Job Loss Predictions Over Rising Minimum Wages Haven't Come True (axios.com) 305
Eighteen states rang in 2019 with minimum wage increases -- some that will ultimately rise as high as $15 an hour -- and so far, opponents' dire predictions of job losses have not come true. From a report: The data paint a clear picture: Higher minimum wage requirements haven't reduced hiring in low-wage industries or overall. Opponents have long argued that raising the minimum wage will cause workers to lose their jobs and prompt fast food chains (and other stores) to raise prices. But job losses and price hikes haven't been pronounced in the aftermath of a recent wave of city and state wage-boost laws. And more economists are arguing that the link between minimum wage hikes and job losses was more hype than science. What we're hearing: "The minimum wage increase is not showing the detrimental effects people once would've predicted," Diane Swonk, chief economist at international accounting firm Grant Thornton, tells Axios. "A lot of what we're seeing in politics is old economic ideology, not what economics is telling us today."
Shocker (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember when someone (damn, wish I could remember who it was exactly) predicted that Seattle would have no restaurants within 5 years? LOL Just outright idiocy.
Government would be a whole lot easier in general, if more people could just apply basic common sense to it on a regular basis.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The end of 2017 brought more Seattle-area restaurant closures
https://www.seattletimes.com/l... [seattletimes.com]
3 surprising Seattle restaurant closures — plus 11 more (2017)
https://www.seattletimes.com/l... [seattletimes.com]
8 Seattle-area restaurant closures — and one closing soon (2018)
https://www.seattletimes.com/l... [seattletimes.com]
Why Are So Many Seattle Restaurants Closing Lately? (2018)
https://www.seattlemag.com/art... [seattlemag.com]
Bakeman's Restaurant is Closing After 47 Years
https://seattlemag.com/eat-and... [seattlemag.com]
Restaurants Unlimited Bankrup
Re:Shocker (Score:5, Interesting)
And far more restaurant openings than closures, plus a plethora of food trucks sprouting up all over. Whether a restaurant makes it or not depends much more on the competency of its management than the level of minimum wage.
Re:Shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
...plus a plethora of food trucks sprouting up all over.
Because a truck is cheaper overhead than a physical building, no wait-staff, and disposable everything rather than washing them. If you like eating out of a truck and putting stuff in landfills all the time I guess that's fine.
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Is a plethora larger or smaller than a breadbasket?
Re: Shocker (Score:3, Insightful)
Plenty of high quality restaurant if you can afford them. Guess you'll have to make food at home without society subsidizing cheap labor.
Re:Shocker (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shocker (Score:5, Informative)
Cherry picking much? Seattle has 2600+ restaurants.
And let's go through your links for actual information instead of you just spamming some links and hoping we don't READ them.
You posted 11 links. Of those:
- Your first link doesn't give much information as to why any places closed in particular, especially nothing to do with wages
- Your second link teases 14 restaurants closed, but literally on the second sentence in the first paragraph has a series of hyperlinks to the site's other articles about a total of 72 just newly opened restaurants. I guess 58 new restaurants opened doesn't get the clicks like 14 closed do...
- Your third link does mention minimum wage, but doesn't actually tie it to the closures - and also below the fold mentions that 3 of the 8 places closing/closed have been reconcepted by others and will open again.
- The 4th article tries to tie the minimum wage to its story but is forced to concede that "none of our local departing/transitioning restaurateurs who announced their plans last month have mentioned this as an issue". So they choose to editorialize.
- 5th article - Bakeman's is closing because the guy owning it wants to retire, and the only potential buyer was scared off when the building the restaurant is in wanted to force said buyer to agree to a list of expensive renovations before they'd agree.
- Article 6 - due to a parent company going belly up for unrelated reasons (Restaurants Unlimited)
- Article 7 - literally mentions in the second sentence that a new Thai restaurant will open in the same location immediately after.
- Article 8 - cites lack of business. Fad concept doesn't prosper when fad cools. Whodathunk?
- Article 9 - Actually on point.
- Article 10 - Another doom and gloom headline with an article that below the fold again reveals more openings than closures.
