The Minimum Wage and the importance of landing that first job

Washington Times ^ | 05/16/2015 | Rick Berman

[SeekAndFind]

Customers at the new San Francisco McDonald's on Sutter Street are greeted not with a friendly smile but with the impersonal glare of two human-sized electronic tablets ready to take their order. Not coincidentally, San Francisco’s minimum wage increased to $12.25 an hour earlier this month. The city has long had one of the highest wage floors in the country.

These automated ordering systems are a stark reminder that employers can automate jobs when the cost of entry-level service employees becomes higher than what consumers are willing to pay for that service. Employers don’t do this because they’re unkind; business is a Darwinian struggle where only those who can control costs to maintain their often razor-thin profit margins can survive.

The reduced job opportunities that come as a result of these cost-cutting measures disproportionately impact society’s most vulnerable. The academic evidence clearly shows minimum wage hikes price some of these less-skilled employees out of the job market entirely.

This has been observed for decades. Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins reported to the president in 1939 that “workers who had been receiving less than [the new minimum wage] had been laid off and replaced by more efficient workers.” This phenomenon has continued through the years: Today, employees are increasingly being replaced by customer self-service and automation.

The minimum wage debate is more than just an argument about where wages should be set. It’s about how the minimum wage cuts off the all-important bottom rung of the career ladder for those who need it most. President Obama and progressives love to talk about the importance of “good jobs.” But you can’t get a good job unless you have a first job.

[W.]

It’s what we get for having people who can’t think past the tip of their own nose running the country.

[Taxman]

Dumbass LIEberals still are in the evil clutches of the labor unions!

Minimum wage hikes increase labor union wages across the boards; that is why the DALs (Dumbass LIEberals) keep increasing minimum wages!

Despite countless studies and real-time data that indicate minimum wage hikes result in more unemployment!

DALs don’t care about that, obviously.

[jonno]

“business is a Darwinian struggle where only those who can control costs to maintain their often razor-thin profit margins can survive.”

Well put. Even your LIV might understand the debate when put this way.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

If the minimum wage were the answer to all problems, persons entering the job market the first time would still be making 25 cents an hour in real silver coin.

[Popman]

At some point the unions will petition the NLRB to represent automation devices...

After all its only fair...