$15 Minimum Wage in Seattle Approved

inb4 lattes go up to $14, and the tech guys in Seattle develop robots to make minimum wage workers obsolete, bringing lattes back down to $6.

This is a great point. At $15 hour, the lowest skilled workers are going to have a huge target on their backs. At the current wages, they may be staying under the radar.
 


I wonder why no one is pointing out how much this broadens the market for illegals - they just got a lot more attractive.
 
If the shift manager makes $15 per hour currently, and he makes double what the guy who mops and takes out the trash makes at $7.50 an hour, what happens to the shift manager once the guy who takes out the trash now makes the same as him? Do you think the shift manager will want a raise? Should he get a $7.50 raise ($22.50/hr) like his subordinate? or should he get a 100% raise ($30/hr), like his subordinate?

What about the shift manager's boss, the general manager, who makes $20/hr? Surely he deserves a raise too, now that all of his employees are making more and his shift manager is making more than him.

This is assuming that as the owner, I don't just fire the trash guy and make the shift manager do that shit from now on for a $1 raise.
 
If the shift manager makes $15 per hour currently, and he makes double what the guy who mops and takes out the trash makes at $7.50 an hour, what happens to the shift manager once the guy who takes out the trash now makes the same as him? Do you think the shift manager will want a raise? Should he get a $7.50 raise ($22.50/hr) like his subordinate? or should he get a 100% raise ($30/hr), like his subordinate?

What about the shift manager's boss, the general manager, who makes $20/hr? Surely he deserves a raise too, now that all of his employees are making more and his shift manager is making more than him.

This is assuming that as the owner, I don't just fire the trash guy and make the shift manager do that shit from now on for a $1 raise.

Depending on how many people the shift manager has under him. He will get a raise and 3 out of the 5 people below him will be fired. He will now have more work to do and so will the 2 people left over. This will create more people dependant on the government, which is what the government needs in order to stay in control. Business owners will start looking for the highest skillset workers between $15-$20 per hour, with the new flood of people that are unemployed, they will have a huge selection, but that doesnt mean the selection will be great.
 
1175602_10152425550034243_7598159240123689867_n.jpg
10157357_639166696160175_2164482938001027045_n.jpg
 
Although I live on the other side of the country, I'm almost positive that the minimum wage morons who voted for this shitty idea will be able to hear my bellowing laughter when semi-skilled unemployed or underemployed workers from surrounding areas flood Seattle, and put the unskilled labor this law was supposed to help out of work immediately.

Stay tuned for leftists telling us what the optimum price for a gallon of milk or a haircut is, since after all, there is no fucking way a market derived price schedule could possibly be more accurate than some plan made by a planner.

Am I Right?
 
Get up to speed on minimum wage studies

"The influential Congressional Budget Office – widely viewed as a nonpartisan scorekeeper for US fiscal and economic policy – weighed in on a controversial issue Tuesday, releasing an estimate that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would cost the nation’s economy 500,000 jobs...

The CBO reached its conclusion by drawing on an array of mainstream academic studies, not by doing its own original research
."

Would a $10.10 minimum wage really cost 500,000 jobs? Obama and CBO at odds. (+video) - CSMonitor.com
 
  • Like
Reactions: JakeStratham
That's not an assumption libertarians make at all. It never has been, and wouldn't be. Well, anyway, it's not an assumption a free market economist would make.

You're starting your analysis of someone else's analysis by making your own incorrect assumptions about their assumptions.

That's reassuring as you never hear libertarians (or at least I haven't) discuss the perils of free markets. Thanks for setting me straight
 

Honestly, I think it'll go this way even at $8 min wage even $1 minimum wage, no wage. Less room for error, faster and more efficient.

McDonalds already has order screens. Software update and switch hardware to a touch screen. A parent could order food with a car full of screaming kids, WAY faster. Hell, automate the whole fucking place and have one guy as an operator. He could even do it remotely and watch over like 50 stores at once.