- Article 11 - Similar to above - closures, then a link to more openings. Individual closures indicated varied circumstances like retirements, hint at a sudden tragedy, but again no mention of wage.
Re:Shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a kind of asymmetric warfare. Google "restaurants closing in Seattle" and spam the resulting links. Anyone arguing with you now has to spend 100x as long debunking each one.
While they prepare their argument many people will mod the post up without reading the links.
To counter I usually just debunk the first link and then state that I couldn't be bothered with the rest since the poster put near zero effort.
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The point I was making is that posting little articles here and there about 10 restaurants, or 20 restaurants when the overall number in the city is in the thousands, coupled with the fact that there are other articles on new opening restaurants - is pointless. It gives no context and anyone can use it to put forward any point of view they wish, although the poster I replied to did a very bad and easily debunked job of it.
Now, if someone can dig up several years of aggregate data year over year on restaura
Re:Shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shocker (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny enough, there's evidence that the exact opposite is needed to create jobs, higher taxes so companies are more interested in writing off stuff such as wages. Given a choice between giving the government money and giving their employees money, many will choose their employees along with spending the money on other capital costs such as expanding or buying newer equipment rather then stock buybacks to boost the stock price for the CEO to cash out on.
Of course that is assuming there is enough demand for whatever the company is producing to be profitable enough to worry about taxes.
Re: Shocker (Score:2, Interesting)
Restaurant industry? No, absolutely not. Remember that they're not subject to minimum wage constraints, they rely on tips. As far as the big chain fast food joints, they are mostly franchises so the bigger companies don't feel the impact very much. Also given they have less capital, they could be simply waiting for the technology to be more affordable to reduce the need for those workers.
Common sense told most Americans that Smoot-Hawley was a good idea, but it didn't turn out so well. The Trump tariffs are
Re: Shocker (Score:5, Informative)
...Remember that they're not subject to minimum wage constraints, they rely on tips....
I keep seeing this myth posted time and time again. Waitstaff are required by Federal law to be paid minimum wage, regardless of how much they receive in tips. I wish people would ACTUALLY look up the rules on minimum wage before spouting ignorant comments.
https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm
If an employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 an hour do not equal the Federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.
When you tip, you are in effect paying most of the wage for the employee, and the employer thanks you for it. Now, anything tipped ABOVE the minimum wage does increase the employee's take home pay, but please stop spreading the myth that 'waiters get paid less than minimum wage'. It's simply not true.
Re: Shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
>Restaurant industry? No, absolutely not. Remember that they're not subject to minimum wage constraints, they rely on tips.
Not in Seattle, they aren't. Tipped workers make the full minimum wage.
Re: Shocker (Score:5, Informative)
Remember that if minimum wage merely followed inflation from when it was first introduced, it would still be less than $5 an hour.
What? I've heard numbers closer to $20 an hour. I was making minimum wage in the mid 70's, $3.65 an hour in Vancouver, BC and it was enough to live on pretty well. Now minimum wage won't buy you a room to sleep in unless you work a lot of hours.
Hmm, this article, https://www.politifact.com/tru... [politifact.com] points out that the Federal minimum wage in 1968 was $1.60, about $11.76 in todays dollars rather then the current $7.25 an hour Federally. Now Seattle is an expensive place to live so it makes sense the minimum should be higher then $7.25
Other articles claim around the same based on inflation. Based on productivity, well over $20 an hour
Re:Shocker (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the reaction of old-school economists every single time, dating at least to the 1970s. "Raising the minimum wage will destroy the country! Mass unemployment! Business failures everywhere! Skyrocketing inflation! Dogs and cats sleeping together!"
Then nothing happens (except that some people can actually afford food and rent the same week) and they quietly forget that they ever made the prediction to start with. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Finally now there is a small contingent of economists who are actually **USING DATA** (gasp!) and attempting to convert Economics from a religion to a science. I wish them luck.
Re:Shocker (Score:5, Interesting)
Not restaurant related, but applicable to the conversation: Results of minimum wage increase at Target [cnn.com].
