This has little to do with helping anybody. It is driven by hatred, envy, jealousy and bitterness toward “rich” “greedy” business men, the productive, achievers. They do not care that it will hurt low-skill workers. They want to stick it to the man.
When will people learn that when you increase the incomes of low-skilled workers it only serves to increase inflation and thus they very same people that the increased minimum wage was supposed to benefit see not economic prosperity.
Instead, wages on for low-skilled workers should be decreased in order to allow increased income to stock holders and executives who can put that money back into circulation without causing inflation.
The ‘moonbats’ here in Seattle will just have to learn but probably won’t because many have high paying jobs at Amazon or Microsoft. We will just see more aggressive panhandlers and homeless on street corners and freeway on and off ramps. I’m sure all those illegal aliens will be storming up here to take their jobs with less pay.
What’s missing from the discussion is that no government has the right to set a minimum or maximum wage.
While I would expect that many small businesses who employ minimum wage workers will be soon issuing pink slips to all but their most productive and more customer self service, there are some unintended consequences. These may include minimum wage workers who manage to keep their jobs seeing smaller paychecks due to higher taxes and those currently getting government benefits like Medicaid, food stamps, free meals for their kids at school etc. may now be no longer eligible for those programs. This plan will backfire big time.
According to the moonbat socialist member of the city council, franchise owners are rich.
So if you run a 24 hour small newsstand (like I use to do) and you don’t want to work 24 hours a day, you have to pay someone to work the other 12 hours at $15 an hour for 8 hours then time and a half for the remaining 4 hours which equals $210 total, so just to pay for him you would have to make in profit $8.75 an hour over 24 hours which during the night can be all you make if anything at all. So you know what I would do? I would only be open 12 hours a day and guess what? I am not hiring an extra person. So yes yes I can see how this would create jobs, perfectly logical.
In the short term, lots of businesses will fire anyone they can “surplus”, and prices will really jump. Job perquisites will disappear. But then the fun really begins. The average rent will increase to consume the entire “raise”, oblivious to increases in other prices.
Rent, in particular, finds its market level at about half the net income of workers. It is spontaneous inflation, not based on supply, but on net income.
There is a minimum wage in America. It’s a lot higher than $15 an hour. And when a business doesn’t meet it, the taxpayers do... through welfare, subsidized housing, Obamacare, Medicare, and so on.
I’m sick of all these business owners crying how there’s no-one to hire. There’s 30 million unemployed and underemployed Americans, and they want to truck in illegals by the tens of millions. What they mean is that they can’t find someone willing to work for the ludicrously low wages they want to pay.
If your business can’t stay afloat paying $15 an hour when your competitors also have to pay $15 an hour, you don’t have what it takes, and if you want to destroy America and force me to pay for your workers, screw you.
Am I being harsh to small businesses? No. Large businesses bring the cost of recruitment and hiring way down by dealing in bulk. They can afford to keep cycling through an endless stream of employees working for a few weeks or a few months at a time. The HR costs are less than the costs of paying someone more. The small businesses who monkey that behavior screw themselves over. Ever wonder why no-one in customer service learns English? Why? They’re going to get the same $7 an hour.
Employees used to represent an investment, and employers used to do all they could to grow that investment.
A nearby restaurant has started paying staff about $20.00/hr. There is also a “no tipping” policy — there’s a surcharge on everyone’s bill instead. It’s still too early to tell how well this experiment will work out in practice. (One suspects that habitual non-tippers will give the place a wide berth, as they wouldn’t be able to avoid the surcharge.)
If the minimum wage is raised to $15, or above, that cost will inevitably show up on restaurant bills. That will be a huge disincentive to tipping. It seems likely that workers, who now rely on tips to top up their wages, won’t see any net increase in their remuneration. The better ones (who now get the biggest tips) might actually see their total pay go down.
Children, can you say higher costs, higher prices and/or higher unemployment.The libtards are counting on these destructive effects being prevented or delayed, because the government is able to create money out of thin air, which will increase the demand for labor.
We will not be visiting any restaurants or shops in Seattle.
10% sales tax + $15 minimum wage will price them out for us.
We go to Seattle frequently, have a kid in college there.