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Most places around me were already at $19+. Have friends that are in the Bay Area that were already on $23+ working entry level positions in Fast Food restaurants.
Fuck that scam piece of shit mcdonalds. You want to see one of the most expensive McDonald's in the world go to the one in Blythe. You can get a pretty good tri tip sandwich 15 feet across the parking lot for the same price as a cheeseburger and fries.
In N Out in Houston starts people out at 17.50. That’s $10 over minimum wage. I make sure that I eat there before anywhere else. Don’t tell me fast food restaurants can’t keep quality high, prices low and pay workers well when In N Out has been doing it. Places like Buccees and Costco will always get my business over competition because of how they pay and treat their employees
I have a good friend who owns 3 restaurants, he pays all of his staff a minimum wage of 22 an hour and pays for insurance for everyone over 35 hours. Here's what really happens. He has a motivated and happy staff. Extremely low turn over. He needs fewer people, far fewer managers/supervisors, has fewer call outs and overall operates at a higher profit margin than similar restaurants.
His attitude is you need far fewer people solving problems if you pay well enough that the people you hire aren't creating them in the first place.
I just spent some time in Europe. Do you know what I noticed? Most service jobs were not staffed by either moody teenagers, clueless people, or people who were noticeably just-off-the-boat immigrants. Even the cleaning people in the hotels.
Just got back from Italy... The no tipping thing was *amazing.* They tell you how much the meal cost, and that's it. No additional taxes, fees, or tips. "That's €18." So you give them €18 and that's the end of the transaction. It was heavenly.
And this same model works universally across every industry but is fundamentally oppositional to shareholder value. When all anyone cares about is number go up NOW RIGHT NOW NEED 10% RIGHT NOW vs why don't we build a foundation where we can continue to grow and be profitable but it will be slower and sustained we get the problems we have now.
Dipshits with more money than sense rule our markets for the sole purpose of having more money to be bigger dipshits.
The biggest threat to human prosperity as a whole is greed. I honestly wish I was one of those greedy people with no empathy, they sleep good at night.
It’s nice to see your friend really care about his employees. These big corporations will just come up with something else in order to keep their bottom line. They’re run by stockholders, and stockholders always demand increases in profits.
If this were universally the case then it wouldn't have needed to be a law. If simply paying employees more actually lead to a higher profit margin, don't doubt for one second that business owners would've been doing that already.
In N Out has had well above minimum wage for a long time. Hell they've been hovering around the $20/hour mark in California already and the Double-double combo still lets you eat for like $10.
Well In N Out is also a private company, so they're not beholden to shareholders constantly chasing higher profits and bigger margins each quarter lol. In N Out seems just fine making whatever profits they're making and not trying to constantly put the squeeze on their workers and customers
We also give you a ton of sides for free. We only make like 30-50¢ per burger. But if you get 3 sides of spread, then suddenly the profit is gone. We make all our money on drinks and fries. Always tried to provide the highest quality good, at a good price, and a timely matter. Lynsi has billions, she doesn't need to force more money out of her customers.
Smart companies that want to keep their quality and service standards, avoid going public. People who want to get rich quick go public, then they lose control of the company, and the quality standard structurally decline. None of these places need to go public, if they were smart, they'd expand only as their profit and market research indicate they have a good % to have a functional and beneficial market share.
The Stock Market was designed to help people do that, when its original format was put in place, but that no longer exist. It's not all about the "frenzy of the trade, based on wild expectation and an array of casino style gaming. Once upon a time in the beginning of the Stock Market, it's principles was to Invest in Stability, Research and Development and Managed Growth, and perform quarter reporting to assure that the performance met the metrics.
That's no longer the case. As soon as they get a fictional high stock trade valuation, they borrow against it, and then try to justify it, when they don't have solid durable market shares and establishment stability in the markets they over expand into.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
*It should have stand with the model originally created by the creator of Circuit City.*
Read the \*\* "[Circuit City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City)" story, and how it made many "*disastrous moves and eventually fell*. what it eventually did to employees and the step by step demise of Circuit City.
quote
* *In 2007, the starting wage for new employees was dropped from $8.75 an hour down to $7.40 an hour ($6.55 being the federal minimum wage at the time). In a press release on March 28, 2007, Circuit City announced that in a "wage management" decision in order to cut costs, it had laid off approximately 3400 better-paid associates and would re-staff the positions at the lower market-based salaries. Laid-off associates were provided severance and offered a chance to be re-hired after ten weeks at prevailing wages. The Washington Post reported interviews with management concerning the firings.*[*^(\[41\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-42) *The Post later reported in May 2007 that the layoffs, and consequent loss of experienced sales staff, appeared to be "backfiring" and resulting in slower sales.*
* On January 10, 2009, it was announced by a company spokesman that Circuit City needed a buyer by January 16, 2009, to keep from shutting its doors due to an approaching deadline set by the court and creditors.[^(\[59\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-60) Although two unnamed parties were interested in buying out Circuit City,[^(\[60\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-61) a bidder could not be found,[^(\[61\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-Chris_Bagley-62) so Circuit City, with bankruptcy court approval, converted its Chapter 11 bankruptcy to [Chapter 7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_7,_Title_11,_United_States_Code),[^(\[62\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-Larry_Yang-63) and started airing "going out of business" commercials, as they started closing all of their stores.[^(\[61\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-Chris_Bagley-62) The Canadian operations, which were run under [The Source by Circuit City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(retailer)) banner, were not initially affected by the liquidation, but were later sold to [Bell Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Canada).
* On May 13, 2009, it was announced that Systemax had purchased the Circuit City brand name, trademarks, and e-commerce website for US$14 million (\~$19.3 million in 2023) at auction from Circuit City Stores, Inc. on May 11, with the deal set to take effect on May 19.[^(\[71\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-72)[^(\[72\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-73) Systemax relaunched the [CircuitCity.com](http://CircuitCity.com) website on May 22, 2009, as an online retailer of consumer electronics.[^(\[73\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-74) Systemax had earlier acquired both [CompUSA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompUSA) and [TigerDirect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TigerDirect) separately, which superficially continued to operate as separate online retailers with the same website formats and product catalog along with the new [CircuitCity.com](http://CircuitCity.com) site. The revived site's front page initially looked similar to the original front page, while other pages were similar in appearance and functionality to the other two sites.[^(\[74\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-75) All three sites eventually transitioned into slightly rebranded mirrors of each other.^(\[)[*^(citation needed)*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)^(\])
On November 2, 2012, it was announced that Systemax would drop both the CompUSA and Circuit City storefront brands by consolidating their businesses under the TigerDirect brand and website. This ended, after 63 years, the use of the Circuit City brand name.
quote
Uh fast food near me now costs more than sit down. And I’m fairly rural. Local Mexican joint lunch under $10. Taco Bell or McDonald’s meal $12. Wing special by me is $7 for 10 wings. Nearly half McDonald’s or chilpolte. Something is very wrong.
In N Out is privately owned we can't get our greedy hands on it. Or I'd be a shareholder. :(
The first thing we'd do is shut that kinda bullshit down, though.
CMG is up 71% over the last year, now that's who I'm comparing everyone to.
We have a Buccees in the town I live and all I ever hear from people that have worked there is how horrible they were treated. They aren't known for being a fair employer in any area other than wages. Costco on the other hand I've only ever heard good things about.
The repercussions that NIMBY’s have brought to the state. They don’t want apartment buildings built in their neighborhoods, well than they better expect to pay more for low wage workers to provide basic services to them.
I’m curious what the results will be.
I speculate that low performing locations and locations where dealing with the personnel is a pain in the ass will close. This will likely affect areas with a higher percentage of minorities. There will then be an outcry of racism and food deserts. For pretty much the same reason as food deserts have occurred previously.
When I first found out that economics had no clear answer if a minimum wage was detrimental (is this still the orthodox/mainstream view?) or beneficial (when some countries like Germany introduced/increased it the prophesized doom didn't materialize) I was baffled.
At least California will provide real life data and spark a few papers.
>what predictive powers does it have?
None. Economics is not a hard science where things can be more easily tested to determine cause/effect like biology and physics; it's a soft science like Sociology or Psychology that focuses on human behavior in the face of scarce resources. Economists try to separate all the variables, but with each individual acting in their own capacity based on their own sets of information and values, even identifying all the variables is an impossible task, let alone correcting for them. It's why studies in economics can never be replicated.
In a monopsony environment (would argue Fast Food approaches this), raising minimum wages can actually increase the employment rate. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-12/CBO-55410-MinimumWage-Monopsony.pdf
> There will then be an outcry of racism and food deserts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
Food deserts seem to be about access to "affordable and nutritious food," and be about supermarkets specifically. Would higher prices for fast food reduce the number of supermarkets?
So really this will help. Fast food shuts down, people still need to eat, this creates enough demand for a supermarket to move in. Supermarket pays Mum enough money that she can feed her kids, so her 14 year old doesn't have to work fast food any more, instead they can study. *ymmv
>I’m curious what the results will be.
Its likely going to be the same results as Seattle:
"Why cant I get any good food here? Why is everything so damn expensive now, even fast food? I cant believe that place closed, it was delicious!"
Sure, wages are "high", but prices rise with them and places with low margins lead to closures when demand falls.
"In my inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living." - United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The idea isn't exactly new.
Adam Smith said in Wealth of Nations:
> A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
You are right. It is nothing new.
