Think $4 toast is bad? Try $6 toast, with no one to serve it to you.It amazes me that lefties still haven't figured out that you can't merely legislate people into prosperity.
A survey on one major Bay Area city's minimum-wage hike and its negative impact on businesses could be a warning sign for San Francisco leaders who are seeking to boost the nation's already-highest minimum wage.
In San Jose, a 25 percent minimum-wage hike last year led to higher prices for consumers and fewer hours for workers at restaurants, according to a survey conducted by the Employment Policy Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Meanwhile, leaders in San Francisco -- which has a $10.74 minimum wage -- are calling for The City's lowest-paid workers to take home even more, possibly $15 per hour. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, has repeatedly called for an increase to the federal minimum wage.
"It's just bad public policy," said Michael Saltsman, the EPI's research director. "It's a warning for San Francisco -- and it's a warning for Congress"...
Out of the 163 South Bay restaurants surveyed, 108 -- or two-thirds -- raised prices after the $10 minimum wage took effect. Another 73 reduced workers' hours, and 69 restaurants cut staff entirely.
The notion of increasing San Francisco's minimum wage to $15 an hour is getting more traction. The influential San Francisco Labor Council recently called for such a figure.
Education, politics, and anything else that catches my attention.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Yet Another Tax On People Who Don't Understand Economics
Why not just raise the minimum wage to $100/hr? Then we'd all be rich:
I think this will end poorly if the minimum wage is set to something reasonably, high ... and, yet, I'm willing for California to try!
ReplyDeleteThe only way to know for *SURE* how this turns out is for some brave state to make it happen. California like to be the leader on social change, so California is the obvious choice.
$20/hour minimum wage statewide. No exceptions!
Lets try it for five years and see.
-Mark Roulo (SF Bay Area Resident)
Darren,
ReplyDeleteDidn't Nancy Pelosi and her husband make a fortune in wine production by, among other things, pulling a fast one to avoid union wages on their employees?
Marco
ReplyDeleteCalifornia or New York would be the logical choices. And after they push out the rest of their business out to more sane states like Texas, Utah or Nevada, no federal bailout, period!
Sorry Mark but even enacting a ridiculously high minimum wage, and watching it tank the economy, won't prove a thing to the faithful.
ReplyDeleteThere will be endless and inventive excuses, and the proponents will fight to retain the policy just as they fought to retain whole language in California after that idiotic idea drove California's reading scores from number two in the nation to number forty-nine.
Espousal of a minimum wage increase is evidence of moral elevation and admission of its failure would disprove that assumption of moral elevation. That's just not acceptable.
If you REALLY understand economics, you support not having a minimum wage at all. It's actually a gift to the industries that primarily hire people at minimum wage...because they know that that's all the need to pay. Let worker's unionize, let them negotiate. If they have a pool of workers sufficient to staff their business at $5 an hour, so be it ... if that same pool of workers wants $20/hr, and the firm can't afford it, they won't have jobs. Minimum wage laws work only slightly less well than rent control laws ... exactly the same concept.
ReplyDelete