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Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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We went out and had burgers yesterday, mine was $12, my wife's $9.50. We don't do the drive-thru fast food places, only real burgers. I don't think a minimum wage increase will affect fast food, they will just lay off the slower workers and manage with fewer, better people. Next week I'll be in Las Vegas and will have the best burger, from Bobby's Burger Palace. It's been a year so it may have gone up from $14 but well worth it. I have no idea how much the workers there get paid, but for me, and many others, quality is worth paying for. McD and the like are not going to raise prices, they depend on customers that just want cheap to survive.
And what is the better system? We have seen the effects of communistic central planning. The planners like Stalin or Putin succeed but no one seems to be able to manage the economy. We see out of control socialism in Europe. Greece is the current prime example of a give away government that killed the economy. We have seen what happens when unions get too much power. Witness the railroads or the auto industry. Go visit Detroit to see the final outcome.
I guess capitalism is like democracy. Neither work perfectly but the alternatives seem worse.
Greece is an exception. There are many other European countries that are doing quite well and have a much higher standard of living than the US. And none of them are run by crony capitalism. Germany, for example, has state controlled banking, employee and state representation on company boards and state owned railways. Companies are not able to buy politicians who then protect their interests when elected. Why can't the US implement what works in other countries and omit what doesn't? That would be a huge improvement over the current corrupt corporate government.
...... I don't think a minimum wage increase will affect fast food, they will just lay off the slower workers and manage with fewer, better people. ......
...... McD and the like are not going to raise prices, they depend on customers that just want cheap to survive.
Any company that is even halfway decently managed does not intentionally keep slow workers or have an excess of workers. They already look for the best they can hire. Often the choices are just not great.
Fast food restaurants, including McD, have been under lots of financial pressure. Growth is difficult except internationally. Often the push to make or maintain profits means prices need to go up. I would say prices have already moved beyond cheap.
I rarely eat at fast food places, but I recently took my granddaughter. A whopper meal was over $8 with tax. I also got a small cone and the grandkid wanted a cup with chocolate sauce. A squirt of chocolate was $0.50 extra.
I do not know about doom and gloom, but someone needs to pay for the increased MW. The payment will come from increased costs for everything that depends on MW labor.
That is precisely correct. A higher MW shifts income to low wage workers and away from everyone else. The question is how much?
Per capita GDP is ~$55k/yr. 60% of the population is employed. If 20% of workers (12% of the population) get a $5.5k/yr raise, you'd expect aggregate real prices to increase by 10% x 12% or 1.2%, for the 80% of the population that didn't get a raise. It's trivial.
i dont get this country, people want a higher wage, but companies will use that to raise prices of their items. say if it gets raised to 12-15 an hour, then burgers will soon cost 8-9 $ just for a burger. its not like if the wage gets raised their not going to raise their items high, so why raise the wage so high ?
That depends on the price elasticity of demand of the goods produced by a firm in a competitive economy.
i dont get this country, people want a higher wage, but companies will use that to raise prices of their items. say if it gets raised to 12-15 an hour, then burgers will soon cost 8-9 $ just for a burger. its not like if the wage gets raised their not going to raise their items high, so why raise the wage so high ?
It's business. Higher wages helps people but higher prices helps the company. To me, I would rather have people earning a livable wage. The price hikes are the companies choice but they can also choose not to hike. So the problem is not with the wages but the profit margins demanded by shareholders and in a capitalist society they want more and more.
i dont get this country, people want a higher wage, but companies will use that to raise prices of their items. say if it gets raised to 12-15 an hour, then burgers will soon cost 8-9 $ just for a burger. its not like if the wage gets raised their not going to raise their items high, so why raise the wage so high ?
Companies raise prices to cover the cost of:
Materials
Deliveries
Employees
Electricity
Water
Theft
accidental damage
unsold items
I laughed when someone said "Why does stuff cost more, they haven't raised the minimum wage in years!"
I had to let them know that those prices went up due to people who sought higher wage positions and got them and then to retain top talent, the employers had to keep paying high wages for the "Experienced" workers to stay.
They replied "That's so stupid, they should pay the low wage people more to make it fair"...
Oh God.
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