Posted on 12/29/2016 6:08:12 PM PST by BenLurkin
Last month, Competitive Edge, a San Diego communications firm, announced that it was moving 75 call center jobs to El Paso, Texas because of the costs of the minimum wage hike. In the Bay Area, San Francisco Eater reports that restaurants continue their year-end “death march” with dozens of closures, many of them at least partially a result of dramatic minimum wage increases. Book stores have been particularly hard hit, with local favorites like Black Oak Books (Berkeley) and Almost Perfect Bookstore (Roseville) closing because of cost increases.
Earlier this year, Adam Ozimek, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, calculated that 600,000 California manufacturing jobs paid $15 an hour or less. He said 31,000 to 160,000 jobs could be lost under the new minimum wage rate.
Proponents at the union-backed Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley have argued that a $15 policy could generate savings for taxpayers. But their claims fall apart when you dig into the methodology. For instance, it doesn’t account for the reduced job opportunities that Gov. Brown and the vast majority of economists warn about. By this logic, why not raise the minimum wage to $30 to generate even more positive economic benefits? The answer, of course, is that it would cause widespread job loss. Same story with a $15 minimum wage.
Even setting aside the offsetting effects of job loss, the claim of minimum wage savings for taxpayers is dubious. According to California’s Department of Finance, the $15 minimum wage will cost the state at least $4 billion as tens of thousands of government employees get raises from the mandate and program expenditures adjust upward.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
Touché
Used to be that an entry level fast food job could pave the way to many more opportunities. Six months to a year of customer service and handling cash opened the door to positions at banks and much more. Now all that experience will not be available. The customers will be served by a kiosk that never calls in sick. I’ve read that McDonald’s is trying out burger machines that can crank out 100’s of burgers per hour. The minimum wage proponents make me ill.
that pesky middle class wanted too much anyway....good universities for their children, and occasional nice meal out, roaming the national parks.....all of this is annoying to the elites...
So you will now see the explosion of self-order kiosks at every fast food place as that industry reduces it labor force by at least a third
Helping to “Keep Austin Weird”.
Good point but slight correction: it will cost the taxpayers.
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