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I am not saying that I support a $15 an hour minimum wage. I think its too high and will likely lead to a lot of unemployed, low skilled people.
That being said, we've basically allowed the minimum wage to die as a mechanism for preventing too much exploitation at the lower end of the job market. What I do support is a minimum wage immediately of $9.00 an hour with a raise to $10.00 per hour within a year. Perhaps, the youngest employees should be given a slightly lower minimum wage as well.
My last point is that it hardly surprises me that you can find an article in Forbes Magazine that is critical of what happened. Forbes is a conservative business publication and I suspect the management of the magazine doesn't believe in a minimum wage at all. Of course, they are going to write something negative on this issue.
The minimum wage in Washington is already $9 an hour. The real problem in Seattle isn't the minimum wage, it's overly strict zoning rules with restrict the supply of housing, which jacks up home prices and rents.
As for Forbes being "conservative"....I really think that argument is getting old. Like 90% of journalists are liberal...so even the "conservative" ones are middle of the road.
Now, I guess you're going to tell me The Atlantic is a conservative magazine, too.
After 4-5 years of college and hundreds of thousands of dollars college grads are offered $20 an hour, if they are lucky to get a job. How can flipping burgers get you $15?
The real reason wages have been stagnate for many years because billionaires seized total control of the government 35 years ago and have been working ever since to undo the progress made during the previous 80 years, to return the USA clock back to 1900.
So how exactly did ACA and Sarbanes-Oxley pass? If your assertion were true, none of these things would've passed, Medicare and Medicaid would have been repealed, corporate tax rates would have been slashed to nothing, and the EPA would have been closed down.
The minimum wage in Washington is already $9 an hour. The real problem in Seattle isn't the minimum wage, it's overly strict zoning rules with restrict the supply of housing, which jacks up home prices and rents.
As for Forbes being "conservative"....I really think that argument is getting old. Like 90% of journalists are liberal...so even the "conservative" ones are middle of the road.
Now, I guess you're going to tell me The Atlantic is a conservative magazine, too.
The very same is happening in Austin Tx. New homes have to be ADA compliant. Imagine the added costs for those modifications ?
An article suggesting the $15-an-hour minimum wage was a factor in some recent Seattle restaurant closures caught fire with national and conservative media this week. The only problem: When we asked the restaurateurs in question, they said it’s flat wrong.
Oh, and as for the very title of this thread from last summer? Even it's wrong - the minimum wage increase to $15.00 in Seattle won't even begin to be phased in until next month, and will take years to complete.
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No wage increases have occurred yet in Seattle; they begin, incrementally over seven years, in April. The Seattle Magazine article itself notes that “none of our local departing/transitioning restaurateurs who announced their plans last month have elaborated on the issue.”
Of course, the propagandists didn't bother to find out why the restaurants were closing. They just decided it had to be because of the minimum wage law, and since they didn't want it to be for any other reason, they didn't bother to ask the actual owners of those restaurants - lest they be disabused of what they desperately want to believe.
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Renee Erickson is closing Boat Street Cafe, her first restaurant, but she runs three others and is in the process of opening two more. Asked in an email about the closure being associated with $15, she replied: “That’s weird, ha. No, that’s not why I’m closing Boat Street. Would have said so.”
Erickson continued, “I’m totally on board with the $15 min. It’s the right thing to do … Opening more businesses would not be smart if I felt it was going to hinder my success.”
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Little Uncle proprietors Poncharee Kounpungchart (who goes by PK) and Wiley Frank are closing one location, having found the space unsuitable after two years, while remaining open on Capitol Hill and considering new opportunities.
“We were never interviewed for these articles and we did not close our … location due to the new minimum wage,” Kounpungchart and Frank said in an email. “We do not know what our colleagues are doing to prepare themselves for the onset of the new law, but pre-emptively closing a restaurant seven years before the full effect of the law takes place seems preposterous to us.”