TL;DR: Total number of jobs not reduced (in some creases increased), workers paid more per hour BUT are given fewer hours, fewer qualify for benefits, and actual payroll difference is close to net 0.
Re:Shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
Except employers are doing just that in states that haven't raised minimum wage. It's almost like corporate greed is a constant variable.
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My wife worked there over two decades, the changes you pointed out have nothing to do with the minimum wage, it's been the trend for retail management for the last quarter of a century. Every year each store as a goal handed down to them to increase sales by X percent while decreasing employee expenses by Y percent, the ultimate goal appears to sell everything in the world while not paying anyone.
They've recently reduced the number of LOD's (essentially assistant managers) from six or more per store to one
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People with common sense don't enter government.
Re:Shocker (Score:4, Informative)
First of all, we've had tremendous business growth due to tax cuts which offset state minimum wage requirements. More and more restaurants have been investing in automation and cutting people outright. Nowadays most QSR in high minimum wage areas have fully automated drink dispensers and most chains have cut the amount of staff in half. Whereas before you had waiters tending ~5 tables, most chains now have 2-3 waiters for the entire restaurants leading to high wait times unless you want to engage with the table-side tablets.
Open your eyes, businesses don't just fail, they cut workers and adapt. Some do fail and a lot of mom and pop restaurants have closed or become high tech losing all their appeal.
McChicken Sandwich Please. (Score:2)
Because fast food restaurants raising prices should be the bar for wages.
--
Maybe life is random, but I doubt it. - Steven Tyler
Stores closing earlier (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing I've noticed, moving from a $7.50/hr state to a city that has ~$15/hr minimum wage, is that most everything closes between 8pm and 9pm, almost no stores are open (except Grocery Stores) after 10pm, and 24 hour stores almost do not exist here. If you want to go grocery shopping you have to do it between 6am and 12am.
In $7.50/hr land, many stores are open 24/7, fast food is open 24/7, auto parts stores, many CVS/Walgreens are open 24/7... that is not true in $15/hr land. Most of those shops close by 9pm, and for the largest flagship stores, 10pm or very occasionally 12am (midnight).
Additionally, food quality at restaurants is a lot lower, unless you are willing to pay $50/plate, service is about 1/3rd to 1/2 as good/fast etc.
That said, the people working service industry jobs are a lot happier and look a lot less stressed.
Re:Stores closing earlier (Score:5, Insightful)
I have absolutely noticed that here in Quebec, where minimum wage is still 12.50$, but has constantly hiked over the past few years. Also, full employment means that salaries naturally go up, even in the fast food industry, so we regularly see 14-15$/h salaries.
Most Tim Hortons used to be 24/7, but now, they almost all close at night, with a few exceptions, or only the drive-thru is open. Same at Mc Donald's. All their prices have hiked. Now I can't get a combo at subway under 10$. And in all these food chains, service is now slow, poor and rude.
There is even a local fast food chain from Quebec City that kept a few restaurants open at night, but they increase prices by 12% between midnight and 5:00AM (And they also offer night shift bonuses, so the maths still work)
Baseline now, I only go to restaurants when I have no other choice, or when I have a couple hundred bucks to spare. Otherwise, I eat at home.
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One other problem we have in Quebec is a lack of labour in the market.
Wages in the further regions are rising because of lack of people to work. Which is also the cause of the 24h stores/restaurants disappearing.
Heck, many are closing on Mondays because there is no one to work.
Many mention the generational issue of youngsters not wanting to work much or at night/weekends.
Might be true, might not, I'm unsure.
Re:Stores closing earlier (Score:4, Informative)
NYC has $15/hr and many stores stay open either until 2-3 am or overnight ... it's killed a few overnight stores, but not all, and it's hardly becoming a city that goes to sleep at 8 pm.
Rolling up the sidewalks at 8-9 pm might just be local culture unrelated to minimum wage. I know San Francisco was that way well before $15/hr was even discussed.
It has to come out somewhere (Score:3)
(steady revenue) - (increased expenses) = losing money. That math is inescapable no matter what your opinion on the minimum wage. The topic being discussed is how businesses are making that (revenue)-(expenses) equation balance out. OP postulated that the increased wage cost was being canceled out by decreasing worker hours.
