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You tip people at fast food places? Actually if wages were set at a living wage, we wouldn't need to tip.
Fast food workers aren't the only people who make minimum wage.
And there are some fast food places that allow tipping, maybe not where you live but there are where I live.
Maybe if the workers had to rely on tips instead of arbitrary, un
earned wage hikes they would have more incentive to work harder and do well.
$15 may be high. I certainly think minimum wage should rise with inflation. If it did then it would be at $10.74 right now. The City of San Francisco has their minimum wage tied to inflation and they have the lowest unemployment rate in the state (5.4%) and guess what? San Francisco has more than its share of fast food and small retail outlets.
I think $15 is high, but the argument that if minimum wage is tied to inflation that it would be a job killer is just complete nonsense. A higher minimum wage is great for the economy.
What if we said it should be raised with productivity? Then it would be 22.23. This seems like a compromise in between....
Why? I guess if you are gonna run to the idiotic extreme, I could combat it by saying we should end all minimum wages and allow business owners to own employees like property.
And that would be good. Government should never tell anyone what to pay employees. The market should determine all wages.
Funny how this is such a big issue when it's probably no big deal for the post part.
In the Permian Basin area of Texas, they've had to SUBSTANTIALLY raise wages for unskilled workers because the oilfields increased the demand for labor. All the fast food joints, truck stops and other service related businesses have pretty much all raised wages significantly. They're even giving big fat bonuses to unskilled workers just to attract them.
Guess what happened?
.....nothing.
Turns out that they could all bear the increase in costs...at least from what I can see because everything is still open and doing brisk business.
Not saying that's the template for Seattle, but I would at least wait for the fallout before passing judgement.
They raised wages to attract labor in Texas. Market forces at work.
Seatac is raising wages to raise wages. They already have a ready supply of labor at $2 more than minimum wage. They control the prices and the wages. Government forces at work.
And are suckers to pay the jacked up prices. Eat BEFORE you go to the airport and save yourself some money.
Now you are trying to tell people how to spend their money? Also, airport prices are always higher than normal so people probably won't see much difference at Sea-Tac compared to other airports. Movie food is expensive too, but that doesn't stop me from buying a bucket of popcorn for my movie rather than popping some popcorn on a camper grill in the theater.
And that would be good. Government should never tell anyone what to pay employees. The market should determine all wages.
Except when those business owners get together and decide what the wages should be set at to prevent cost of pay competition. Then of course there is always someone willing to do a job for less than someone else. That is called the race to the bottom, and that is back for the economy.
But who decided to raise those wages? The people running the businesses that knew they could bear the cost or were they forced to do so by people that voted themselves a pay increase?
They were forced to do so by the local market and pressure to raise wages. Too many available jobs and not enough workers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hoffdano
That's how it is supposed to work. High demand for labor raises wages.
But unless you show me otherwise I don't believe the cost of services and products hasn't gone up to cover the higher wages. Since everyone in the area is working and making good money it probably doesn't matter if McDonalds raised the price of coffee or a Big Mac.
Well, I stop at these places from time to time when passing through and the price of a burger appears to be the same as it is back home in Arizona. But the workers are making significantly more money.
But there's no doubt that there are businesses that have raised prices. But that's ok on balance if more people are working and making good wages.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TrapperJohn
They raised wages to attract labor in Texas. Market forces at work.
Seatac is raising wages to raise wages. They already have a ready supply of labor at $2 more than minimum wage. They control the prices and the wages. Government forces at work.
Again, I said explicitly that the Texas example may not be a proper template for Seattle, but still, let's not declare it a disaster before the law is even implemented.
Do fast food workers do better at the airports you tip at? A Wendy's burger seems to taste the same regardless how much one tips.
First off, I'm not talking about airports, just regular fast food and other service industry jobs in general.
Nor am I talking about the quality of the food per se....if you're eating at Wendy's and expecting a gourmet burger you're in the wrong place lol.
I'm talking about tying wages to performance rather than an arbitrary minimum wage that treats all workers the same whether they are a motivated hard worker or a slacker doing just enough to keep his job but no more.
Most wait staff at a normal restaurant typically make less than minimum wage but can make far more than that in tips if they are motivated to do so.
What really gets me about minimum wage hike is that the left seems to think that the money to pay for increases just appears out of thin air....
Businesses are in business to make money....that means the cost has to be passed on to the consumer if the company wishes to stay in business.
And who are the main consumers of fast food?
Not rich people.......so the cost of the wage hike is born by the poor and lower middle class who actually eat fast food on a regular basis.
Who else gets the shaft?
Everyone who makes more than minimum wage effectively gets a pay cut because everything ends up costing more eventually and even the people who got the increase eventually end up right back where they started when prices catch up.
That includes the people who have worked their way up from a minimum wage position and maybe got a promotion along with a pay increase. Because now comes along an arbitrary increase in minimum wage and suddenly the raise they worked hard for is meaningless.
So, wages have to go up for everyone to be "fair" only sometimes they don't and even if they do it does nothing but raise costs for everything else .....homes, cars, groceries, child care, health care etc.
Minimum wage hikes are nothing but politicians buying votes and keeping the never ending circle going is much more in the interests of politicians promoting it than the people getting it.
But in this day and age where even tipping is seen as an entitlement maybe I'm just pipe dreaming lol.
They were forced to do so by the local market and pressure to raise wages. Too many available jobs and not enough workers.
Your using of the word forced doesn't make it the same as this example. They chose to raise wages due to the market conditions. Yeah, that's pretty much the Republican argument you're making there for how wages are increased. Good to know you agree with Republicans.
Now, at SeaTac, the owners have NO say so in this increased cost of business. The local gov't is forcing this upon them - there is no choice involved. Shoot, the employees basically voted themselves a pay raise. See, that's what force actually looks like.
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