$15.00 Minimum Wage

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by Flagg

I know in my business I've got one of my senior managers whose stated job is a license to kill the Good Idea Fairy.

I like Heinlein's layout for a congress in one of his books. In one house it takes minimum 2/3 to pass anything. The other house's sole role is to, with only 1/3 needed, repeal anything stupid from the first house. In my experience, however, "the boss" is often the insomniac Good Idea Faerie so the exercise is a self-licking ice cream cone - with the boss (possibly) having insulated themselves further from the workforce.

At any rate, the winnowing will out. How much of this makes it to the MBA Factories in a discussion of shit not to do remains to be seen.

[PSM]

More causalities on the Minimum Wage front:

Restaurant die-off is first course of California’s $15 minimum wage

BY JEREMY BAGOTT

In a pair of affluent coastal California counties, the canary in the mineshaft has gotten splayed, spatchcocked and plated over a bed of unintended consequences, garnished with sprigs of locally sourced economic distortion and non-GMO, “What the heck were they thinking?”

The result of one early experiment in a citywide $15 minimum wage is an ominous sign for the state’s poorer inland counties as the statewide wage floor creeps toward the mark.

Consider San Francisco, an early adopter of the $15 wage. It’s now experiencing a restaurant die-off, minting jobless hash-slingers, cashiers, busboys, scullery engineers and line cooks as they get pink-slipped in increasing numbers. And the wage there hasn’t yet hit $15.

As the East Bay Times reported in January, at least 60 restaurants around the Bay Area had closed since September alone.

A recent study by Michael Luca at Harvard Business School and Dara Lee Luca at Mathematica Policy Research found that every $1 hike in the minimum wage brings a 14 percent increase in the likelihood of a 3.5-star restaurant on Yelp! closing.

Another telltale is San Diego, where voters approved increasing the city’s minimum wage to $11.50 per hour from $10.50, this after the minimum wage was increased from $8 an hour in 2015 – meaning hourly costs have risen 43 percent in two years.

The cost increases have pushed San Diego restaurants to the brink, Stephen Zolezzi, president of the Food and Beverage Association of San Diego County, told the San Diego Business Journal. Watch for the next mass die-off there.

But what of California’s less affluent inland counties? How will they fare?

Christopher Thornberg, director of UC Riverside’s Center for Economic Forecasting and Development, told the San Bernardino Sun that politicians should have adopted a regional approach. He said it would been better to adapt minimum-wage levels to varying economies – something like the Oregon model, the nation’s first multi-tiered minimum-wage strategy.

Oregon’s minimum-wage law is phased, with increases over six years. By 2022, the minimum will be $14.75 an hour in Portland, $13.50 in midsize counties and $12.50 in rural areas.

“That makes sense,” Thornberg told the Sun. “That’s logical.”

California is even more varied economically than Oregon. Thornberg believes hiking wages in blanket fashion will spark layoffs and edge low-skilled workers out of the job market.

In the Central Valley, wages for all workers, on average, are lower than those of the coastal counties.

U.S. Census Bureau data show about 21 percent of workers in Bakersfield earned from $8 to $12 per hour in 2015, the most recent year for which data was available. In Fresno, 32 percent of workers were in that wage group, and in Modesto about 25 percent. Contrast that with Santa Clara County, home of Silicon Valley, which registered only 12.5 percent at that level.

The state’s diverse unemployment rates tell a similar tale. Unemployment in Bakersfield was 9.5 percent; 8.8 percent in Fresno, and Stanislaus County notched 7.9 percent. Compare that to Silicon Valley’s unemployment rate – 3.2 percent

“Part of our whole concern with (the $15 wage) is it’s a one-size-fits-all,” Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, told The Sacramento Bee last year. “Areas with double-digit unemployment, this is scaring them to death.”

Jamil Dada, chairman of the Riverside County Workforce Development Board, told the Sun that he believed the state’s Inland Empire will be hit harder than other parts of the state.

“It might be tolerable in the coastal regions,” he said. “Their business environment is completely different.”

As politicians insert their sausage fingers into subtle market mechanisms, scarcity and unintended consequences will ensue.

Joining San Francisco’s restaurant die-off was rising star AQ, which in 2012 was named a James Beard Award finalist for the best new restaurant in America. The restaurant’s profit margins went from a reported 8.5 percent in 2012 to 1.5 percent by 2015. Most restaurants are thought to require margins of 3 and 5 percent.

If what’s happening with one early adopter of the $15 wage progression is any indication, locally famous inland hash houses and burger joints from Calexico to the Cow Counties will disappear as mandated wages climb to $15 statewide. And that will only be the start of things.

Jeremy Bagott, a former journalist, writes about California finance and land-use issues. He wrote this for The Modesto Bee.

http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/opn...155979969.html

Pat

[The Reaper]

As predicted.

Libs do not understand that someone has to eventually pay the bill.

TR

[Box]

...bill?

[Flagg]

Having spent a lot of time in the Bay Area in the last year, I reckon it's not just wages that hurt restaurants, but the similar sized overheads of real estate rent/lease costs.

Real estate costs have gone full retard in the Bay Area.

Young high paid hotshot coders at Google bus in from long distance(at company expense) because they can't afford to live anywhere nearby.

I honestly believe that if people were allowed to cook for profit in their own kitchen to provide meals for other people delivered by the likes of UberEats or Lyft, or even delivered in person thru ultra-local ordering, we will see a further nail in the coffin of restaurants.

Food health and safety restrictions will probably prevent this.

There's already a huge movement towards industrial scale but individualised and perfectly timed grocery and prepared food pickup and delivery from my old employer Amazon.

[glebo]

California will tax and out pay themselves into oblivion....and say...hey...whaaa happened man???

They'll eat themselves from within...dumbasses...

[miclo18d]

Originally Posted by glebo

California will tax and out pay themselves into oblivion....and say...hey...whaaa happened man???

They'll eat themselves from within...dumbasses...

"You can't out earn stupidity" -- Dave Ramsey, radio host

[Guy]

Fast food restaurants start using kiosks....

[bblhead672]

Originally Posted by Guy

Fast food restaurants start using kiosks....

At least the kiosks can be programmed to appear to appreciate your business. Unless the fast food chains want to make the experience more "human" by having the kiosk ignore you for awhile, then be sullen and spit in your food.

[ddoering]

And they won't spit in your food if they don't like how you look.

[PSM]

Originally Posted by ddoering

And they won't spit in your food if they don't like how you look.

I can't use my White Privilege?

[GratefulCitizen]

The discussion politicians don't want to have:
https://youtu.be/fjs2gPa5sD0

Participation trophies don't give honest feedback.
Life isn't fair, and that is a fact which must be addressed.

[TJ11B]

Originally Posted by GratefulCitizen

The discussion politicians don't want to have:
https://youtu.be/fjs2gPa5sD0

Participation trophies don't give honest feedback.
Life isn't fair, and that is a fact which must be addressed.

Indeed.
I find myself watching more and more Dr. Peterson videos here lately. He really seems to get it IMHO. Some may call it "social Darwinism", but I call it motivation.

[bblhead672]

Originally Posted by Flagg

Food health and safety restrictions will probably prevent this.

I thought health and safety reasons had been cancelled when SF decided it's okay for humans to crap in the streets and sidewalks.

[abc_123]

Originally Posted by bblhead672

At least the kiosks can be programmed to appear to appreciate your business. Unless the fast food chains want to make the experience more "human" by having the kiosk ignore you for awhile, then be sullen and spit in your food.

Don't worry the humans will still be there to put the wrong stuff in your bag at the drive thru window and spit in your food.