According to you, hours worked rem
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One thing I've noticed, moving from a $7.50/hr state to a city that has ~$15/hr minimum wage, is that most everything closes between 8pm and 9pm, almost no stores are open (except Grocery Stores) after 10pm, and 24 hour stores almost do not exist here. If you want to go grocery shopping you have to do it between 6am and 12am.
It's this.
I remember the standard closing time for stores used to be 9PM. Every store would be open until 9PM, and restaurants would generally be open until 10PM.
Enter the minimum wage hikes.
Now everything closes at 8PM or earlier. Some stores have outright weird hours where the time it closes varies by weekday - clearly someone did the math and figured out what days weren't worth staying open later.
It's also a reason portions in restaurants are getting bigger: it hides the cost of labor. Cooking and servin
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One thing I've noticed, moving from a $7.50/hr state to a city that has ~$15/hr minimum wage, is that most everything closes between 8pm and 9pm, almost no stores are open (except Grocery Stores) after 10pm, and 24 hour stores almost do not exist here. If you want to go grocery shopping you have to do it between 6am and 12am. In $7.50/hr land, many stores are open 24/7, fast food is open 24/7, auto parts stores, many CVS/Walgreens are open 24/7... that is not true in $15/hr land. Most of those shops close by 9pm, and for the largest flagship stores, 10pm or very occasionally 12am (midnight). Additionally, food quality at restaurants is a lot lower, unless you are willing to pay $50/plate, service is about 1/3rd to 1/2 as good/fast etc. That said, the people working service industry jobs are a lot happier and look a lot less stressed.
My anecdote is precisely the opposite. Coming from a state with a minimum wage of nearly double my current state (this is 7 years ago that I moved), I was SHOCKED at just how few places were open past 9. Just about every restaurant (including some sports bars) in my new town wouldn't take food orders past 9 and would start getting people out of the restaurant by ten. In the state I grew up in, there were a bunch of 24 hour stores.
The correlation is probably more in where in the state we respectively move
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That's not something I've noticed, but in my San Diego neighborhood, that sounds about right. High minimum wage; nothing is open after midnight. Business hours are way more a thing here than I remember in Michigan.
We can go through this all over again in a decade. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless minimum wage is tied to inflation, it will gradually fall in real terms - so every decade or so there can be a big political fiasco.
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This is the correct answer right here.
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Axios is avoiding the elephant in the room again (Score:2)
Either the law of supply and demand is false, or not. Fight!
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There is also no sources or link to a study, if there is any from Grant Thornton.
Very weak article and honestly, should not have been accepted on Slashdot. Its just hot air.
Re:Axios is avoiding the elephant in the room agai (Score:4, Insightful)
The law of supply and demand is not false, it is an oversimplification.
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A vast one, much less so than to say that supply and demand only applies in large-scale B2B transactions. The law that has the most effect on consumer pricing is what the market will bear, AKA "How much you got?"
Just as silly... (Score:3, Interesting)
The modern economy is so globalised and intricate these days it's hard to predict anything until we observe the real-world outcomes. Its unfortunate that speculation itself can tank an economy for a small period of time.
Calling all armchair economists! (Score:3)
I've generally been a supporter of $15 minimum wage, but there are a couple little things about it that has bothered me...
When minimum wage goes up, the prices of goods and service usually go up in response to increased labor costs (I saw this happen in 1993 when Oregon voters passed a min wage increase and when the increase took effect my local McDonalds immediately raised its value meal prices). If the prices of goods and services go up, then won't that negate or partially negate any meaningful benefits of a higher minimum wage? Also, given how expensive housing, formal education, and healthcare is, aren't the benefits of a $15 minimum wage negligible at best? These are serious questions, and I would appreciate serious answers.
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If the prices of goods and services go up, then won't that negate or partially negate any meaningful benefits of a higher minimum wage?
You have to tie the minimum wage to inflation (the price of goods and services going up) in order for it to work properly. The federal minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation for over three decades.