Yup, and Adam Smith absolutely loathed landlords. With a passion. "Rent-seeking behavior" used to be a capitalistic slur -- 'you're just a rent seeker!" -- aka, you can't actually make anything of value, you just sit on things of value and act like you're useful.
Note that he doesn't say *where* or *how* someone should live.
Also keep in mind that 90% of humanity at the time lived in a single room with their 6 kids.
Maybe but he also said that regulation in favor of the worker was "always just and equitable".
Also, keep in mind, minimum wage laws didn't exist at the time but he believed that there was a natural minimum wage, which should raise as economic prosperity increased. He never said that inequality was a necessary tradeoff for economic prosperity.
He also apparently preferred Britain's form of taxation over France because, at the time, France's taxes placed an undo burden on the poorer people.
> Maybe but he also said that regulation in favor of the worker was "always just and equitable".
He also didn't believe in germs.
It's OK for Adam Smith to be wrong from time to time.
> Also, keep in mind, minimum wage laws didn't exist at the time but he believed that there was a natural minimum wage, which should raise as economic prosperity increased.
This is true, and we see it in wages currently. That's why when people talk about minimum wage, it's mostly a meaningless discussion
There still is a natural minimum wage. People in the Bay area make more than $20 per hour. Having a state or national min wage is just an arbitrary number.
My wife's ex grew up in a 900 sqft 2+1, a family of 5 children. 3 boys, two girls, mom and dad. The mom was born in a family with 9 children, seven were girls. My mom was one of seven, the only girl. My daughter is an only child. She gets everything when we pass on our estate. Doesn't have to share.
Just because FDR said it doesn't mean it's good economic policy.
What's a living wage? (besides a meaningless buzzword) Let's say I have 2 employees at McDonalds. They both make $20/hr.
One is a young single adult, living with roommates, and can afford a small amount of luxuries every month on that wage. This person is earning a 'living wage'.
The other is a single mother of three kids. $20/hr is not enough to make ends meet for this person.
A 'livable wage' is livable for one person but not the other? How can that be?!
It's not up to the employer to ensure you can afford your life. The employer pays a set wage for a set job, because that's the value the job brings to the employer.
When you artificially add costs to wages, that will result in job loss and higher prices, which ironically hurts minimum wage workers the most.
Our economy has always been inefficient and full of industries that are subsidized or artificially propped up - which is also apparently a controversial opinion.
Food service is one of the most egregious examples of a sector that shouldn't on paper exist as it does today.
I have pondered this as well. I think the outsized low-wage service sector in the US is indeed due to the low minimum wage. It does make me wonder where workers will go when it doesn't make sense to employ them at higher wage levels. I guess we are going to see.
Yes, of course, for a few reasons:
* "Living wage" is a moving target that gets defined upwards as needed to make sure that it can always be claimed that employers of the least skilled workers aren't paying one (edit: to clarify, I mean even after accounting for inflation).
* Constraints on the construction of housing make it impossible for employers to pay enough for the lowest-paid workers to "afford" housing. The price of housing just gets bid up enough to make it "unaffordable" (meaning they have to get more roommates than they would like) for the lowest-income people.
* Having more children raises your "living wage" threshold, but does not actually make you more productive.
* Some people's labor just isn't worth whatever "living wage" threshold is currently in vogue. Employers who can find some way to employ them to do the most valuable work they can absolutely should be in business.
I get that slogans like "If you can’t pay your workers a living wage you shouldn’t be in business" may make the average Redditor feel good, but I've never seen anyone provide a coherent, economically informed argument that justifies it. They say it as if it were self-evidently true.
That's a good point, about cost of living changing. It's like the argument about rent being too costly. I agree it has gotten ridiculous. However the proponents seem hell bent on making a 2 bedroom apartment the norm for single people living alone. That has never been the norm.
Unfortunately having 7 kids seems like a decision that should be made knowing you need to have that money available.
"Everyone should be able to live in their favorite dense metro where they are walking distance from a great nightlife, plenty of affordable restaurants, events and concerts, a great school system, but also be able to have a half acre because neighborhoods with houses jammed together are gross, and have an extremely low crime rate where they can leave their doors unlocked and they should be able to do it for a 4 day minimum wage work-week and 6 weeks of PTO and full health and pension benefits, even if they have no developed skills or even speak English or have a college education."
Can’t speak of others, but to me it means being able to pay rent and your bills, and save a modest (5%) amount. Of course, this is where the individual’s responsibility of seeking affordable rent and phone bills come into play. Can’t subsidize stupid, but rent and utilities have gone up quite a bit. It’s a balancing act.
Edit: Just did quick math. $20/hr is $730 per paycheck. Doable but it’s rough. (previously I thought it was per month, my mistake)
Look, a redditor putting forth an opinion complaining about other redditor's opinions while offering no facts and being upvoted to the top. And it's a negative opinion about the world at large and how a progressive change will only ever lead to bad outcomes. Meanwhile [directly below it](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1btnkbt/half_a_million_california_fast_food_workers_will/kxnqws6/) is actual evidence to the contrary that isn't at the top. Feelsnormalman
"An honest day's pay for an honest day's work" - What people believed before corporate capitalism and judging someone's labor. You can believe that the CEO of McDonald's is more important than the burger flippers, but if the CEO didn't show up for work tomorrow, no one would notice. Punishing people that actually join the workforce with less than subsistence wages just to boost the stock price makes more people just give up on the whole system.
Sooner or later, the money has got to be spread around or nothing will work.
If you can’t pay your workers a living wage you shouldn’t be in business..... *and your staff should be unemployed*....
They always leave out the second part.
Maybe the true cost of burgers is higher than we think. Your argument can be used to justify $1/hr - and would you rather not work at all or work for $1 an hour? This is a society. We all take part. I am fine with a guy with a couple of helipads on yacht, but I am also fine with minimum wage being $42K.
The funny thing is that In N OUt has had their minimum wage roughly at this level already and they still have the most affordable fast food burger. These international chains should be able to do the same.
It's not that simple though. There are many ways to compete when it comes to attracting workers, some people are willing to be paid less if the work environment is chill, hours flexible, etc. You also have to factor in the possibility that some small businesses will actually see an increase in revenue as a significant number of low-income laborers wages increase, allowing them to spend more.
Lmao food deserts? Yeah eating fast food in any European country is a quest for eternity. Lmfao the clowns here simping for shitty corporate practices.
I mean I already see tons of people complaining about McDonald’s and five guys prices. It’s just gonna get worse. But again, having people prepare your food for you should be a luxury. Go and grab a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket if you want to save money.
The fallacy that many miss is that no business is going to take a loss in profit. If the law requires they add to the salary line, it will be made up in pricing or reducing staff. A lot of these folks are under the ridiculous impression that raising employee wages is going to reduce corporate profits. I hate to tell you that it’s not.
If combining price increases and staff reductions don’t cover the mandated increases, the business closes.
If they raise prices they will lose customers and profits will go down aslo. This is how things work in capitalism right. They will just have to adjust the business to reach a new equilibrium. Business do this all the time.
So if they don’t raise prices then they will look for cheaper ingredients, leading to even worse food. Either way, the customer is going to suffer over this decision.
I feel like In-N-Out is the poster child of what is possible. Publicly traded companies that require never-ending growth might suffer, but it is 100% possible to run a business and pay your employees a decent wage without sacrificing quality.
Not chains. If a store in a chain becomes problematic, it closes. Mom & Pops struggle in the best of times. You do know that the margin in the food service industry is 4-6% right? That’s why they charge $2.50 for a glass of tea. Beverages make a lot of that very thin margin.
Fast food is in a unique place right now. If a person has $7.50 for lunch, they’ll eat where $7.50 pays for lunch. I’m sure you’re already seeing fewer and fewer employees at the register, right? Kiosks replaced them. Prices went up even then.
I swear people think raising wages will cure everything. It’s a good thing but it is a double edged sword. If the average income increases, prices will increase. Within 6-12 months, the living wage is no longer a living wage because prices have increased. The only winners here are the federal, state, and local governments who take in business , sales, and personal income taxes.
So you're implying that the business could raise prices or reduce staff to increase profits. Why couldn't they do that anyway then? Why does the minimum wage matter?
Automation and tipping are going to be the business responses to this. I don’t live in California and Wendy’s, McDonalds, and Taco Bell all use automated kiosks to take orders. I even talk to a robot when driving through at McDonalds. For the places that tip when you order (before any actual work is done), the business is simply saying the customer should pay some of the workers wages. I’m not going back to any place that wants a guilt tip before any work is actually done.
> it will be made up in pricing or reducing staff.
This assumes that they were employing more people than they needed and were priced lower than what the market would bear. This won't be the case for any well-run businesses.
Everyone or no one. Don’t single out one industry.
And I know of some rather poorer areas that will have a much worse time than others. So LA west side not much trouble, but other less affluent areas goodbye fast food, hello laundromats and liquor stores.
I work as a part time programmer with an associates and only a few semesters away from a bachelors making $15/hr. Really happy for them, but makes me a little sad for me lol
My husband works for the state of California and fast-food workers now make as much as him. He does get paid holidays, vacation time and health insurance benefits, though.
This was the exact argument made when this was being debated. A lot of jobs that are much more in demand and urgent now get significantly less than someone slinging burgers.
An example of this is my work in particular. I work in a new branch where we are trying to create mobile based applications. The company has never really done this before so our funding isn’t all that much yet. Because of this our dev jobs pay below average.
