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This city’s minimum wage is rising to $16.39 an hour on Jan. 1. Instead of receiving a bigger paycheck, I’m left without any pay at all due to the policy change. That’s because the restaurant where I’ve worked for six years is closing as a consequence of the city’s harmful minimum-wage experiment.
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When rent is too high, labor costs too much, and customers don’t want to pay $40 for a roast-chicken entree, the only way for many operators to ease the pain is to close.
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I’ve lived in this city for almost 20 years, supporting my family thanks to the full-service-restaurant industry. Today I’m struggling because of a policy meant to help me. I’m proudly progressive in my politics, but my experience shows that progressives should reconsider minimum-wage laws that hurt the very workers they’re trying to protect.
Without seeing the restaurants financial statements and tax returns her opinion is worthless.
Facts are always more powerful than anecdotes. In 2018, 362 new restaurants opened in Seattle, and 71 closed. While in this specific case it could be that the minimum wage forced the business to close, the law doesn't seem to be stopping other restaurants from being successful.
This does not change the law of supply and demand, which shows that the fiat minimum wage laws on balance hurt those whom they are supposed to help.
If you drop a slip of paper and a gust of wind blows it up into a tree, where it gets stuck, that does not disprove the law of gravity. Nor do your restaurant opening stats disprove the law of supply and demand.
This is basic econ 101. I read it eons ago in a textbook written by liberal economist Paul Samuelson, who showed the folly of the fiat minimum wage with a graph and a few lines of algebra.
Sweden and Denmark have NO fiat minimum wage, but most jobs are unionized. When you have a team of lawyers and professional negotiators to iron out your contract, you will probably get a fair wage. That is the answer, but most US politicians, including Democrats, seem willfully blind to it.
I'm not even going to argue good or bad, hard enough time just getting people to accept basic cause and effect.
Science deniers? There's no science in CBO predictions. Cause and effect? CBO would not know "cause and effect" if it hit them in the face.
Some day, maybe, there'll be a journalist (you know, someone who investigates stuff and reports on their findings) who'll review the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) history of being correct, or even close, in their predictions.
I'm no journalist, but I cannot recall ANY CBO prediction coming true.
I'm not even going to argue good or bad, hard enough time just getting people to accept basic cause and effect.
From the article...
The CBO predicted much bigger job losses than House Democrats, who have pushed for the $15 minimum wage, expected. The study cited "considerable uncertainty" about the impact, because it's hard to know exactly how employers would respond and to predict future wage growth.
Did the study consider businesses closing? That's what happened in this case.
What was your wage back then? Would be interesting to see what it would be now adjusted for inflation.
I remember my mother telling me she made 50 cents an hour working a summer job at a drive-in restaurant in the late '50s. According to this inflation calculator that was $4.58 in today's dollars.
21 states are raising their minimum wage for 2020—-Bad Idea!
Politicians, many with zero business experience can dictate what the minimum wage should be, go figure.
Quote:
As Keith Mestrich, CEO of Amalgamated Bank and a fan of the wage hike noted on Yahoo Finance’s YFi PM, “It's going to be a really happy holiday for a lot of people around the country.”
Really Mestrich...accept for small business like me!
well if there are going to be minimum wage laws, then its the states that should dictate what the miimum wage is, not the feds.
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21 states are raising their minimum wage for 2020—-Bad Idea!