The worker's share of profits also has been falling consistently since the feudal era. If the US federal minimum wage had kept pace with increases in executive bonuses, it would be over $30/hr today.
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Fast Food prices ARE rising in So-CA (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know how they are gathering metrics, but fast food prices HAVE been rising noticeably in southern California, pretty much in lock-step with minimum wage increases.
Re:Fast Food prices ARE rising in So-CA (Score:5, Interesting)
The only actual links to studies in the article are to studies which do show job loss as the result of minimum wage hikes. Their evidence otherwise appears to be quotes from a few economists, for example from "Bill Spriggs, chief economist at labor union AFL-CIO". But hey, I guess the summary above only stated it's from a "report", not a study.
"Report" in this context generally translates into a press release from an advocacy organization, so I wouldn't take anything they say as actual evidence.
In short, the headline isn't true, which, for example, a simple google search for new york restaurant job loss [google.com] quickly demonstrates by displaying result after result about the recent impacts of their rising minimum wage in the restaurant industry.
Re: (Score:2)
Mod this up!
Re:Fast Food prices ARE rising in So-CA (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, you can find any number of massively dishonest studies [fortune.com] using wingnut calculus:
Wingnut calculus that counts people being able to afford to cut back to 1-2 jobs instead of working 2-3 as a "job loss". Calculus that completely ignores the fact that a minimum wage increase can create jobs by giving workers more money to spend. More money in the consumer economy == more demand == more jobs. Not less.
There is no effect if wages are already higher (Score:3)
This insight is brought to you by CORI (Score:2)
Captain Obvious Research Institute.
Of course higher minimum wage boosts the economy. That in turn keeps the demand for labor high. The minimum wagers spend their money. Unlike the super rich. Anyone with more that two braincells knows this.
Re: (Score:3)
So, if we were to raise minimum wage to $1000 per hour, that would do wonders for our economy, right?
If not, why not?
And if not, where is the tipping point between "higher minimum wage good" and "higher minimum wage bad"?
Re: (Score:2)
Seen vs. Unseen (Score:3)
Just looking at the number of jobs isn't enough to tell you about the minimum wage increase being beneficial or not.
1. How many jobs that would have been created at the previous minimum wage weren't increased? It's hard to count something that doesn't exist.
2. Of those workers subject to the minimum wage, how many had their hours cut? Are workers at the minimum wage rate actually seeing higher weekly take-home incomes?
Makes sense (Score:3)
The other thing you'll probably see if these changes become widespread enough is some degree of inflation. What degree that might be is a matter of contention, though. Worker wages is one part of the economy, there are lots of other factors at play, and you have intelligent actors (most significantly state actors) working to actively counter inflation.
Re:Give it a little time... (Score:5, Informative)
That because any cost rises, prices have to be increased to compensate.
I managed a restaurant for 4 years. I assure you that isn't the case.
Sure, it's math. If costs go up, the profit side of the balance sheet goes down, unless you can offset elsewhere.
Most of the time, you can offset (and not with a price increase- we only did that yearly, mostly to match rent increase, which was a way bigger dollar amount than our salaries) and the times that you can't, you take a hit to your bottom line. Fortunately, since our job was to increase that bottom line every chance we had, it wasn't a big deal to absorb cost increases.
Re:Give it a little time... (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting statement, not sure I follow hoiw your economics works.
Re: (Score:2)
Example of increasing bottom line net revenue:
- Shop around for cheaper landscapers.
Above can be used to offset salary increase, or you can absorb the cost:
- Reduction in bottom line net revenue from 15% of gross to 14% of gross.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
a price increase- we only did that yearly, mostly to match rent increase
You should read book on how to manage a business. This is a very foolish way to set prices.
Your prices should be based on marginal cost and how much your customers are willing to pay, not on what you pay for rent.
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Your prices should be based on marginal cost [...], not on what you pay for rent.
So in your world, is "rent" not part of "cost"?
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Don't try to figure out what ShanghaiBill's world is like.
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So in your world, is "rent" not part of "cost"?
Rent is a fixed cost, not a marginal cost.