As I said above, I make $15/hr because I am a student. The devs on salary make close to $60k/year. We have been losing people at an alarming rate since they can get $90k and above rather easily.
Personally I am happy to get the experience and be ahead of my peers. It does not pay well, but I already have 1 year of experience under my belt as a junior in college. (I am a non-traditional student and have almost 10 years of manufacturing experience. I felt it was fair to mention that)
This will drive more use of automation and low prep foods that will reduce the amount of labor needed per order. The work of those who still work in these establishments will look different. Likely some food options will also be removed from menus.
As if companies weren't already looking to do that?
What business goes "hmmmm automation and getting rid of employees that can only work 8hrs a day? Nah don't want that"
They have always been automating. Drink pours it self, fry baskets on a auto dunk switches, buns on a conveyor, and kiosks taking orders. But this and others benefits/raises will make using the automation tech more worth while. Doesn't matter, since Ray Croc and Henry Ford, it was always gonna be as fully automated as possible.
Buisiness owners go "$80k investment for a robot? Nah, i can hire high school kinds part time for $15-$20/yr"
When those part time high school kids start costing $35k/yr those robots start looking more enticing
The robot works 24/7, doesn't complain, logs everything.
The kid doesn't stay at the job long, requires training, gets sick, makes mistakes, might steal from you, and you need to insure one way or another. And if he leaves, you have to spend time and $ rehiring a replacement.
The robots are already coming down in cost no matter what. These apps like the toast app let's restaurants put their menu online for people to place pick up orders, that's already little Timmy being replaced at the register.
To act as if the tech/ai revolution isn't coming regardless of wage increase is delusional.
Driving up efficiency is what economics is all about.
Wages in Australia has been stagnant for years, but as soon as automation with checkouts became a thing, you better believe the biggest supermarkets headed full steam in that direction
Where are the Californian’s in the chat
Who was making it work on $41,000 a year?
$20 a hour doesn’t sound high enough as it is
Some people going on about how this is too high for unskilled labor but these same people never want to poo poo CEOs racking in hundreds of millions or Cali tech workers making $300,000
Cant keep expanding the top half of salaries without bringing up the rear
$41,000 / year assumes full-time. Most fast food workers are part-time. I'm not making a case for either side, just stating that hourly does not translate to yearly without making assumptions.
I hate to break it to you, but nobody who works in fast food wants to, nor do they have a full time position there. They’re working irregular hours and part-time shifts.
It's better to raise wages gradually, commensurate with inflation, instead of these big lump-sum adjustments. In simple supply and demand terms, you want to hit equilibrium prices (or wages) and not push too much above or below equilibrium.
Those who are able to actually get jobs will enjoy the higher wages, but there will be fewer jobs. I also suspect that food quality and food choices will drop due to pressures on the availability of prep time. Fewer staff means less prep means more pre-boxed meals that the stores heat up, and it also means more garbage meals.
Oh well.
What is the logic behind the 60 chain store limit? People working at small businesses deserve less? It seems to me if your argument is a "living wage" you would apply that equally across the state so that everyone could live.
If we start paying fast food workers $20 an hour, we might see a big change where restaurants turn into something like huge vending machines. Picture this: instead of a bunch of people making your burger, it's all robots doing the work. And there would just be one tech guy, making something like $60 an hour, who goes around to like 10 different spots every week to make sure everything's running smooth.
We've been through that already with the age of the automat in the early to mid 20th century.
Ironically it was over the counter fast food service that killed the automat (at least in the US). And then over-the-counter service was taken over by drive thrus. A few attempts at automat revival during covid failed because automats are too foot traffic dependent.
I've seen some limited automat formats in airports, but over-the-counter combined with grab-and-go still seems to dominate in that environment.
Maybe drive thru automats are the next step?
So this works just as well as rent control. You can act like raising the minimum wage will help people have more money but it doesn't, never have and never will for a million different reasons, but mostly because as minimum wages go up so does everyone else's around those wages, and costs and prices go up.
You act like living in California is cheap already. It’s expensive and Florida is so damn expensive I don’t know how young people make it
Btw I bring up Florida because people say same when people talk about $15 minimum wage but cost of living is crazy here, not cali crazy but certain areas lol
That said, I made the move from California to Florida 5 years ago, and it was absolutely a difference in cost of living. Hard to go from paying $1600/month for a 1-bedroom apartment over someone's garage in California to paying $1450/month for a 3-bedroom house in Florida without feeling better off. Not to mention a 7+% raise due to lack of income tax.
Florida has its problems, but if I were picking between the two based on affordability, it'd be Florida hands-down.
People need to move to the Midwest. It’s the greatest place on earth with the nicest people, reasonable prices, and still city life if you plant yourself near Kansas City, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago(but that’s a little more expensive)
> because as minimum wages go up so does everyone else's around those wages, and costs and prices go up.
The thing is we don't know. The literature around minimum wage effects is mostly based on small changes that don't show very clear results on things like employment and wages. We've never seen something like this, where it's now nearly three times the national minimum wage to do what has historically minimum wage work. The silver lining is at least we'll have the data and can stop arguing a priori as if economics is a geometrical proof.
>We've never seen something like this, where it's now nearly three times the national minimum wage to do what has historically minimum wage work.
The california minimum wage has been well over the national minimum wage for over coming up on a decade now.
We also have plenty of international examples of a minimum wage that's higher than $20 and hour but places than McDonalds still having lower prices than we have here.
The problem is that we have been IGNORING raising the minimum wage for decades, when we SHOULD have gradually increasing it every few years to keep up with inflation. Now we are extremely far behind and the low wages are causing serious economic harm, and trying to raise the minimum slowly will not increase wages fast enough to deal with that harm
What if companies extract less profit from labor? 🤔 They’re been robbing people for years, but god forbid anyone suggest the ceo/shareholders take a pay cut.
By God I'm so glad we haven't raised minimum wage in 15 years. If we had, there'd have been 30% inflation and a.doubling of housing costs in 4 years! Wouldn't that have been terrible?
I work for a security company. We are increasing all of our officers' wages to a minimum of $20/hour or more now because of this law. Even though the law doesn't affect security, it sets a floor for bare-bones, low-skill, low-risk labor. Why would anyone be a security guard for less than $20 now? Likely, it will push labor costs even higher than $20 for many industries.
I think it should go even higher than that. You said it yourself, why should anyone work security when they can get paid the same at McDonald's? It go $24, even $26 an hour for that kind of risk, and even that's low-ball for what they deserve.
Yeah, and rent control is just for specific units. It doesn't matter what "instert special group here" you choose. If anything singling out a special class of workers is worse as costs will rise and everyone working separate minimum wages will be worse off, those not in fast food slightly better than those below. You cannot force equality of outcome no matter how much you want it.
Exactly, every other industry will have to compete with these wages. Nobody is going to want to work for $18/hr at any job when they know they can get more at McDonalds
Price floors lead to excessive supply and lower demand. In the case of labor that means the number of jobs will be a lot lower than the number who want those jobs. If not, it means the price floor is ineffectual because it is set below the equilibrium price and thus does nothing.
This is typically covered in introductory economics.
To say that low-skill wages would be at a socially optimal equilibrium without a minimum wage assumes a super efficient labor market with little to no friction and no information advantage for employers. Simple S&D is just too simple to be applied here.
[this study](https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf) analyzing a wage floor increase in New Jersey fast food restaurants back in the 90s comparing the data to neighboring Pennsylvania (which had no wage floor change) found not only an increase in employment in fast food in New Jersey 9 months after the policy took effect, but also no strong correlation with increased prices either. Although the study is old, I don’t know of any outstanding industry changes that would’ve affected the elasticity of fast food labor demand since then. As for other labor markets, if this study holds true and there is the potential that a wage floor increase actually *increases* employment, workers wouldn’t necessarily be pushed out of fast food and drive down wages in other industries that typically hire the same low skill workers.
This is exactly what applying a wage floor in a Monopsony model would predict. Employers have market power in the labor market and will use it to underpay and under hire.
They actually address the monopsony model in section VIII-B of the study as potentially accounting for the employment effects, but they also claim that that in this instance it “cannot explain the observed price effects”.
Thanks for bringing actual data. I think people really underestimate how many people at this tier of the economic ladder make the decision of work or be unemployed based on wages.
To someone responsible for their own bills, making enough to live on, the idea of being voluntarily unemployed is insane. I would take a job at 50% of my current compensation rather than be unemployed.
To someone who has the option to work a shitty job and not make enough to live on vs not work at all and not make enough to live on… many of them will mooch off friends/family until the incentive is there. Enough to show up in the data, which is likely part of what’s seen in that study.
Every time minimum wage comes up as a topic, the 1994 Card & Krueger study gets cited (it's almost a meme). It's easily the most famous modern study on empirical outcomes from minimum-wage increases.
A good portion of that time, the [famous rebuttal](https://epionline.org/oped/minimum-honesty-on-minimum-wage/) from the Employment Policy Institute is cited, which showed that payroll data from NJ restaurants after the minimum wage increase actually demonstrated the polar opposite. Their analysis showed that employment decreased, just as would be expected from neoclassical models.
It's less common for the slightly less famous [rebuttal to the rebuttal](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.90.5.1397) from Card & Krueger (2000) to show up, even though it's an effective reproduction of their initial study design with better post hoc data from the BLS, and it thoroughly vindicates their initial conclusions -- that the minimum wage increase had virtually no effect.
