• rumba@lemmy.zip
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    1 month ago

    I would seem to me, there’s a market for opening a daycare that pays livable wages, and another where you could both undercut nursing facilities and pay the staff living wages.

    I’m not a fan of capitalism by any means, but it does seem that this should market correct no? What’s stopping that from happening?

    • cogman@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      For a daycare, it’s because setting up a new one is expensive and risky. You need property, insurance, and licensing. You need employees you’ve vetted and trained. It takes months to do all this and during these months you aren’t making any income.

      Nursing homes are even worse because they have a lot of legal requirements (that should exist!) which raises the barrier even further.

      It’s hard to get the loans needed for these new businesses if you aren’t already wealthy.

      The people that are wealthy enough to do this are instead investing in PE firms which buy up daycares and run them into the ground for profit. You are looking at “I could invest here for 10 or 20% return and I don’t have to do any of the management work” or “I can invest here for 3 to 5% return and it’s a full time job running the place”.

      Mind you, once these places are established, a LOT of the owners just do “market rates” for everything because, of course, they are quite greedy and the returns doesn’t really improve when you treat your employees well.

    • wpb@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      What’s stopping that from happening?

      Capitalism, actually. The purpose of a system is what it does.