Prices should be set to maximize marginal profit.
If your customers are willing to pay higher prices, then you should charge higher prices whether your rent goes up or not.
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Rent is a fixed cost, not a marginal cost.
Ok, rent just went up because your annual lease just renewed. Therefore, you should keep your prices the same.
Please go start an actual business, so we can all point and laugh.
Re:Give it a little time... (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's just not the way real-world businesses work. In practice, when your rent increases, so does everyone else's within your region. Your customers won't go elsewhere, because everybody is increasing their prices at about the same rate, on average. Granted, different companies shift at different times of year, but over the course of the year, customer movement in both directions averages out. In effect, you can just assume that every year, the point of equilibrium shifts towards higher prices, and that's a close enough approximation of reality.
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Increasing the price on customers is difficult, and comes with a corresponding potential reduction in business.
Rent is the largest marginal cost.
I don't need to read a book about managing a business, I actually managed a business. It's there to this day, so it seems the methodology was successful. It was also my understanding that this was how it was done in most of the restaurant industry.
We ran with a 5% labor cost
Re: (Score:3)
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Its all relative to the business.
Think of a Tim Hortons (in canada, coffee/doughnut shop).
4 employees, 24hours, 15h an hour.
1440$ per day salary (not counting benefits) minimum. Many Tim Hortons have between 6 to 14 employees at PEAK hours.
1440$ x 365 days: 525600$ in salary (minimum, without counting benefits and additional employees mentioned above).
Divide that number by 12 months. $43800.
If salary was inconsequential compared to your rent (at 43800$ a month) they would be renting a CASTLE.
Salary is one o
Re: (Score:2)
$43,800 a month doesn't get you a castle.
Particularly on the lake front.
We were a small business. And a restaurant. Were we an example of every type of restaurant? No.
We were a novelty cafe across a boulevard from a beach.
A raise in wages is never inconsequential. And the bottom line, MUST not change, or else you close the business. Whats the point in putting in all the work if you cant make a profit, might as well invest in ETFs or stocks.
This is fucking horse shit.
The bottom line MUST not change? Sure, if you operate with zero profit margin.
You clearly have no fucking idea what you're talking about.
Re: (Score:3)
Stop playing semantics.
It goes up and down but you always try to compensate and keep it stable.
If you arent trying, you arent managing it correctly.
I do know what Im talking about and not a restaurant, but a specialised service business and consulting with over 100 employees.
Profit is different every year, but we constantly adjust to try and make sure the EBITDA remains stable.
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Stop playing semantics.
It's not semantics- you clearly weren't aware of what property costs are in metropolitan areas.
It goes up and down but you always try to compensate and keep it stable.
You do what you do to keep the business running and profitable.
In times of plenty, you take higher profit margins. Other times you take less.
We did many company-wide pay raises without raising prices. You could too if you weren't too stuck in a false belief that has zero evidence backing it up.
I do know what Im talking about and not a restaurant, but a specialised service business and consulting with over 100 employees.
Don't believe you. Unless you're one of the said consultants that company rents out, and you just don't know how much yo
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to think restaurants are not money making ventures.
The vast majority are not.
Of the rest, most don't own the land/building, and rent isn't legally controlled, so it increases every year until they are not profitable.
Re:Give it a little time... (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority are not.
This is false.
I worked restaurants from 15 to 26.
I managed a restaurant (including bottom line financials) from 22 to 26.
Of the rest, most don't own the land/building,
This is true.
and rent isn't legally controlled,
This is also true.
so it increases every year
More truth.
until they are not profitable.
3 truthful statements used to back up something you pulled out of your ass. That's not clever.
It is true that restaurants close. It is true that sometimes rent is the cause of that. But only in extraordinary circumstances (landowner *wants* them out of their lease) are those rents raised to the point where a profitable restaurant can't still exist there.
Re:Give it a little time... (Score:5, Informative)
To those thinking this will elevate the lower class with no impact on the consumers purchasing power ...
Nobody is expecting that. A higher minimum wage isn't pulling wealth out of thin air. The money comes partially from consumers in the form of higher prices, and partially from shareholders in the form of reduced profits. That is sorta the goal: To change how wealth is distributed.