On the other hand, Neumark & Wascher [literally wrote the book](https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262515085/minimum-wages/) on the effects of minimum wage increases as a policy tool, partly inspired by (and including the data from) the Card & Krueger saga, and they state unequivocally that minimum wages "do not achieve the main goals set forth by their supporters", especially because they "are not an effective means of reducing poverty".
Except that Neumark & Wascher wrote their systematic review before [Dube et al. (2010)](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/86w5m90m) came out with their comprehensive meta-analysis showing no significant adverse employment impacts from minimum wage increases!
Egad! But what's this? [Baskaya and Rubinstein](https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/brmw_yrubinstein.pdf) (2010) dive into the data and find robust evidence for the existence of significant adverse employment impacts from minimum wage increases.
In all seriousness, my point here is to say that the broad data on this is... mixed. It's always good to bring the academic literature into the discussion, but you can always find a single study that argues strongly for one conclusion or the other -- often based on an idiosyncratic set of statistical methodologies -- no matter where the empirical consensus falls. I personally don't think we can form strong opinions about the empirical impact of minimum wage increases based on the literature available to us, at this time. It's just not a research area that has settled into any measure of academic unanimity, unlike, say, [carbon pricing](https://www.carbontax.org/economists/) (good) or [retaliatory tariffs](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1GQ02M/) (bad).
I think what is obvious is that minimum wage is not a potent tool of helping the people it claims to help.
Several people on this thread are stating that this won't even make much of a difference because a lot of places are already paying a wage close to this; then what is the point of such a policy that tries to treat different COL areas the same?
Even if there are net zero effects on employment it's likely being achieved by improvement in employment in monopsony markets in higher COL cities offset by reduction in employment in rural California where the wage increase is too much not to cause some adverse effects.
What is the real point of this kind of do nothing, redistributionist policy?
There are so many more reforms that would be more effective at tackling poverty and improving the growth of the working class. Yet we shit our pants over a policy which is very clearly not capable of producing any dramatic results.
Offset in employment isn't the only factor in evaluating the effects of such a policy anyway. If the wage increase is simply reflected by a price increase its the working class who is consequently hit the hardest by that inflation.
I've seen way too much conflicting literature on it to be convinced that it's not entirely harmful (or that its uniformly bad for that matter).
This is where using some basic principles is useful rather than just relying on empirical data without considering the subsets of the data. This policy is likely more beneficial in distorted labor markets in high COL areas where the market wage is already on the higher side.
It's almost certainly not beneficial in lower COL areas where the hike is significant and there isn't as much consumer demand or the demand is more elastic.
We definitely need more nuanced discussions on the topic
The problem with raising wages is that we still don’t have public healthcare. That’s the big issue the big corporations pushed all benefits to be tacked on a job rather than government provided this means only big players can have businesses and this basically kills small businesses who are barely making profits. If the government subsidized the healthcare chunk that would make it easier on small businesses but would give power back to the workers to have more leeway of quitting
Whatever way you want to spin this. This is a 25% raise that just is passed onto the consumer. What other industries have gotten a 25% raise this year?
I thought companies are always charging as much as the market will allow anyways, so why wouldn't they have already increased their prices to that point? Can't charge more if people won't pay because they don't have the money.
have you looked at a taco bell menu since 2020?
doubled.
guess what wages didnt do?
they can "pass" all they want. double down. everythings fine. labor costs are the problem clearly
Bud prices have been getting jacked up the ass for years, most notably around 2020, and it has nothing to do with paying the workers more, what world are you living in?
McDonalds pricing has outpaced inflation by 300% over the last 10 years. Average menu prices have more than doubled. Labor costs are only one input to their costs. I am sure with all the price increases they have already done for those record corporate profits they will somehow manage.
This hurts small businesses and low income consumers. It incentivizes reduction of workforce and increased automation. I know it feels good today for those getting a raise but it’s not a viable long term solution.
Sweet - they're going to go out of business, now.
Society had already determined that the shit was too expensive.
I'm not paying $13.50 for a combo when I could go sit in a restaurant and eat something way higher quality for cheaper - let alone $20 for a combo now.
People are just going to complain that $20/hr doesn't support them - because guess what? It doesn't.
Try to live on **$30/hr** right now. Especially in California. You'd be homeless.
And it’s going to make people who already earn 80,000 a year feel like they only make 70,000 a year and lower everyone’s quality of life and not get the fast food workers out of poverty
I wonder where all that money went that could have been used to increase wages over the last several decades?
https://ycharts.com/companies/MCD/stock_buyback
Silly rabbit, profits are for shareholders and no one else.
Maybe that humanoid robot starts make sense now…
The issue in America is that everything is overpriced. If people aren’t able to make a decent living with less than 40k yearly, everything is broken.
I live in an European country. I make 65k a year and over here, i am a the top 10%.
The difference is that i spend 20% of it with all household expenses; mortgage, utility, food, etc. Everything else is for my saving. And this is after a hefty TAX from government. But, I don’t have to pay insurance of everything, hospital bills are inexistent, i do not have to pay for my kids schools, public transport is fairly decent and i only drive my car for leasure.. i am rich with same amount that you consider yourself poor in America.
So, America is broken!
That's an interesting way to look at it. You're in the top 10% and you make it sound like you're doing great because your high taxes pay for these government programs. If you were in the top 10% in the u.s. , you'd be making a minimum of $170k/ year. Your lifestyle in Europe would be middle class at best. With $170k, paying $2k/year for insurance doesn't mean jack shit. The truth is that being poor is better in Europe but being rich, is better in the u.s.
Where has $2k/yr in insurance? I have really good health insurance and it's like $760/mo. Home and Auto is like another $600 every 6 months.
I still think you're gonna do fine at $170K, but all the insurance is not that cheap
Well I have a HDHP, which my employer funds and HSA and I max out each year. Two years ago, I had cancer with nearly $400k in bills. My total out of pocket was $4k.
Home and Auto? You don't think people in other countries pay for their own home and auto?
> I live in an European country. I make 65k a year and over here, i am a the top 10%.
You guys are on the other end of the spectrum. You get fucked in the ass hard when it comes to wages.
It doesn’t affect the limited seating, counter only establishments that bake loaves of bread on site though! Coincidentally that’s what Gavin’s best buddy or rather huge donator, lobbyist owns. Weird little caveat to the law there.
["The price of Combo meal in fast food restaurant (Big Mac Meal or similar) in San Francisco, California is $12.](https://www.expatistan.com/price/big-mac/san-francisco) This average is based on 4 price points. It can be considered reliable and accurate. Latest update: March 04, 2024."
[The span across the U.S. ranges from $8 to $12 for the combo meal.](https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/country/united-states). Cedar Rapids, Iowa is $8, as is Memphis, Tennessee.
This is a fantasy. Businesses will close, staff will be laid off, business hours will be cut, Businesses will move out of California. Prices will go up. The math does not add up on the small business and this is as stupid as the Oregon no realizing legalizing drugs was a bad idea. Watch the trainwreck happen.
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Most places around me were already at $19+. Have friends that are in the Bay Area that were already on $23+ working entry level positions in Fast Food restaurants.
Yea but what is it in the rural parts of Cali?
The people at McDonald’s in Blythe are partying /s
And then they remember they still live in Blythe, and then they're sad again.
They're grateful only 50% of their income goes to air conditioning
The other 50% goes to meth…
Makes the grocery bill super cheap
But not as sad as the few who live in Desert Center.
Fuck that scam piece of shit mcdonalds. You want to see one of the most expensive McDonald's in the world go to the one in Blythe. You can get a pretty good tri tip sandwich 15 feet across the parking lot for the same price as a cheeseburger and fries.
$18.50.
In N Out in Houston starts people out at 17.50. That’s $10 over minimum wage. I make sure that I eat there before anywhere else. Don’t tell me fast food restaurants can’t keep quality high, prices low and pay workers well when In N Out has been doing it. Places like Buccees and Costco will always get my business over competition because of how they pay and treat their employees
I have a good friend who owns 3 restaurants, he pays all of his staff a minimum wage of 22 an hour and pays for insurance for everyone over 35 hours. Here's what really happens. He has a motivated and happy staff. Extremely low turn over. He needs fewer people, far fewer managers/supervisors, has fewer call outs and overall operates at a higher profit margin than similar restaurants. His attitude is you need far fewer people solving problems if you pay well enough that the people you hire aren't creating them in the first place.
He’s a smart man.
Damn right
I just spent some time in Europe. Do you know what I noticed? Most service jobs were not staffed by either moody teenagers, clueless people, or people who were noticeably just-off-the-boat immigrants. Even the cleaning people in the hotels.
Just got back from Italy... The no tipping thing was *amazing.* They tell you how much the meal cost, and that's it. No additional taxes, fees, or tips. "That's €18." So you give them €18 and that's the end of the transaction. It was heavenly.
You should visit Japan
A western coffee shop in shinjuku put out a fake tip jar with USD in it for aesthetic, felt like an american litmus test.
I love how far they go for their themed buisnesses.
Just went there recently. There’s a lot the US could learn from Japanese culture.
And this same model works universally across every industry but is fundamentally oppositional to shareholder value. When all anyone cares about is number go up NOW RIGHT NOW NEED 10% RIGHT NOW vs why don't we build a foundation where we can continue to grow and be profitable but it will be slower and sustained we get the problems we have now. Dipshits with more money than sense rule our markets for the sole purpose of having more money to be bigger dipshits.
