The consequences of a $15/hr minimum wage

S.J.WPlaces like McDonalds won't lay off staff, they can't. They are already operating at the lowest possible amount of staff they can have, so as to maximize profits. As for cost of living, yes that will go up but only in key areas of bread/ milk and necessities. 15 an hour is still shit all to live on and your gucci hand bag will be fine OP. But they don't deserve 15 an hour, maybe 10 max. If you're working at McDonalds for a career then you're a fucking idiot. Plain and simple. I'm 18 turning 19 and I've worked at McDonalds since I was 14 and yeah it sucked to go from 17 an hour in Australia to 11 an hour in Canada but you make sacrifices. And no I'm not choosing McDonalds as a career

cool_nameThe amount of staff required to maximize profits will change when the cost of employees goes up 50%

S.J.Wbut they can't change how many staff they put on. Hypothetically it takes 10 staff to deal with 100 customers so their experience is satisfactory. If they drop down to 9 staff for 100 customers then customer satisfaction will drop. And McDonalds cares more about repeat customers more than they do about making a profit

cool_nameWhy do they care repeat customers?

NickyToorThe current minemum wage is not enough to live on, especially when it's supporting more than one person. People claim that only teens who don't support thsves have those jobs, but in reality most of these positions are held be adults supporting at least one other person. Everybody deserves a livable wage. People also make the argument that raising the minemum wage will force prices up because they don't have the extra money, however, if you look at companies like Walmart and McDonald's, they can easily afford it. Their CEOs are earning tens of millions of dollars when their employees don't have enough to live on. The Walton family is worth as much as the entirety of Mongolia. They could easily pay their employees much better, only their greed stops them. We need a national minemum wage if $15. We are one of the only developed countries that has people that still can't get by with a job and welfare.

ryanoSince when is it the governments job to take care of society and their poor decisions that lead them to making a career out of working for McDonalds, etc.

And you do realize there are tens of thousands of businesses (small or relatively big), other than wal mart or mcdonalds, right? Thats what this new law is and already has affected.

So since minimum wage is increasing in LA, does that mean I can double my day rates when charging for my work? It should be only fair, right? Or at the very least, raise my rates the same percentage that the cost of living will go up.

People said obamacare wouldn't affect hours, employment, etc.. But guess what. It has. I know several people that have had their hours cut to 24hrs a week so the company doesn't have to pay for healthcare..

ryanoSeattle was the first city to implement this minimum wage increase, and LA has come to be the 2nd. Only time will tell if this was a terrible decision.



42 percent of surveyed employers were “very likely” to reduce the number of employees per shift

44 percent reported that they were “very likely” to scale back on employees’ hours to help offset the increased cost of the law

More than 43 percent of respondents said it was “very likely” they would limit future expansion in Seattle in response to the law

One in seven respondents is even “very likely” to close a current location in the city limits


Full article here:
http://viral.buzz/seattles-15-minimum-wage-crash-for-many-their-new-wage-is-zero/




To me, in the end, employers will cut employees hours even more so since obamacare was enacted. They may even be forced to lay off a few employees, causing unemployment rates to go up. Cost of living will go up to offset wage increase. Small businesses who can't afford it will be forced to close, or move out of the city. Which in return, means corporate giants will continue taking over the ma&pa shops of america.

Granite_StateYeah fuck universal healthcare and providing low-income families with a livable wage!!! Whats that terrorist thinking! Let go back to the privatized system and 7.25/hour without adjustments for inflation because thats what our founding fathers would have wanted.

Granite_StateYeah fuck universal healthcare and providing low-income families with a livable wage!!! Whats that terrorist thinking! Let go back to the privatized system and 7.25/hour without adjustments for inflation because thats what our founding fathers would have wanted.

ANDR01DNo, what the founding fathers would have wanted is for people to take advantage of the opportunities this country provides and work hard to increase their standing (Skilled Labor and Degrees). The last thing they would want is for those who have worked hard to be no better off than McDonald's employees. Or God forbid, someone decides to forgo hard work because places like McDonald's are now the easiest bucks you'll ever earn.

S.J.WBut they don't deserve 15 an hour, maybe 10 max. If you're working at McDonalds for a career then you're a fucking idiot. Plain and simple.

turquoise

S.J.Wbut they can't change how many staff they put on. Hypothetically it takes 10 staff to deal with 100 customers so their experience is satisfactory. If they drop down to 9 staff for 100 customers then customer satisfaction will drop. And McDonalds cares more about repeat customers more than they do about making a profit

S.J.Whahahha supply and demand curves are used for the most of basic high school economics. They have no real world application and as for your graph, hahahahaha. That's so false

integralmgmtFor the vast majority of businesses affected (Walmart, McDonalds, etc...) employee wages constitute an incredibly small portion of their total costs. To me, the ideal situation would be a federally mandated $15 minimum wage with public support. For those talking about inflation due to that type of raise, it simply wouldn't happen. The vast majority of wealth is in the hands of the wealthiest few, and this would be a very small change in wealth distribution and amount of money in circulation.

S.J.Wwell if McDonalds quality drops (lol) then people will choose other restaurants. Both McDonalds in America and Canada failed to grow profits last financial year so they're not about to cut staff to maximize profits because everything will fall to shit in their restaurants.

NickyToorYou just said that the government shouldn't do anything at all for their constituents. Forgive me if Im wrong, but Im pretty sure the whole point of government is to take care of society. Most people who make a career out of McDonalds are forced to. They didn't choose it. Most either didn't get a college education because it was insanely expensive (which is a whole different topic) or have some other handicap like not speaking english. According to the Washington Post, "nearly a third fast food workers have some sort of college experience." Virtually no long term fast food employees got that way by their own means.

