This is the hidden cost and penalty of minimum wage laws. Maybe your nephew is not worth $20 an hour to the business but is worth $15. Forced to pay $20, the business would just not hire anybody or will look for technology or close down as thousands have done in California.
@scripta can you give any economic justification for only some businesses having to pay $20 an hour? If the targeted businesses have such an advantage why would anybody open another kind of restaurant?
Or her poor nephew will have to do the same work that 2 employees did a couple years ago. Thatâs the most common outcome, a shift consisting of 8 workers becomes a shift consisting of 6 workers. This is definitely a contributing factor to perceptions that a job sucks.
It wonât be $15/hr since minimum wage is $16 state-wide, and higher in many cities already. Yes, theyâll have to compete if the demand for workers is higher than supply.
Iâm not sure. What do you think?
So you agree that 7-10 is pretty bad, but you think $20 is too high? What do you think is the right number? I suspect California is the leader because it has the largest population, probably the largest population of food service workers in the US, and one of the most expensive states to live in.
I donât know why it is being singled out, I only have a suspicion â probably because itâs a significant portion, maybe even a plurality of all minimum wage earners, and because this minimum wage is barely a living wage even if working full time. The minimum wage hasnât kept up with inflation either, but thatâs tangential.
Well, you donât want a minimum wage job to be an amazing job or a career, right? A minimum wage job should suck.
Of course, more deflection.
Of course, backtrack to that after very definitively asserting this, which is what I was responding to:
So youâre basically admitting that your position was a crock of crap?
So? Jobs exist to perform a work function, not provide a âliving wageâ (whatever thatâs supposed to mean). An employer has zero responsibility to ensure you have enough cash to buy what you feel you need, what you are paid is based on the value you add to the business. I know itâs heresy to say, and it probably makes me a bigoted racist facist, but if your wage hasnt âkept upâ (again, whatever that is supposed to mean) itâs simply because your work isnt worth as much as you want to think it is.
If a minimum wage Californian wants a âliving wageâ, maybe they should start by moving out of California?
It further indentures people to the support from the state, and buys their votes in the hopes that theyâll mandate even more handouts. Or maybe itâs a health initiative attempting to put fast food out of business?
the minimum wage is always $0, just ask all the restaurant and their workers the NY politicians put out of businessâŚ
âUnfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a workerâs productivity worth that amountâand, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.â
â Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Citizenâs Guide to the Economy
Iâm admitting that you made a valid point â I wasnât entirely correct that this wonât affect smaller joints. It will affect them where demand for workers is smaller than supply. But it will not affect them where supply of workers is higher than demand.
This is a crock of crap, as you put it. What you are paid is the least that the employer can get away with paying you. It certainly canât be more than the value you add to the business, but it is always as little as possible.
Iâd be on board with that initiative, but not all fast food is bad for health. Chipotle is great, for example.
Thatâs, like, your opinion, man. It is not and does not necessarily have to be correct or valid. Some employers actually care about their employees, and it makes for better employees.
Yay! They get the crap idiots who consider it a lifetime achievement to make it to work within an hour of their scheduled time three days in a row⌠Thatâs definitely the receipe for success for a service-centric business.
No, thatâs a basic, fundamental fact of employment in capitalism.
And thatâs a choice made by such employers, be it due to compassion or merely strategic. The state mandating how those employers must show that they care and dictating how much they must care is the fallacy.
To point, I had all minimum wage teenage employees. The restaurant wasnt particularly lucrative, so wages werent high. But I never charged them for food, to the extent that we fed a family reunion (when all the family in town decided to stop by to see little Suzie at her job), to them stopping by with their friends at all hours of the night for snacks. Perks that were worth more than any raise they could imagine, yet cost me a fraction of such a raise. With this obsession over mandating a âliving wageâ, none of that wouldâve been possible, and most everyone wouldâve been worse off for it.
In short - my business, my choice what I want to provide my employees. Their choice is to either accept it or find a different job (or buy into the business). Letting the inmates run the assylum and dictate how businesses invest their cash is how weâve gotten to $20 fast food cheeseburgers.
I didnt say your productivity. I said the value you add. You are only worth as much as your replacement would cost; if you think you are worth more, you better be adding more value than that replacement. Buying labor is no different than any other purchase transaction - when presented with 2 identical widgets with different prices, you buy the cheaper one unless thereâs something that adds extra value to the more expensive one.
When buying either a $4 widget or a $9 widget, minimum wage is the state forcing you to pay $12 for either one (or go without entirely). Which means the manufacturer of the $9 widget will stop investing to make their widget more valuable, since theyâre getting the same as the cheaper one regardless. Itâs insanity, but thatâs tangential as well.
Except people are not widgets. Are you saying that kids will not want to go to college or improve themselves in other ways because either way theyâll only be worth $12? Your analogy doesnât really apply.
The way I see it, minimum wage says that if you want to hire someone, then the value that employee adds must be at least that minimum wage (plus overhead, benefits, etc). And if itâs not, then your business sucks and should not exist.
Those with that inclination are going to do so regardless. A career-based minimum wage doesnt apply to them. It applies to those who will spend a lifetime at minimum wage jobs. If they arent going to earn more than the baseline regardless of effort, then thereâs no reason to put in the effort to be their best.
That part of the equation gets glossed over in the sales pitch. At least you acknowledge it. Yet I cant help but wonder why that is a valid argument, but âif you cant live off your paycheck then get a better job (or move to a cheaper area)â gets summarily dismissed? Itâs the exact same premise.
Problem is, small businesses are rarely lucrative. And every extra dollar in payroll is a dollar being taken out of the ownerâs pocket, who often isnt much better off than those employees who are now mbeing given more.
So is this your argument for why minimum wage should not exist? Because those who wonât earn more than the baseline regardless of effort would not put in the effort?
Because it inherently encourages a regression to the lowest common denominator.
$20/hr is more than the median wage in over half the states. Heck, the median wage in CA is $23/hr. Now nearly half of Californians might as well just flip burgers for a living, rather than work to advance their employment.
Thatâs a 2021 number. I think itâs closer to $26/hr now (source for the estimate).
In-n-out has always paid above minimum wage, but that didnât make nearly half of Californians work there for a living.
Thatâs possibly true in theory but not really in practice. If youâre offering way below market rate, youâre either gonna attract the worst workers or gonna have to give extra advantages over the competition. Considering the mobility of workers, the high turnover in the landscape of low-paying jobs, itâs highly likely to have an impact on small restaurants. Plus the fact that with the current level of unemployment, weâre very much in a situation of constant low-supply of workers.
Iâm not a huge fan of this measure overall. I fail to see any legitimate reasoning for singling out the large fast-food chain restaurants. The fact that youâd need a higher minimum wage for them specifically is puzzling honestly. Itâd suggest that the job market is not able to self-regulate and itâd make me wonder why.
Because this is sharply in contrast with what I see here. In my state, minimum wage has not kept up with the going rate for low-paying jobs. At just above $10/hr, youâll not find anyone to work for you even if your job was first hand testing sleep quality on mattresses. Stores have difficulty staffing when offering $5/hr above the minimum wage. Not saying there is no need for a minimum wage, but it should be well below supply/demand-adjusted rates. That $20/hr for oddly specific workers seems like overreach to me.
That sounds like a dream job! Heck, Iâd even work the night shift.
Iâm sure we could write volumes to explain it, but in a nutshell itâs because they feel it is exploitative for business owners to get an annual return on their investment. Excess revenue should fund higher employee wages, not owner profit.
A new way to get paid while you sleep 
Hi all, itâs been a while! Thought Iâd check in.