The problem with minimum wage hikes is not that they "destroy jobs". It has long been known that modest rises in the minimum wage don't have much effect on employment. The problem is that a higher minimum wage doesn't do much to alleviate poverty, because most minimum wage workers are not poor, and most poor people don't have minimum wage jobs.
Most minimum-wage workers are actually 2nd or 3rd owners in households above the median income level.
Meanwhile, most households in the bottom quintile have no one in full time employment. The problem is not low pay, but no pay. We should be doing more to get people onto the bottom rung of the ladder, rather than just focus on those already on the bottom rung. Once people are into employment, they already tend to move up fairly quickly.
Re: (Score:2)
Most minimum-wage workers are actually 2nd or 3rd owners in households above the median income level.
Citation needed (not saying you're wrong, but I'd love to see where this comes from)
Re:Give it a little time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Most minimum-wage workers are actually 2nd or 3rd owners in households above the median income level.
Citation needed (not saying you're wrong, but I'd love to see where this comes from)
Citation #1: Income inequality by household demographics [aei.org]
The average household in the bottom quintile had 0.43 people earning income. The average household in the top quintile had 2.04 people earning income.
Citation #2: Key facts about the minimum wage [washingtonpolicy.org]
The average household income of a minimum wage earner is $53,000 per year.
Only 2 percent of full-time workers earn the minimum wage.
Two-thirds of minimum wage earners receive a raise within a year if they stick with the job.
Only 9 percent of adults living below the poverty line work full time.
A big problem with combating poverty in America is that voters have very skewed ideas about what causes poverty. Mostly, poverty is not about "low wages" but about NO wages. Poor households tend to have no earned income at all. The biggest difference between households at 20% and 80% is not the level of wages paid, but the number of household members in employment.
Raising the minimum wage is likely to be economically innocuous. It isn't going to hurt profits and prices much, but it isn't going to do much to help the poor either. We would be better off focusing on incentives to both get a job and to hire more people. Reducing payroll taxes would help. So would increasing the EITC.
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Out of his nether regions. Many of the homeless in the Seattle area actually have jobs, but don't make enough to accumulate for security deposit and rent.
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Nearly all billionaires are heavily liberal
Factually wrong:
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/07... [jacobinmag.com]
Don't be fooled by a noisy minority. The majority stays quiet for a reason.
Re: (Score:2)
You just argued for getting rid of the minimum wage all together.
Thats the only way to get more people into the job market faster. To allow them to learn skills, so they can go up in income mobility.
Look up Thomas Sowell on this subject on You Tube.
Reducing shareholder profits is a no go. Whats the point of running a business if the profits keep reducing. Might as well invest in the stock market.
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The problem with minimum wage is that is causes inflation
[Citation Required]
Proof: Notice how inflation has ceased to exist since the Federal minimum wage was frozen?
The last "hike" was in 2009. That's hardly "frozen". 10 years stretches are pretty common in minimum wage history.
Also, inflation is currently at 1.8%, remarkably close to the 2% target....
Re:Give it a little time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Holy crap, you think there hasn't been any inflation since 1983? If the minimum wage had done nothing more than keep up with inflation it would have been $9/hr by 1999. The three tiny bumps since Ronnie Raygun have brought its purchasing power up to (IIRC) 1989-levels.
I used to live on minimum wage and could pay my rent, buy food, and have a little left over for weed or some other luxury. That hasn't been the case for most of three decades now.
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Only if your thinking about economics is as shallow as an introductory textbook. Those make assumptions like "perfectly efficient market". Which don't exist in the real world.
In the real world, an increase in minimum wage increases the price floor for a good or service, and there are zero products being sold at their price floor. Which means whether or not the price goes up becomes more complicated.
For example, I've seen some reports that some McDonalds saw increased business after the minimum wage hike.
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McDonalds saw increased business after the minimum wage hike.
Where I live, McDonald's pays way more than minimum wage, and everyone working there is an adult. I haven't seen a teenager working there in many years.