Everybody keeps claiming that raising the minimum wage will hurt small business, but it can have several benefits. For example, the Washington Post says “The only way a business is going to survive is if people have money to spend, and if people have money to spend, they will buy your product,” Barb Johnson, who owns a small cafe in Minnesota, said in an interview earlier this year with the University of Minnesota.
“I’m not losing money by paying one or two people higher wages if I’m busy enough,” she added. “And I would be busier if more people had more money.”
John Shepley is one of the owners of a Maryland business that grow plants for eco-friendly roofs. His state last month became the second state to embrace the president’s calls for a $10.10 minimum wage, says he favors the wage hike. He noted that low-wage workers usually turn right around spend nearly all of their earnings, often at local businesses.
“That added spending, added tax base, and all the other benefits are going to far outweigh any conceivable downsides,” he said at an event with the Department of Labor."

As to obamacare, the only reason there were so many problems was because the conservatives were determined from day one to hinder it in every way possible to make obama look bad. If the company cuts their hours to 24hrs a week to avoid paying for healthcare, then theyre being dicks. Healthcare should be universal, but at the very least covered by the employer.

S.J.Whahahha supply and demand curves are used for the most of basic high school economics. They have no real world application and as for your graph, hahahahaha. That's so false

Granite_StateGetting a degree is insanely expensive and with the current job market not even 100% secure. Skilled labor is good and is a cheaper alternative with sometimes equally high if not higher payout than some degrees. But some people don't have the time or financial resources to do either of these. It seems the conservatives on this site feel that anyone can receive higher education, but that is an absurd fallacy.

Then you factor in people who never went to college for various reasons but still need an education to get a decent job anywhere. Now imagine this person has kids. It goes on and on and on. People seem to think getting a college degree is a black or white choice but its not.

The world needs people to work at McDonalds and Walmart. If everyone "worked hard" and "got an education" there'd be no people to fill these jobs. Now I'm not saying the minimum wage needs to be 15, just something livable, and 7.25-10 is hardly livable.

turquoise

KravtZYour a genuine moron. Supply and demand is so fucking relevant to real world applications. Seattle and LA raising minimum wage to $15 an hour could be the worst decision of all time. For one, business WILL cut back employee hours, # of workers, etc in order to offset the rising cost of labor.

Not to mention that Supply and Demand dictates wages. Why the fuck would Joe Schmoe who owns XYZ small business give his employee an automatic 100% raise from lets say 7.50 an hour minimum wage to $15 just because the government said they had to? If Joe's employees doesn't like what he makes now, well that he can fucking do what everyone who isnt a whiny fucking liberal would do. Either get an education, or better themselves in a way to position themselves to make more money.

Why should our government dictate how much people should make? They can't even run a balanced budget. Its not my fault people make poor decisions in life that lead them to working minimum wage as an adult. Minimum wage jobs WERE NOT meant to support a family. etc....they were designed for teenagers

PULLIm sorry but if you think its even remotely ok to not go to college or at least learn a craft or skill then you are flat retarded. There are government agencies or banks who will give you the money to go to school, mostly because it is a good investment.

Also the unskilled labor market will always be saturated. When people don't go to college or become productive parts of the economy it hurts america's productivity per capita. Going to school allows you to get a step above unskilled labor which makes money essentially and usually because you can then control the unskilled workers. American productivity per capita is factually is higher than any other country because people go to school and end up being bosses or managers of less skilled workers in which you then encapsulate the productivity of all those below you. Americans do an excellent job of this abroad (sweatshops etc) and make bank but some idiots at home still think for some reason its OK to get that sweatshop job and be entitiled to $15 and hour when a chinese worker makes a hundreth of that, another reason why the unskilled labor market is far from running out of willing hands.

MCsugarcatYes it will force the shareholders and CEOs and billionaires to take a smaller cut of the profits and again Im sure poor dickheads on here will hate that the upper eschelon of society has less power over the lower classes but again it will be a great thing.

TOAST.Or they will increase prices and cut back on staff so their cut stays the same.

TOAST.Or they will increase prices and cut back on staff so their cut stays the same.

Granite_StateThey are already doing that.

ANDR01DI find it hilarious that you guys think that higher-ups will cough up money meant for their pocket to pay no-skill labor $15/hr. If they can't cut any more entry level positions, all that is going to happen is that middle class people lose their jobs too. And now you will have have hard working people suffering for career McDonald's workers.

Is that really what you want?

ryanoSince when is it the governments job to take care of society and their poor decisions that lead them to making a career out of working for McDonalds, etc.

S.J.WPlaces like McDonalds won't lay off staff, they can't. They are already operating at the lowest possible amount of staff they can have, so as to maximize profits. As for cost of living, yes that will go up but only in key areas of bread/ milk and necessities. 15 an hour is still shit all to live on and your gucci hand bag will be fine OP. But they don't deserve 15 an hour, maybe 10 max. If you're working at McDonalds for a career then you're a fucking idiot. Plain and simple. I'm 18 turning 19 and I've worked at McDonalds since I was 14 and yeah it sucked to go from 17 an hour in Australia to 11 an hour in Canada but you make sacrifices. And no I'm not choosing McDonalds as a career

.Frybased on the intelligence that you show on this website, I wouldn't be surprised if you spent the rest of your life at mcdanks