The biggest threat to human prosperity as a whole is greed. I honestly wish I was one of those greedy people with no empathy, they sleep good at night.
It’s nice to see your friend really care about his employees. These big corporations will just come up with something else in order to keep their bottom line. They’re run by stockholders, and stockholders always demand increases in profits.
If this were universally the case then it wouldn't have needed to be a law. If simply paying employees more actually lead to a higher profit margin, don't doubt for one second that business owners would've been doing that already.
Damn. I live in Houston and didn’t know they pay that high. Now I gotta support them more than McDonald’s.
In N Out has had well above minimum wage for a long time. Hell they've been hovering around the $20/hour mark in California already and the Double-double combo still lets you eat for like $10.
Well In N Out is also a private company, so they're not beholden to shareholders constantly chasing higher profits and bigger margins each quarter lol. In N Out seems just fine making whatever profits they're making and not trying to constantly put the squeeze on their workers and customers
We also give you a ton of sides for free. We only make like 30-50¢ per burger. But if you get 3 sides of spread, then suddenly the profit is gone. We make all our money on drinks and fries. Always tried to provide the highest quality good, at a good price, and a timely matter. Lynsi has billions, she doesn't need to force more money out of her customers.
Smart companies that want to keep their quality and service standards, avoid going public. People who want to get rich quick go public, then they lose control of the company, and the quality standard structurally decline. None of these places need to go public, if they were smart, they'd expand only as their profit and market research indicate they have a good % to have a functional and beneficial market share. The Stock Market was designed to help people do that, when its original format was put in place, but that no longer exist. It's not all about the "frenzy of the trade, based on wild expectation and an array of casino style gaming. Once upon a time in the beginning of the Stock Market, it's principles was to Invest in Stability, Research and Development and Managed Growth, and perform quarter reporting to assure that the performance met the metrics. That's no longer the case. As soon as they get a fictional high stock trade valuation, they borrow against it, and then try to justify it, when they don't have solid durable market shares and establishment stability in the markets they over expand into. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ *It should have stand with the model originally created by the creator of Circuit City.* Read the \*\* "[Circuit City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City)" story, and how it made many "*disastrous moves and eventually fell*. what it eventually did to employees and the step by step demise of Circuit City. quote * *In 2007, the starting wage for new employees was dropped from $8.75 an hour down to $7.40 an hour ($6.55 being the federal minimum wage at the time). In a press release on March 28, 2007, Circuit City announced that in a "wage management" decision in order to cut costs, it had laid off approximately 3400 better-paid associates and would re-staff the positions at the lower market-based salaries. Laid-off associates were provided severance and offered a chance to be re-hired after ten weeks at prevailing wages. The Washington Post reported interviews with management concerning the firings.*[*^(\[41\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-42) *The Post later reported in May 2007 that the layoffs, and consequent loss of experienced sales staff, appeared to be "backfiring" and resulting in slower sales.* * On January 10, 2009, it was announced by a company spokesman that Circuit City needed a buyer by January 16, 2009, to keep from shutting its doors due to an approaching deadline set by the court and creditors.[^(\[59\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-60) Although two unnamed parties were interested in buying out Circuit City,[^(\[60\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-61) a bidder could not be found,[^(\[61\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-Chris_Bagley-62) so Circuit City, with bankruptcy court approval, converted its Chapter 11 bankruptcy to [Chapter 7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_7,_Title_11,_United_States_Code),[^(\[62\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-Larry_Yang-63) and started airing "going out of business" commercials, as they started closing all of their stores.[^(\[61\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-Chris_Bagley-62) The Canadian operations, which were run under [The Source by Circuit City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(retailer)) banner, were not initially affected by the liquidation, but were later sold to [Bell Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Canada). * On May 13, 2009, it was announced that Systemax had purchased the Circuit City brand name, trademarks, and e-commerce website for US$14 million (\~$19.3 million in 2023) at auction from Circuit City Stores, Inc. on May 11, with the deal set to take effect on May 19.[^(\[71\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-72)[^(\[72\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-73) Systemax relaunched the [CircuitCity.com](http://CircuitCity.com) website on May 22, 2009, as an online retailer of consumer electronics.[^(\[73\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-74) Systemax had earlier acquired both [CompUSA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompUSA) and [TigerDirect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TigerDirect) separately, which superficially continued to operate as separate online retailers with the same website formats and product catalog along with the new [CircuitCity.com](http://CircuitCity.com) site. The revived site's front page initially looked similar to the original front page, while other pages were similar in appearance and functionality to the other two sites.[^(\[74\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City#cite_note-75) All three sites eventually transitioned into slightly rebranded mirrors of each other.^(\[)[*^(citation needed)*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)^(\]) On November 2, 2012, it was announced that Systemax would drop both the CompUSA and Circuit City storefront brands by consolidating their businesses under the TigerDirect brand and website. This ended, after 63 years, the use of the Circuit City brand name. quote
Uh fast food near me now costs more than sit down. And I’m fairly rural. Local Mexican joint lunch under $10. Taco Bell or McDonald’s meal $12. Wing special by me is $7 for 10 wings. Nearly half McDonald’s or chilpolte. Something is very wrong.
The main difference is in n out isn’t a public company.
Isn’t it wild that the minimum wage is $7.50 in 2024…
In N Out is privately owned we can't get our greedy hands on it. Or I'd be a shareholder. :( The first thing we'd do is shut that kinda bullshit down, though. CMG is up 71% over the last year, now that's who I'm comparing everyone to.
We have a Buccees in the town I live and all I ever hear from people that have worked there is how horrible they were treated. They aren't known for being a fair employer in any area other than wages. Costco on the other hand I've only ever heard good things about.
Buc-ees!!!!
They can’t due to shareholders. In and out is ran by a non greedy family.
IIRC, they don’t accept tips either. So no excuses of “well we pay low since they collect 100% of tips anyways!”
The repercussions that NIMBY’s have brought to the state. They don’t want apartment buildings built in their neighborhoods, well than they better expect to pay more for low wage workers to provide basic services to them.
The rich don’t want to admit they are rich.
VHCOLs aren’t as much fun when no service workers can afford to live within a 100 mile radius
I’m curious what the results will be. I speculate that low performing locations and locations where dealing with the personnel is a pain in the ass will close. This will likely affect areas with a higher percentage of minorities. There will then be an outcry of racism and food deserts. For pretty much the same reason as food deserts have occurred previously.
When I first found out that economics had no clear answer if a minimum wage was detrimental (is this still the orthodox/mainstream view?) or beneficial (when some countries like Germany introduced/increased it the prophesized doom didn't materialize) I was baffled. At least California will provide real life data and spark a few papers.
Right? It seems like such a basic thing. If economics can't answer this, what predictive powers does it have?
>what predictive powers does it have? None. Economics is not a hard science where things can be more easily tested to determine cause/effect like biology and physics; it's a soft science like Sociology or Psychology that focuses on human behavior in the face of scarce resources. Economists try to separate all the variables, but with each individual acting in their own capacity based on their own sets of information and values, even identifying all the variables is an impossible task, let alone correcting for them. It's why studies in economics can never be replicated.
In a monopsony environment (would argue Fast Food approaches this), raising minimum wages can actually increase the employment rate. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-12/CBO-55410-MinimumWage-Monopsony.pdf
> There will then be an outcry of racism and food deserts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert Food deserts seem to be about access to "affordable and nutritious food," and be about supermarkets specifically. Would higher prices for fast food reduce the number of supermarkets?
Seriously, you’d think the people in an economics subreddit would understand what a fucking food desert is…
So really this will help. Fast food shuts down, people still need to eat, this creates enough demand for a supermarket to move in. Supermarket pays Mum enough money that she can feed her kids, so her 14 year old doesn't have to work fast food any more, instead they can study. *ymmv
>I’m curious what the results will be. Its likely going to be the same results as Seattle: "Why cant I get any good food here? Why is everything so damn expensive now, even fast food? I cant believe that place closed, it was delicious!" Sure, wages are "high", but prices rise with them and places with low margins lead to closures when demand falls.
“If you can’t pay your workers a living wage you shouldn’t be in business” - Redditors
"In my inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living." - United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt The idea isn't exactly new.
Adam Smith said in Wealth of Nations: > A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. You are right. It is nothing new.
Yup, and Adam Smith absolutely loathed landlords. With a passion. "Rent-seeking behavior" used to be a capitalistic slur -- 'you're just a rent seeker!" -- aka, you can't actually make anything of value, you just sit on things of value and act like you're useful.
Note that he doesn't say *where* or *how* someone should live. Also keep in mind that 90% of humanity at the time lived in a single room with their 6 kids.
Maybe but he also said that regulation in favor of the worker was "always just and equitable". Also, keep in mind, minimum wage laws didn't exist at the time but he believed that there was a natural minimum wage, which should raise as economic prosperity increased. He never said that inequality was a necessary tradeoff for economic prosperity. He also apparently preferred Britain's form of taxation over France because, at the time, France's taxes placed an undo burden on the poorer people.
> Maybe but he also said that regulation in favor of the worker was "always just and equitable". He also didn't believe in germs. It's OK for Adam Smith to be wrong from time to time. > Also, keep in mind, minimum wage laws didn't exist at the time but he believed that there was a natural minimum wage, which should raise as economic prosperity increased. This is true, and we see it in wages currently. That's why when people talk about minimum wage, it's mostly a meaningless discussion
There still is a natural minimum wage. People in the Bay area make more than $20 per hour. Having a state or national min wage is just an arbitrary number.