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McDonalds saw increased business after the minimum wage hike.
Where I live, McDonald's pays way more than minimum wage, and everyone working there is an adult. I haven't seen a teenager working there in many years.
Just about the only fast food restaurants I see these days that hire kids is Chickfila and Zaxbys (I'm pretty certain both specifically target high school/college kids for employment). Everything else is adult.
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You realize that increase in sales was not 100% from McDonald's employees, right?
Also, if your business was paying minimum wage + $1/hr, you're probably going to have to give everyone a raise when minimum wage goes up.
Re:Jobs is the secondary concern (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the employers often have a lot more power in the deal, especially in the US where you can lose health insurance if you just leave a job. So it's "put up with our crazy hours and low pay or risk dying on the street."
Where such a power imbalance exists, we need regulations to insure minimally acceptable conditions of employment.
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A minimum wage isn't going to destroy an economy unless it's outlandish (say $100 per hour) or a massive sudden spike. Business still gets done,
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Or another word for nothing left to lose.
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Makes sense if two parties are peers and are operating on roughly equal ground. What if there is a magnitude of difference in power between two negotiating parties?
There is a little bit that I think can sort most of this out quickly for you. There is a faction of people in this democracy that have a goal that is different than attempting to maximize individual freedom above all other concerns. Not everyone has faith in anarcho-capitalism, and it's to be expected that not everyone shares a common belief syst
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So, could you show how wonderful life was for the poor before minimum wage laws? With all that freedom filling their bellies instead of food?
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No, you're advocating for these stupid laws — you show, how terrible life was without them.
Slaves may have been conditioned to mock it, but free people do prefer freedom over wealth [ndtv.com].
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No, you're advocating for these stupid laws — you show, how terrible life was without them.
So, took a moment to realize just how shitty it was and are now dodging.
This is entirely surprising that a Randian can't actually show the benefits of their ideology.
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How do you start up a business when all your profits for the next month are gone paying people trying to help you get your business going?/quote> If your business model hinges on the availability of super-cheap labor, maybe you shouldn't be in business.
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Re:Jobs is the secondary concern (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary problem of these do-gooding laws is the that they violate freedom. The government inserts itself between two willing parties and says, no, you cannot be agreeing to this — we here in government know better, what's good for you ...
Strangely enough, the idea is primarily pushed by the same people, who'd be aghast over government intervening between adults agreeing to have sex a certain way.
Yep. And kids should be allowed to go back and work in factories, industrial garment making, and coal mines, because freedom. And all those people living in company towns getting paid in company scrip? They could have upped and moved any time they damn well wanted to!
Ever read the Constitution? As part of the very first line of the Preamble is the phrase "promote the general Welfare". The government has a constitutionally defined responsibility to ensure a basic standard of living in this country. And in these types of jobs, all of the power rests in the hands of the employer, not the (potential) employees. At this level there are only so many places offering a limited number of jobs, while the potential pool of applicants is much bigger.
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Absolutely, yes — as long as their guardians approve of it.
True that, yes.
It does not mean, what you think it means.
Wow, you replace
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Welfare as it was written at the time in the constitution did not refer to welfare as we know it now. Welfare had to do with the well being of the people. It didn't have anything to do with the financial well being of individuals. Historically, the overwhelming majority of people were poor and that was accepted as okay. The standard of living has increased markedly from historical standards. People that are poor now have a standard of living that would have made them considered well off in the past.
The impl
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I don't know about the McDonalds in your area but there are now 2 kiosk for ordering food and only 1 person at the register. There used to be 2.
Back in the day, there were 5+ taking orders for food. Then McDondald's figured out how to streamline order-taking and fewer cashiers were needed. But they were serving more food per hour, so now they needed more workers in the back making the food.
Guess what the kiosks and phone app are about? Streamlining order-taking, resulting in more food per hour....
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Did somebody tell you that at some CO2 level, a tsunami would wash over the world and drown us all? If not, then you've missed a number of catastrophes. Ask the people of Puerto Rico, Barbuda, California, Venice, even fucking New York City. I'm sure they'll have some choice words for you.