Federal Minimum Wage

You know what's funny? @Ancalagon can't see my posts, so he'll spend the whole day arguing with you and you won't tell him to STFU.

That bit was a statement from the restaurant industry lobbyist.

They didn’t cite their source but I imagine it wasn’t entirely fabricated.

But generally there is a a lot of weaseling going on in a statement like that. Bloomin’ Brands for instance owns outright over 90% of the Outback, Carrabba’s and Bonefish Grill locations. They have over 93k direct employees.

They count as one operator.

The Chinese place down the street from you entirely run by the extended family counts as one operator.

So when the industry lobbyist says ‘most businesses...’ take that with a heavy grain of salt.

@Lanzman you can facepalm all you want but the catechism that All Costs Are Passed On To The Consumer And This Shall Result In Counterbalancing Inflation isn’t backed up by either the principles of capitalism (that prices are set by the intersection of supply and demand; if the market would support higher prices prices would already be higher) nor by empirical evidence (see the above study and nearly every other peer reviewed study on the subject so far).

You swallowed a hook. Sorry.

I seriously do not know what you are arguing about. I merely suggested that franchisees would be the ones to suffer - as opposed to McDonald's corporate. McDonald's corporate will be just fine. So, unless your point was something else entirely, I do not see A) why you're upset about my statement. B) what it is you are arguing about.

The mystery is your point. I can't seem to find it anywhere.

This:

"I merely suggested that franchisees would be the ones to suffer - as opposed to McDonald's corporate. McDonald's corporate will be just fine."

...may have been what you meant, but it's not what you've been posting. That aside, a franchisee is NOT an independent restaurant, which is what you seem to have been posting.

@Jenee We still have plenty of franchised Maccas here even with a high by US standards minimum wage.

As stated so categorically, ridiculous. Microeconomics 101 disagrees. Businesses maximize profit, but if costs go up and price elasticity of demand for their products is low, they’ll have to cut profits because increasing prices would reduce profits even more than just eating the additional costs. And that’s ignoring 2nd order effects like increasing pay can increase productivity, which reduces marginal cost, enabling them to sell more/time (right up to MC=MR), which increases profit/time.

Some businesses with higher demand elasticity can just raise prices, but it’s very far from all of them.

Oh, I know. For most "Western" civilizations capitalism works out well for the general population. Here in the states, though, not so much. I'm not speaking against minimum wage. My points were specific to McDonald's corporation and their franchise agreements here in the states - as that is where the issue with minimum wage is. Any other 1st world nation has already resolved most issues with minimum wage and the shit corporations are allowed to get away with.

First inaccuracy/oversimplification: There are other options besides price raise/profit cut. One obvious one is seeking a cut in other expenses - marketing, overhead, and yes, things like number of people employed or their benefits.

There are obviously businesses that have chosen to make business decisions in support of their employees, its charitable mindset and so forth that hurt their profits.

To take an example, Chick-Fil-A essentially has decided to cut its revenue by a seventh by remaining closed on Sundays. Now one could argue maybe they get some measure of goodwill from people who are like "They are good Christians and so I will eat there more heavily on the other days of the week." But it is almost certainly not enough of a surge to offset the business they are writing off by not being open on Sundayss.

On the flip side, for years, Chick-Fil-A has had as a corporate value donaitng to homophobic Christian charities, costing them both in PR and boycotts. (Again, I suppose it's arguable that pro-homophobic customers and tax breaks more than offset any loss, but I'd tend to doubt it.)

At least hypothetically, some capitalist corporation will realize that it will make more money by being cheaper than the competition and stop the inflationary cycle.

I'm too lazy to find the figures, but I think it's fairly safe to sa that the increase in the cost of living has greatly outpaced the avergage rise of wages and of course certainly the federal minimum wage. Even accepting everything you have said in this post as true, I'm guessing that the hypothetical inflationary cycle would have to be somewhere on the order of humongous for the raise in the minimum wage to $15 four years from now to outpace the cost of living from when it was first established at $7.25 in 2009.

Thanks for the lesson on how economics doesn't actually work. Very helpful contribution.

Should be interesting to see what the parliamentarian has to say about that.

So an old Platoon Sergeant of mine/current Sheriffs Deputy (aka conservative, but good dude) posted this and I am having to hold myself back from responding with something snarky like:

Yes. Why isn’t it?

it should be.

Dooooooo eeeeeeeet

One thing I will say on this particular point ... although I don't buy any of the arguments against a wage hike, I understand how someone who is at a "just on the edge, but surviving" income level could be leery of changing anything. Basically, it's "okay, I FINALLY got this working, so don't breathe, don't touch anything, don't do anything that might mess this up."

If Republicans DID turn out to be right about costs going up or low-wage people getting laid off, I wouldn't really be affected. Even though all the evidence points to them being wrong, a 1% chance of "really, really bad" is still harder to bet on than a 1% chance of "no personal impact on me at all."

Valid point. And I've been on the edge but surviving often enough to empathize with that perspective. But considering that my last "real" job was terminated on five minutes' notice because the boss's wife was filing for divorce and he was trying to hide his assets by firing every third person in the office, I've come to the conclusion that the Suits don't need an excuse to fire people. Minimum wage would just augment their armamentarium.

I have come to believe that if you can't run a business whilst paying employees a living wage that you don't have a valid business model.