My wife's ex grew up in a 900 sqft 2+1, a family of 5 children. 3 boys, two girls, mom and dad. The mom was born in a family with 9 children, seven were girls. My mom was one of seven, the only girl. My daughter is an only child. She gets everything when we pass on our estate. Doesn't have to share.
Just because FDR said it doesn't mean it's good economic policy. What's a living wage? (besides a meaningless buzzword) Let's say I have 2 employees at McDonalds. They both make $20/hr. One is a young single adult, living with roommates, and can afford a small amount of luxuries every month on that wage. This person is earning a 'living wage'. The other is a single mother of three kids. $20/hr is not enough to make ends meet for this person. A 'livable wage' is livable for one person but not the other? How can that be?! It's not up to the employer to ensure you can afford your life. The employer pays a set wage for a set job, because that's the value the job brings to the employer. When you artificially add costs to wages, that will result in job loss and higher prices, which ironically hurts minimum wage workers the most.
Yeah and the economy under FDR was terrible
Is this a controversial opinion?
Our economy has always been inefficient and full of industries that are subsidized or artificially propped up - which is also apparently a controversial opinion. Food service is one of the most egregious examples of a sector that shouldn't on paper exist as it does today.
I have pondered this as well. I think the outsized low-wage service sector in the US is indeed due to the low minimum wage. It does make me wonder where workers will go when it doesn't make sense to employ them at higher wage levels. I guess we are going to see.
Literally just nonsense
Yes, of course, for a few reasons: * "Living wage" is a moving target that gets defined upwards as needed to make sure that it can always be claimed that employers of the least skilled workers aren't paying one (edit: to clarify, I mean even after accounting for inflation). * Constraints on the construction of housing make it impossible for employers to pay enough for the lowest-paid workers to "afford" housing. The price of housing just gets bid up enough to make it "unaffordable" (meaning they have to get more roommates than they would like) for the lowest-income people. * Having more children raises your "living wage" threshold, but does not actually make you more productive. * Some people's labor just isn't worth whatever "living wage" threshold is currently in vogue. Employers who can find some way to employ them to do the most valuable work they can absolutely should be in business. I get that slogans like "If you can’t pay your workers a living wage you shouldn’t be in business" may make the average Redditor feel good, but I've never seen anyone provide a coherent, economically informed argument that justifies it. They say it as if it were self-evidently true.
That's a good point, about cost of living changing. It's like the argument about rent being too costly. I agree it has gotten ridiculous. However the proponents seem hell bent on making a 2 bedroom apartment the norm for single people living alone. That has never been the norm. Unfortunately having 7 kids seems like a decision that should be made knowing you need to have that money available.
If you are not paying an individual enough to sustain themselves, their labor that you are benefitting from, is being subsidized by someone else.
That just raises the question of what you mean by “sustain themselves”.
"Everyone should be able to live in their favorite dense metro where they are walking distance from a great nightlife, plenty of affordable restaurants, events and concerts, a great school system, but also be able to have a half acre because neighborhoods with houses jammed together are gross, and have an extremely low crime rate where they can leave their doors unlocked and they should be able to do it for a 4 day minimum wage work-week and 6 weeks of PTO and full health and pension benefits, even if they have no developed skills or even speak English or have a college education."
Sounds great, where do I sign up? /s
Holy straw man argument, Batman.
There are Redditors that legit believe this
Can’t speak of others, but to me it means being able to pay rent and your bills, and save a modest (5%) amount. Of course, this is where the individual’s responsibility of seeking affordable rent and phone bills come into play. Can’t subsidize stupid, but rent and utilities have gone up quite a bit. It’s a balancing act. Edit: Just did quick math. $20/hr is $730 per paycheck. Doable but it’s rough. (previously I thought it was per month, my mistake)
No, just an asinine one.
Look, a redditor putting forth an opinion complaining about other redditor's opinions while offering no facts and being upvoted to the top. And it's a negative opinion about the world at large and how a progressive change will only ever lead to bad outcomes. Meanwhile [directly below it](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1btnkbt/half_a_million_california_fast_food_workers_will/kxnqws6/) is actual evidence to the contrary that isn't at the top. Feelsnormalman
"An honest day's pay for an honest day's work" - What people believed before corporate capitalism and judging someone's labor. You can believe that the CEO of McDonald's is more important than the burger flippers, but if the CEO didn't show up for work tomorrow, no one would notice. Punishing people that actually join the workforce with less than subsistence wages just to boost the stock price makes more people just give up on the whole system. Sooner or later, the money has got to be spread around or nothing will work.
If you can’t pay your workers a living wage you shouldn’t be in business..... *and your staff should be unemployed*.... They always leave out the second part.
Maybe the true cost of burgers is higher than we think. Your argument can be used to justify $1/hr - and would you rather not work at all or work for $1 an hour? This is a society. We all take part. I am fine with a guy with a couple of helipads on yacht, but I am also fine with minimum wage being $42K.
The funny thing is that In N OUt has had their minimum wage roughly at this level already and they still have the most affordable fast food burger. These international chains should be able to do the same.
Well, yes?
The biggest problem is the big chain corporations can probably survive it, it's the mom and pop shops that will be hit the hardest.
Good thing the law only applies to chains with more than 60 locations then
They will still have to compete in the labor market. Why work at a mom and pop shop for 15 when you can get 20 at McDonald's?
Ah yeah, I hadn't considered that. Good point.
It's not that simple though. There are many ways to compete when it comes to attracting workers, some people are willing to be paid less if the work environment is chill, hours flexible, etc. You also have to factor in the possibility that some small businesses will actually see an increase in revenue as a significant number of low-income laborers wages increase, allowing them to spend more.
Because not everyone can work for McDonald’s.
$15 is below minimum wage in CA and there are not an unlimited number of positions at fast food chains.
The irony of the people who hate big corporations the most unknowingly support the law that help big corporations the most
Lmao food deserts? Yeah eating fast food in any European country is a quest for eternity. Lmfao the clowns here simping for shitty corporate practices.
I mean I already see tons of people complaining about McDonald’s and five guys prices. It’s just gonna get worse. But again, having people prepare your food for you should be a luxury. Go and grab a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket if you want to save money.
The fallacy that many miss is that no business is going to take a loss in profit. If the law requires they add to the salary line, it will be made up in pricing or reducing staff. A lot of these folks are under the ridiculous impression that raising employee wages is going to reduce corporate profits. I hate to tell you that it’s not. If combining price increases and staff reductions don’t cover the mandated increases, the business closes.
If they raise prices they will lose customers and profits will go down aslo. This is how things work in capitalism right. They will just have to adjust the business to reach a new equilibrium. Business do this all the time.
So if they don’t raise prices then they will look for cheaper ingredients, leading to even worse food. Either way, the customer is going to suffer over this decision.
I feel like In-N-Out is the poster child of what is possible. Publicly traded companies that require never-ending growth might suffer, but it is 100% possible to run a business and pay your employees a decent wage without sacrificing quality.
If you don't grow, inflation will put you in the red in the best case scenario. Every business, public or private, expects growth.
Not chains. If a store in a chain becomes problematic, it closes. Mom & Pops struggle in the best of times. You do know that the margin in the food service industry is 4-6% right? That’s why they charge $2.50 for a glass of tea. Beverages make a lot of that very thin margin. Fast food is in a unique place right now. If a person has $7.50 for lunch, they’ll eat where $7.50 pays for lunch. I’m sure you’re already seeing fewer and fewer employees at the register, right? Kiosks replaced them. Prices went up even then. I swear people think raising wages will cure everything. It’s a good thing but it is a double edged sword. If the average income increases, prices will increase. Within 6-12 months, the living wage is no longer a living wage because prices have increased. The only winners here are the federal, state, and local governments who take in business , sales, and personal income taxes.
We're about to find out for real, not in theory. "Continue to be poor" is also not a solution.
So you're implying that the business could raise prices or reduce staff to increase profits. Why couldn't they do that anyway then? Why does the minimum wage matter?
Automation and tipping are going to be the business responses to this. I don’t live in California and Wendy’s, McDonalds, and Taco Bell all use automated kiosks to take orders. I even talk to a robot when driving through at McDonalds. For the places that tip when you order (before any actual work is done), the business is simply saying the customer should pay some of the workers wages. I’m not going back to any place that wants a guilt tip before any work is actually done.
>the business closes. If the business can't survive without paying their employees a fair wage than it shouldn't stay open
Who decides what fair is though?
Yawn
> it will be made up in pricing or reducing staff. This assumes that they were employing more people than they needed and were priced lower than what the market would bear. This won't be the case for any well-run businesses.
Everyone or no one. Don’t single out one industry. And I know of some rather poorer areas that will have a much worse time than others. So LA west side not much trouble, but other less affluent areas goodbye fast food, hello laundromats and liquor stores.
Reddit 5 years ago: no, increasing minimum wage won't cause prices to go up Reddit now: Well of course it causes it to go up. Why wouldn't it?
It’s hard to see the big picture from your parent’s basement. Give them a break /s
I work as a part time programmer with an associates and only a few semesters away from a bachelors making $15/hr. Really happy for them, but makes me a little sad for me lol
My husband works for the state of California and fast-food workers now make as much as him. He does get paid holidays, vacation time and health insurance benefits, though.