I see stores like best buy ect becoming nothing more than a showroom / vending type deal. Where its once big vending machine with videos for users. I used to think stores like this would become nothing more than showrooms. But I miss judged instant gratification.
 
Honestly, I think it'll go this way even at $8 min wage even $1 minimum wage, no wage. Less room for error, faster and more efficient.
Yeah, because these machines are all free to the business owners, amirite?

Have you never heard of an economic incentive? Cheap labor always 'costs' far less than machines like these when you're running a business like McDs.


For how many hours some one need to work in a day to get $15?
Oh Grindstone, you're such a card!
 
Regarding the use of government data to demonstrate causality...

It's incredibly difficult, even impossible, to isolate the factors that contribute to any given result.

For example, suppose we're using government data to establish that raising the minimum wage leads to a rise in unemployment. Let's also suppose that when we graph those two events over time, we find that their respective trajectories are positively correlated.

Here's the problem: there are many unknown factors that are affecting unemployment. For that reason, proving causality with the data at hand is virtually impossible. And as a result, any argument based on the assumption that one event caused another event becomes vulnerable to debate.

Here's a hypothetical example...

Let's say someone produced a chart showing that a rise in the minimum wage was (surprise!) actually associated with a decline in unemployment over time. What are some of the factors that may have contributed to the decline that haven't been taken into account?

Is it possible that employers might receive subsidies for hiring select groups, thereby artificially suppressing the unemployment rate? Of course (see link below):

Connecticut Employers Can Receive Subsidies for Hiring Unemployed Veterans | Climbing Back

Is it possible that the federal government might tighten affirmative action laws to the same effect? (Note that such laws extend far beyond juicing staffing percentages.) Of course (see link below):

Uncle Sam Wants You ... to Hire More Vets, Women, and Minorities - Businessweek

Therein lies the problem with using data - i.e. empirical "evidence" - to demonstrate causality. It has been mentioned many times on WF. (For example, the fact that a rooster crows as the sun rises obviously doesn't mean the rooster's crowing has caused the sun to rise. Other factors are in play.)

But this same mistake - assuming causality - is made continuously when people discuss the economic effect of any given event.

Years ago, Hans Hoppe wrote about the need to approach economics as an a priori science rather than one based on empiricism. The link is below:

Austrian Method, Praxeology I

Here's a short video in which Hoppe discusses the same issue:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx7XUuPrbZo]The A priori of Argumention - YouTube[/ame]


There's another problem with demonstrating causality. Even if we can do so - and again, doing so is virtually impossible because of what we do not know - the long-term effects of any given event are usually ignored. Hazlitt mentioned this problem in the first chapter of his book Economics in One Lesson (see my previous post for a link to that book). He noted the following:

In addition to these endless pleadings of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.


The problems outlined all but ensure that no one will give ground. The reason? Because everything based on empirical data is open to debate. The application of logic to prove causality is a much purer approach. But it's also one that is doomed to fail here.

Will raising the minimum wage to $15/hr. cause a long-term rise in employment within our current system - that is, one based on legislation and taxation? Impossible to know and impossible to prove. There are too many factors in play and too many fingers on buttons that manipulate those factors.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pinchyfingers
If I have a burger joint, and I employee 20 kids paying them $8-$10/hour to slang my burgers, what do you think I'm going to do when the government tells me I have to double their wages? Will I:

A) Take it in the ass, move into a smaller house, buy my kids fewer things and stop taking vacations in order to keep all of my unskilled teenage workers employed

B) Double my prices

C) Cut the fat, and get more efficient by using fewer workers to run my business

D) Live in Jerry's magical world where I can keep everyone employed and pay them twice as much without having to raise my prices?

^ Spot on. Raising minimum wage, essentially, would reflect back into higher cost of goods (which ironically, would hit the lower & middle class the hardest).

These minimum wage topics are often a method to buy votes. Unfortunately, look at the bankruptcies of San Bernardino or Stockton, CA for an example of a bubble popping.

One of my favorite quotes was from a French historian who lived in the 1800s.

His quote about America:
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money” - Alexis de Tocquevile