Minimum Wage Madness Begins to Kill Off California’s Restaurant Industry
The restaurant industry is a canary in California’s coalmine of moonbattery. Minimum wage insanity is killing it:
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. …
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.
It’s bad enough in big cities on the coast. Wages, like prices, are lower inland and in smaller towns. That means that one-size-fits-all central planning is even more unsupportable regarding the minimum wage. Unemployment is already significantly higher away from the coast in California. It will soon be higher still — not that the coastal big city liberals who call the shots are likely to lose sleep over it.
As politicians insert their sausage fingers into subtle market mechanisms, scarcity and unintended consequences will ensue.
One consequence of raising the minimum wage that is so easily predictable that it is hard to call it unintended is the scarcity of jobs. Unemployed people tend to vote Democrat.
The state minimum wage in California is scheduled to jump every year. It will reach $15/hour for all employees in 2023. Each jump will cause a corresponding jump in unemployment, hardship, and if everything goes to hell smoothly, Democrat voters.
On a tip from Jester.
Its a feature, not a bug. More dependents on the nanny state.
‘That means that one-size-fits-all central planning is even more unsupportable regarding the minimum wage.’
Yeah, I was going to say, if you scratch that article, author is not arguing against the Minimum Wage, his argument is in support of the Minimum Wage, but “done right”.
I was thinking this too. I can’t think of a better way to generate massive amounts of youth unemployment. Moonbats are dumb, but this dumb? I submit that they know what they’re doing, but to what ends? What can be accomplished by massive amount of unemployed youth, with lots of free time and dismal future prospects?
Socialists are like the proverbial idiot who puts his hand in the fire, gets his fingers burned so puts his hand in again…. and again.
If there was ever such a thing as a never-ending loop of stupidity it would be found in the dictionary under the word “socialist”.
And of course, these morons think they know what’s best for the rest of us!
It’s all part of the establishment of a New World Order. Get people completely dependent upon government and then enslave them.
Once the NWO becomes a reality, they’ll be forced off their lazy asses and put back into work with the government deciding what their menial slave-labor wages will be.
Unarmed and clueless, If they don’t work, they won’t eat – and they’ll be forced by the police state to live under a rod of iron.
Meanwhile the elite at the top will enjoy the benefits of their labor.
But first you have to make sure that they think that slavery is good for them…. it all starts with a few freebies. Give them a few shiny objects to distract them into the trap, tell them that they’re good little boys and girls, tell them that they’re clever, pat their heads, and get them all to suck on the government teat!
That’s cool. The Gubmint can just open school cafeterias to everyone all the time. Who needs that evil profit-seeking private sector anyway?
Ha ha ha ha ha. Told you so!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Big chain restaurants LOVE higher minimum wage; it serves as a barrier to entry for smaller competitors. Big (crony) business LOVES higher taxes and tougher regulations for the same reason. Small business (the biggest source of new jobs) cannot compete.
There may be something to that, but also many union salaries scale on minimum wage. So, minimum wage goes up, all the (already well paid) union folks get a huge bump. Of course if hurts entry level/youth workers, but since those don’t tend to be union jobs anyway, not their problem.
It’s California, so most of the restaurant owners probably voted for it. Too bad, but who cares?
“I didn’t expect the unexpected!”
— Monty Python
“I didn’t expect the expected!”
— Democrats
Well said sir! And spot on too.
The microecon-fu is strong in this one. Have an upboat!
Last year the neo-commies started saying “Capitalism has failed”; now they have to ARRANGE for that to happen.
Back in the thirties, it was introduced because people were working for tips, meals, or products to sell or use. The minimum wage was supposed to insure that people were PAID. It didn’t take long for politicians to realize that they could use it to buy votes with OTHER PEOPLES’ money.
Nothing wrong in the original scenario.
Even though what we operate under is “crony capitalism” run by the Ideocracy.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Rudyard Kipling
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