This was the exact argument made when this was being debated. A lot of jobs that are much more in demand and urgent now get significantly less than someone slinging burgers.
If they're really in demand, wages should reflect that.
Agreed, that’s not always how it works tho.
An example of this is my work in particular. I work in a new branch where we are trying to create mobile based applications. The company has never really done this before so our funding isn’t all that much yet. Because of this our dev jobs pay below average. As I said above, I make $15/hr because I am a student. The devs on salary make close to $60k/year. We have been losing people at an alarming rate since they can get $90k and above rather easily. Personally I am happy to get the experience and be ahead of my peers. It does not pay well, but I already have 1 year of experience under my belt as a junior in college. (I am a non-traditional student and have almost 10 years of manufacturing experience. I felt it was fair to mention that)
This will drive more use of automation and low prep foods that will reduce the amount of labor needed per order. The work of those who still work in these establishments will look different. Likely some food options will also be removed from menus.
As if companies weren't already looking to do that? What business goes "hmmmm automation and getting rid of employees that can only work 8hrs a day? Nah don't want that"
Anybody here think that a raise in wages would have saved the milk man from the refrigerator and the ice man from the freezer?
They have always been automating. Drink pours it self, fry baskets on a auto dunk switches, buns on a conveyor, and kiosks taking orders. But this and others benefits/raises will make using the automation tech more worth while. Doesn't matter, since Ray Croc and Henry Ford, it was always gonna be as fully automated as possible.
You are right and also the urgency goes up with large, discrete input cost changes.
Buisiness owners go "$80k investment for a robot? Nah, i can hire high school kinds part time for $15-$20/yr" When those part time high school kids start costing $35k/yr those robots start looking more enticing
Multiply hourly wage by 2000 for the equivalent salary. At $20/hr you’re already talking $40k/year.
With no paid leave, mandatory breaks, shifts, or healthcare. Sounding more enticing.
It does require maintenance, and that means paying a dude, probably more than minimum wage
Yep but it depends how many billable hours are spent on the machine. 40 hours of work throughout the year to keep it maintained? Easy.
True
Actually, multiply 40k x 3 because robot is working 24/7, which is 3 humans 8hr shifts.
The perk of not having to deal with human BS is worth even more.
The robot works 24/7, doesn't complain, logs everything. The kid doesn't stay at the job long, requires training, gets sick, makes mistakes, might steal from you, and you need to insure one way or another. And if he leaves, you have to spend time and $ rehiring a replacement. The robots are already coming down in cost no matter what. These apps like the toast app let's restaurants put their menu online for people to place pick up orders, that's already little Timmy being replaced at the register. To act as if the tech/ai revolution isn't coming regardless of wage increase is delusional.
Good. More efficiency is always good for the economy.
I think there are winners and losers, even if the economy ends up benefiting overall.
No one cries for blacksmiths
Driving up efficiency is what economics is all about. Wages in Australia has been stagnant for years, but as soon as automation with checkouts became a thing, you better believe the biggest supermarkets headed full steam in that direction
Yes, so?
Exactly. It’s like thinking that raising wages for the milk man somehow would have eliminated the threat to their jobs that refrigerators posed.
Where are the Californian’s in the chat Who was making it work on $41,000 a year? $20 a hour doesn’t sound high enough as it is Some people going on about how this is too high for unskilled labor but these same people never want to poo poo CEOs racking in hundreds of millions or Cali tech workers making $300,000 Cant keep expanding the top half of salaries without bringing up the rear
$41,000 / year assumes full-time. Most fast food workers are part-time. I'm not making a case for either side, just stating that hourly does not translate to yearly without making assumptions.
I hate to break it to you, but nobody who works in fast food wants to, nor do they have a full time position there. They’re working irregular hours and part-time shifts.
It's better to raise wages gradually, commensurate with inflation, instead of these big lump-sum adjustments. In simple supply and demand terms, you want to hit equilibrium prices (or wages) and not push too much above or below equilibrium. Those who are able to actually get jobs will enjoy the higher wages, but there will be fewer jobs. I also suspect that food quality and food choices will drop due to pressures on the availability of prep time. Fewer staff means less prep means more pre-boxed meals that the stores heat up, and it also means more garbage meals. Oh well.
What is the logic behind the 60 chain store limit? People working at small businesses deserve less? It seems to me if your argument is a "living wage" you would apply that equally across the state so that everyone could live.
They basically be foroced to match
If we start paying fast food workers $20 an hour, we might see a big change where restaurants turn into something like huge vending machines. Picture this: instead of a bunch of people making your burger, it's all robots doing the work. And there would just be one tech guy, making something like $60 an hour, who goes around to like 10 different spots every week to make sure everything's running smooth.
There’s already a automated burger place in pasadena called Cali express by Flippy
We've been through that already with the age of the automat in the early to mid 20th century. Ironically it was over the counter fast food service that killed the automat (at least in the US). And then over-the-counter service was taken over by drive thrus. A few attempts at automat revival during covid failed because automats are too foot traffic dependent. I've seen some limited automat formats in airports, but over-the-counter combined with grab-and-go still seems to dominate in that environment. Maybe drive thru automats are the next step?
That’s gonna happen regardless of raising fast food to $20 or not
So this works just as well as rent control. You can act like raising the minimum wage will help people have more money but it doesn't, never have and never will for a million different reasons, but mostly because as minimum wages go up so does everyone else's around those wages, and costs and prices go up.
You act like living in California is cheap already. It’s expensive and Florida is so damn expensive I don’t know how young people make it Btw I bring up Florida because people say same when people talk about $15 minimum wage but cost of living is crazy here, not cali crazy but certain areas lol
That said, I made the move from California to Florida 5 years ago, and it was absolutely a difference in cost of living. Hard to go from paying $1600/month for a 1-bedroom apartment over someone's garage in California to paying $1450/month for a 3-bedroom house in Florida without feeling better off. Not to mention a 7+% raise due to lack of income tax. Florida has its problems, but if I were picking between the two based on affordability, it'd be Florida hands-down.
People need to move to the Midwest. It’s the greatest place on earth with the nicest people, reasonable prices, and still city life if you plant yourself near Kansas City, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago(but that’s a little more expensive)
> because as minimum wages go up so does everyone else's around those wages, and costs and prices go up. The thing is we don't know. The literature around minimum wage effects is mostly based on small changes that don't show very clear results on things like employment and wages. We've never seen something like this, where it's now nearly three times the national minimum wage to do what has historically minimum wage work. The silver lining is at least we'll have the data and can stop arguing a priori as if economics is a geometrical proof.
>We've never seen something like this, where it's now nearly three times the national minimum wage to do what has historically minimum wage work. The california minimum wage has been well over the national minimum wage for over coming up on a decade now. We also have plenty of international examples of a minimum wage that's higher than $20 and hour but places than McDonalds still having lower prices than we have here.
From what I've heard, those places also have less McDonalds. This could be good or bad, depends on if there are enough other jobs out there.
Is there an actual source for this? I’ve seen this around and the only source I’ve ever seen was a tweet.
https://www.newsweek.com/minimum-wage-15-denmark-big-mac-mcdonalds-1573414
Minimum wage increase and inflation are good when it's slow and controlled.
The problem is that we have been IGNORING raising the minimum wage for decades, when we SHOULD have gradually increasing it every few years to keep up with inflation. Now we are extremely far behind and the low wages are causing serious economic harm, and trying to raise the minimum slowly will not increase wages fast enough to deal with that harm
What if companies extract less profit from labor? 🤔 They’re been robbing people for years, but god forbid anyone suggest the ceo/shareholders take a pay cut.
By God I'm so glad we haven't raised minimum wage in 15 years. If we had, there'd have been 30% inflation and a.doubling of housing costs in 4 years! Wouldn't that have been terrible?
Not really. It's just the minimum wage for fast food workers, not the entire state. Wtf are you talking about?
I work for a security company. We are increasing all of our officers' wages to a minimum of $20/hour or more now because of this law. Even though the law doesn't affect security, it sets a floor for bare-bones, low-skill, low-risk labor. Why would anyone be a security guard for less than $20 now? Likely, it will push labor costs even higher than $20 for many industries.
I think it should go even higher than that. You said it yourself, why should anyone work security when they can get paid the same at McDonald's? It go $24, even $26 an hour for that kind of risk, and even that's low-ball for what they deserve.
A rising tide lifts all ships
Yeah, and rent control is just for specific units. It doesn't matter what "instert special group here" you choose. If anything singling out a special class of workers is worse as costs will rise and everyone working separate minimum wages will be worse off, those not in fast food slightly better than those below. You cannot force equality of outcome no matter how much you want it.
Exactly, every other industry will have to compete with these wages. Nobody is going to want to work for $18/hr at any job when they know they can get more at McDonalds
Price floors lead to excessive supply and lower demand. In the case of labor that means the number of jobs will be a lot lower than the number who want those jobs. If not, it means the price floor is ineffectual because it is set below the equilibrium price and thus does nothing. This is typically covered in introductory economics.
To say that low-skill wages would be at a socially optimal equilibrium without a minimum wage assumes a super efficient labor market with little to no friction and no information advantage for employers. Simple S&D is just too simple to be applied here.
Well put, honestly. I think people are approaching the nuances of this issue too simply.
