Posted on 12/13/2019 4:37:49 AM PST by karpov
This city’s minimum wage is rising to $16.39 an hour on Jan. 1. Instead of receiving a bigger paycheck, I’m left without any pay at all due to the policy change. That’s because the restaurant where I’ve worked for six years is closing as a consequence of the city’s harmful minimum-wage experiment.
I work for Tom Douglas, one of the best-known restaurateurs in Seattle. Mr. Douglas is in many ways responsible for the city’s reputation as a foodie paradise, and he recently celebrated his 30th anniversary in business. He’s a great boss, and his employees tend to stay at the company for a long time.
But being an established chef and a good employer doesn’t save you from the burden of a sharp minimum-wage increase, up 73% from $9.47 in 2015. For large-scale employers like Mr. Douglas, there’s no separate rate for workers who earn tips. In Washington and a handful of other states, tips aren’t counted as income earned on the job. That means restaurateurs are expected to pay servers like me the full minimum wage in addition to our considerable tip income.
When rent is too high, labor costs too much, and customers don’t want to pay $40 for a roast-chicken entree, the only way for many operators to ease the pain is to close.
So now, after six years working at Mr. Douglas’s restaurant Tanakasan, I need to find a new work home. My first thought was to go back to Sitka & Spruce, a restaurant where I had once worked. (I previously had to take on a second job there after the rising minimum wage forced Tanakasan to adopt a no-tipping payment model, drastically reducing my income.)
As it turns out, I can’t return to Sitka & Spruce. [It is closing too.]
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
What minimum wage workers make now or in the future has nothing to do with the push for automation. The push for automation is because of technological advances and not to due to the minimum wage. Labor is dirt cheap in the USA by historical measures.
Go to the BLS and do 5 minutes of research and you will set that my supposition is correct.
Business does not adopt a change in technology unless it affects the bottom line in a good way. McDonald's didn't put in Kiosks simply because somebody invented a kiosk. They are a pure substitution of capital for labor because the ROI made it worth implementing them. To think otherwise is simply wrong.
Also, historical measures have nothing to do with future business plans. Substituting capital for labor is done with respect to current costs and what those costs are expected to do in the future. Saying that the minimum wage rate in 1938 was $0.25/hr has absolutely nothing to do with business planning today.
Even if McD's could get workers at $2.00/hr they would have still automated. The automated because they'd rather deal with machines than with human employees. There is no wage floor that would have stopped this from happening. It wasn't even a considerations.
This is the same as the steam shovel replacing thousands of ditch diggers. Their labor was no longer needed at any price.
Wrong.
How do you know ‘they rather deal with machines’?
Change wont happen unless it makes economic benefit. If the Kiosks were more expensive than labor it would not make sense to deploy them, and they would not do it.
It is only because of the increase in labor prices that they did it.
Well, let me rephrase that. Alternatively, from the trend in labor prices they could predict that (lets say) in two years the cost against the Kiosks would be about equal and then start the changes to day, but that doesn’t change the gist of what I said.
YOU.CANNOT.SAY.THAT. You don't know that.
Really? Then why do China and a host of Third World countries still prepare and repair roads with humans using picks and shovels. Could it be that labor costs less to remove a ton of dirt than the capital cost of a steam shovel? (Hint: Yes)
There is a huge difference between the overpopulated and corrupt 3rd world and the developed world. It is a safe assumption that there is no labor rate where human ditch diggers would beat modern earth moving machinery in the developed world. The USA is not the 3rd world even though most economists in the USA are trying to get the USA to that place, a two tier social economic system.
First, the statement above makes it sound like this is a race rather than one that looks at relative cost of doing something. There are places in the US where labor rates are such that ditches are dug by hand. While I was in college, I had a summer job where I dug ditches for the fingers of septic systems by hand after a back hoe dug the basic trench. The ditches had to be finished by hand because they were required to fall 1/8"/foot and that couldn't be done as cheaply with machines. (There are laser-guided machines that can do it, but small contractors can't afford those machines, so many still dig them by hand.) Comparative costs are always important and speed is only one consideration.
Second, your initial statement didn't say anything about excluding third world countries, yet you made a blanket statement without qualifying it. Also, kiosks have been around for decades and I'm sure McDonald's has long disliked the hassles of dealing with minimum wage workers. Guess what finally pushed them over the edge to substitute kiosks for labor?
I am for automation but I HATE OFFSHORING. Offshoring is killing the heart of the economy - manufacturing. Nobody seems to care. Automate all you want just do it here!!!
Probably already stated but Simone needs to get trained for a different job. Perhaps coding since the Dems are always pushing that...
I’m sure there is a Job at the Microsoft Employee Cafeteria.
I have indeed tried to do that at Costco. Tire guy noticed I had a low tire, I wasn’t even doing business with the tire shop. I pulled up and he topped me off. I tried to slip him a $5, he wouldn’t take it.
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