make the founder Howard Schultz a multi billionaire be paid a near living wage

Try living on a pay of close to $20 per hour.

Imagine needing to rely on Starbucks. Drug users are pathetic.

I can get a 60 day supply of good coffee at Costco for $15.

Wrong. The hold Starbucks has on WOMEN. I can get the senior coffee at McD for 89 cents with unchallenged refill.

Also, because I am smartly dressed, I can loiter there for an hour or more.

Is it time for you to dump this drain on your bank account?

One nice thing about Starbucks (at least in the PNW) is that most locations are very nice. All of my kids will meet their friends there, do homework, drink hot chocolate, and spend an hour talking. It is a good place for them to hang out. Leather chairs, wood tables, nice lighting.

Nobody in my family has ever "loitered for an hour in a McDonald's" nor would I encourage that. I'd rather have them pay $4.95 for a hot chocolate or mocha at Starbucks while doing their homework than sit in the dirty carnival lights of a McDonald's.

p.s. If I need to meet up with the people I mentor outside of work, I am not going to meet them at a McDonald's either. So for adults it provides a good place to have an informal talk.

Typical Starbucks:

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The market decides the pricing and not Starbucks. They’re about a dollar cheaper than Peet’s or a mom and pop store, and that’s where I would go if Starbucks wanted $10. If a cup of coffee cost $10 everywhere, I would only drink coffee I made at home. The money isn’t that big a deal, but it’s just plain wrong to pay that much.