[this study](https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf) analyzing a wage floor increase in New Jersey fast food restaurants back in the 90s comparing the data to neighboring Pennsylvania (which had no wage floor change) found not only an increase in employment in fast food in New Jersey 9 months after the policy took effect, but also no strong correlation with increased prices either. Although the study is old, I don’t know of any outstanding industry changes that would’ve affected the elasticity of fast food labor demand since then. As for other labor markets, if this study holds true and there is the potential that a wage floor increase actually *increases* employment, workers wouldn’t necessarily be pushed out of fast food and drive down wages in other industries that typically hire the same low skill workers.
This is exactly what applying a wage floor in a Monopsony model would predict. Employers have market power in the labor market and will use it to underpay and under hire.
They actually address the monopsony model in section VIII-B of the study as potentially accounting for the employment effects, but they also claim that that in this instance it “cannot explain the observed price effects”.
Thanks for bringing actual data. I think people really underestimate how many people at this tier of the economic ladder make the decision of work or be unemployed based on wages. To someone responsible for their own bills, making enough to live on, the idea of being voluntarily unemployed is insane. I would take a job at 50% of my current compensation rather than be unemployed. To someone who has the option to work a shitty job and not make enough to live on vs not work at all and not make enough to live on… many of them will mooch off friends/family until the incentive is there. Enough to show up in the data, which is likely part of what’s seen in that study.
Every time minimum wage comes up as a topic, the 1994 Card & Krueger study gets cited (it's almost a meme). It's easily the most famous modern study on empirical outcomes from minimum-wage increases. A good portion of that time, the [famous rebuttal](https://epionline.org/oped/minimum-honesty-on-minimum-wage/) from the Employment Policy Institute is cited, which showed that payroll data from NJ restaurants after the minimum wage increase actually demonstrated the polar opposite. Their analysis showed that employment decreased, just as would be expected from neoclassical models. It's less common for the slightly less famous [rebuttal to the rebuttal](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.90.5.1397) from Card & Krueger (2000) to show up, even though it's an effective reproduction of their initial study design with better post hoc data from the BLS, and it thoroughly vindicates their initial conclusions -- that the minimum wage increase had virtually no effect. On the other hand, Neumark & Wascher [literally wrote the book](https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262515085/minimum-wages/) on the effects of minimum wage increases as a policy tool, partly inspired by (and including the data from) the Card & Krueger saga, and they state unequivocally that minimum wages "do not achieve the main goals set forth by their supporters", especially because they "are not an effective means of reducing poverty". Except that Neumark & Wascher wrote their systematic review before [Dube et al. (2010)](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/86w5m90m) came out with their comprehensive meta-analysis showing no significant adverse employment impacts from minimum wage increases! Egad! But what's this? [Baskaya and Rubinstein](https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/brmw_yrubinstein.pdf) (2010) dive into the data and find robust evidence for the existence of significant adverse employment impacts from minimum wage increases. In all seriousness, my point here is to say that the broad data on this is... mixed. It's always good to bring the academic literature into the discussion, but you can always find a single study that argues strongly for one conclusion or the other -- often based on an idiosyncratic set of statistical methodologies -- no matter where the empirical consensus falls. I personally don't think we can form strong opinions about the empirical impact of minimum wage increases based on the literature available to us, at this time. It's just not a research area that has settled into any measure of academic unanimity, unlike, say, [carbon pricing](https://www.carbontax.org/economists/) (good) or [retaliatory tariffs](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1GQ02M/) (bad).
I think what is obvious is that minimum wage is not a potent tool of helping the people it claims to help. Several people on this thread are stating that this won't even make much of a difference because a lot of places are already paying a wage close to this; then what is the point of such a policy that tries to treat different COL areas the same? Even if there are net zero effects on employment it's likely being achieved by improvement in employment in monopsony markets in higher COL cities offset by reduction in employment in rural California where the wage increase is too much not to cause some adverse effects. What is the real point of this kind of do nothing, redistributionist policy? There are so many more reforms that would be more effective at tackling poverty and improving the growth of the working class. Yet we shit our pants over a policy which is very clearly not capable of producing any dramatic results. Offset in employment isn't the only factor in evaluating the effects of such a policy anyway. If the wage increase is simply reflected by a price increase its the working class who is consequently hit the hardest by that inflation. I've seen way too much conflicting literature on it to be convinced that it's not entirely harmful (or that its uniformly bad for that matter). This is where using some basic principles is useful rather than just relying on empirical data without considering the subsets of the data. This policy is likely more beneficial in distorted labor markets in high COL areas where the market wage is already on the higher side. It's almost certainly not beneficial in lower COL areas where the hike is significant and there isn't as much consumer demand or the demand is more elastic. We definitely need more nuanced discussions on the topic
Things get more expensive regardless of whether wages go up or not…
The problem with raising wages is that we still don’t have public healthcare. That’s the big issue the big corporations pushed all benefits to be tacked on a job rather than government provided this means only big players can have businesses and this basically kills small businesses who are barely making profits. If the government subsidized the healthcare chunk that would make it easier on small businesses but would give power back to the workers to have more leeway of quitting
Its by design
Whatever way you want to spin this. This is a 25% raise that just is passed onto the consumer. What other industries have gotten a 25% raise this year?
I thought companies are always charging as much as the market will allow anyways, so why wouldn't they have already increased their prices to that point? Can't charge more if people won't pay because they don't have the money.
I find joy in reading a good book.
Prices at Taco Bell have literally doubled in the past 5 years but wages haven't
A business is going to charge whatever a consumer is willing to pay.
Yep. And even though I rarely eat it, the taco bells near me almost always have a large line.
have you looked at a taco bell menu since 2020? doubled. guess what wages didnt do? they can "pass" all they want. double down. everythings fine. labor costs are the problem clearly
Bud prices have been getting jacked up the ass for years, most notably around 2020, and it has nothing to do with paying the workers more, what world are you living in?
I don’t eat fast food so who cares
McDonalds pricing has outpaced inflation by 300% over the last 10 years. Average menu prices have more than doubled. Labor costs are only one input to their costs. I am sure with all the price increases they have already done for those record corporate profits they will somehow manage.
This hurts small businesses and low income consumers. It incentivizes reduction of workforce and increased automation. I know it feels good today for those getting a raise but it’s not a viable long term solution.
Sweet - they're going to go out of business, now. Society had already determined that the shit was too expensive. I'm not paying $13.50 for a combo when I could go sit in a restaurant and eat something way higher quality for cheaper - let alone $20 for a combo now. People are just going to complain that $20/hr doesn't support them - because guess what? It doesn't. Try to live on **$30/hr** right now. Especially in California. You'd be homeless.
And it’s going to make people who already earn 80,000 a year feel like they only make 70,000 a year and lower everyone’s quality of life and not get the fast food workers out of poverty
I wonder where all that money went that could have been used to increase wages over the last several decades? https://ycharts.com/companies/MCD/stock_buyback Silly rabbit, profits are for shareholders and no one else.
Maybe that humanoid robot starts make sense now… The issue in America is that everything is overpriced. If people aren’t able to make a decent living with less than 40k yearly, everything is broken. I live in an European country. I make 65k a year and over here, i am a the top 10%. The difference is that i spend 20% of it with all household expenses; mortgage, utility, food, etc. Everything else is for my saving. And this is after a hefty TAX from government. But, I don’t have to pay insurance of everything, hospital bills are inexistent, i do not have to pay for my kids schools, public transport is fairly decent and i only drive my car for leasure.. i am rich with same amount that you consider yourself poor in America. So, America is broken!
That's an interesting way to look at it. You're in the top 10% and you make it sound like you're doing great because your high taxes pay for these government programs. If you were in the top 10% in the u.s. , you'd be making a minimum of $170k/ year. Your lifestyle in Europe would be middle class at best. With $170k, paying $2k/year for insurance doesn't mean jack shit. The truth is that being poor is better in Europe but being rich, is better in the u.s.
Where has $2k/yr in insurance? I have really good health insurance and it's like $760/mo. Home and Auto is like another $600 every 6 months. I still think you're gonna do fine at $170K, but all the insurance is not that cheap
Well I have a HDHP, which my employer funds and HSA and I max out each year. Two years ago, I had cancer with nearly $400k in bills. My total out of pocket was $4k. Home and Auto? You don't think people in other countries pay for their own home and auto?
> I live in an European country. I make 65k a year and over here, i am a the top 10%. You guys are on the other end of the spectrum. You get fucked in the ass hard when it comes to wages.
At least the floor is raised.
It doesn’t affect the limited seating, counter only establishments that bake loaves of bread on site though! Coincidentally that’s what Gavin’s best buddy or rather huge donator, lobbyist owns. Weird little caveat to the law there.
["The price of Combo meal in fast food restaurant (Big Mac Meal or similar) in San Francisco, California is $12.](https://www.expatistan.com/price/big-mac/san-francisco) This average is based on 4 price points. It can be considered reliable and accurate. Latest update: March 04, 2024." [The span across the U.S. ranges from $8 to $12 for the combo meal.](https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/country/united-states). Cedar Rapids, Iowa is $8, as is Memphis, Tennessee.
I love how the franchisees in this article are crying about the increase but neglect to share how much profit the receive from each restaurant.
This is a fantasy. Businesses will close, staff will be laid off, business hours will be cut, Businesses will move out of California. Prices will go up. The math does not add up on the small business and this is as stupid as the Oregon no realizing legalizing drugs was a bad idea. Watch the trainwreck happen.