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Shanik proprietor Meeru Dhalwala, who is also mentioned by Seattle Magazine, said in a Facebook message, “My closure is strictly due to location — nothing to do with wages.”
And this one was only closed temporarily as part of a sale.
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Sharon Fillingim, the owner of Grub, the final restaurant referenced, said on Facebook that Grub was “a huge success.” In fact, the restaurant was sold and is reopening imminently under new ownership as Bounty Kitchen.
So, are Seattle restaurants actually closing at an unusual rate? Anyone familiar with the restaurant knows it is very volatile. Restaurants close all the time. No one but those chugging the Kool-Aid straight from the pitcher will be at all surprised by the following:
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Is this an unusual number of restaurant closures for Seattle? In February alone last year, before the Seattle City Council approved the $15 wage, Madison Park Conservatory, Marché, Belle Clementine, Azteca in Ballard and B&O Espresso in Ballard closed. The beginning of the year — after the flurry of dining and drinking and spending of the holidays, with taxes looming — is a tough time for the business. Just two prominent closures in Seattle in February could be interpreted as a sign of restaurant industry health. Indeed, 27 new bars and restaurants opened on Capitol Hill alone in 2014.
Unfortunately, there are some people who cling so tightly to the dogmatic belief that raising minimum wage causes a net economic harm that for them, actual data means nothing. For them, the very restaurateurs who state that closing their restaurants had nothing to do with the impending minimum wage are not to be believed. Nothing that contradicts their treasured dogma is to be believed.
Comment about why don't these people go to school and make themselves worth more as employees? Mostly because they do not have the time and money to do so.
Now suppose all these "burger flippers" did go out and make themselves more valuable employees. This have two major effects. First the shortage of burger flippers would theoretically anyway raise the wages of future burger flippers. Secondly as all these former flippers obtained their degrees and went looking for work they would create a surplus of "more valuable" employees and drive down their fresh out of college wages. So after investing four to six years of time and tens of thousands of dollars they find themselves competing with other former flippers for fewer jobs. Some times they have to go back to being burger flippers to pay off their loans. This great for the colleges and the financiers but not so much for the kids looking for work.
It is better that the minimum wage be increased so the near impoverished can live in less desperate conditions. It would also be better if students could finance their educations by borrowing directly from the Fed at Fed interest rates and pay back the loans by paying the Fed a fixed percentage of all future earnings. There is no real need to involve the private finance industry. If we instituted countervailing tariffs on imports to negate the price advantage created by low wages, government subsidies, lax environmental costs and existing foreign import taxes our entire economy would grow. Instead we encourage American financiers to invest in the BRIC countries to our detriment.
This would be contrary to an international "FREE MARKET" but international markets have never been FREE. They have always been contrived and controlled to prevent actual competition. We need to control these markets to benefit all of us not just the lenders on Wall Street and in the City of London.
That's one of the problems, but the other is too many people in the labor pool. Notice real wages have gone down ever since women entered the labor force in large masses. Now the baby boomers are retiring, but unfortunately more and more labor is being automated and we're letting hundreds of thousands of immigrants flood this country to add to the labor pool and further drive down wages.
If the government doesn't institute some sort of large tax on companies for using automation rather than people, there won't be that many people making this "living wage."
Katy, darlin', take a look around your pad. See that vacuum cleaner? you automated rug beating and floor sweeping. Gotta tax you for that according to your logic since you put a housekeeper out of work. See that blender on the counter? You automated food preparation. Gotta tax you for that since you put a cook's helper out of work. That gas/electric stove? You automated fuel delivery to cook food, so gotta tax you for that to help out the wood choppers or coal miners you put out of work. That car out in your driveway? You automated a cabdriver's job and liveryman's job so you get taxed twice for that. Wait, make that three taxes cuz you put at least one buggy whip maker out of work. The lawnmower? you put a gardener out of work, so you get taxed.
We all automate, Katy. Even you. So why the silly dig at "companies" who automate?
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