I wanted to write a comment a la "Who is going to work at Starbucks if they don't need to earn their rent" - but then I realized that those jobs might go away very soon. And what then? I don't want to live in a world with 70% of the population losing a large portion of their growth potential (bc of unaffordable education, healthcare, even housing).
Something that is always surprising me when visiting the US, as a Scandinavian, is how many employees there are in a given shop (or coffee bar :). I don't think a Starbucks/shops/coffee bars needs as many people to operate as there often (in my experience) are in the US (at least in the 10 different cities/places or so I have been to on the east & west-coast/mid-west).
Assuming Scandi baristas are about as efficient as their colleagues over the pond, it is probably the time to complete a coffee-transaction that suffers, though, as with software development, I am not sure if throwing more people at the problem necessarily solves it quicker.
As an example, I remember one time, when I was waiting for a coffee (in the US) and there were no less than 5 employees more or less just hanging out discussing something more important than making my flat-white-double-soy-extra-machiato-caramel-coffee-like-beverage (which I could mean sarcastically, but I don't since I was waiting for a flight and not in a particular hurry) for a pretty good amount of time.
I suppose you could arrest me on this being my own experience (and you wouldn't be wrong), but I am feel confident that there must be some numbers that back them up because the difference is so flaggerant.
Apparently unemployment rates are as high or higher in Sweden for example, so there should be as high a demand for jobs at Starbucks here (in the case profits suffers from this). Intuitively I think that you'd rather hold off, take the well-fare and wait/prepare for a good job than taking one at Starbucks if you got a (good) education. This in turn (again my hypothesis), has made it the norm for that relative extra minute (or whatever) for coffees in Scandinavia, thus that job (as barista number 5) doesn't exist here at all. The price of a barista would also be higher, because it is harder to fill those positions. Which also makes changes the margins on how much more sales the barista number 5 would need generate for it to be profitable.
In any case, finally, commenting on the comment above :) I think that, in some places, many of those jobs do not exist (anymore) and it is still pretty OK to live here...
