Tag: minimum wage

Big Labor seeks LA minimum wage hike exemption for companies that hire Big Labor.

Full points for chutzpah: “Labor leaders, who were among the strongest supporters of the citywide minimum wage increase approved last week by the Los Angeles City Council, are advocating last-minute changes to the law that could create an exemption for companies with unionized workforces.”  And, here’s the funny part: there’s a section of the Right that actually hopes that the unions manage to get this. Of course, most of the aforementioned section live in Texas…

Via  Continue reading Big Labor seeks LA minimum wage hike exemption for companies that hire Big Labor.

Los Angeles vows to become the first fully-cybernetic American megalopolis.

As somebody once noted: the true minimum wage is zero.

Mind you, this vow is in code.  One does not simply openly state that the goal is to remove a human being from every single job that can instead be automated. Consumers can get very touchy about that sort of thing (particularly when they start wondering if their ultimate fate is going to involve anything more lofty than a protein rendering vat).  No, what one does instead is call your technocratic goal something else.  In this case, the euphemism is ‘minimum wage increase:’ “The nation’s second-largest city voted Tuesday to increase its minimum wage from $9 an hour to $15 an hour by 2020, in what is perhaps the most significant victory so far for labor groups and their allies who are engaged in a national push to raise the minimum wage.”

But that sentence should note terrify small businesses that currently operate in Los Angeles. No, this sentence from the same article should terrify them: “Even economists who support increasing the minimum wage say there is not enough historical data to predict the effect of a $15 minimum wage, an unprecedented increase.”  It’s terrifying because it’s such a stupid lie. After all, it’s not exactly a secret what happens: Continue reading Los Angeles vows to become the first fully-cybernetic American megalopolis.

More inevitable results of the Seattle minimum wage hike.

In a development that will shock precisely nobody who wasn’t paying attention, the new Seattle minimum wage hike has claimed another business (Z Pizza). This is of note partially because there’s apparently a wrinkle to the Seattle law: while ‘regular’ businesses have six years to get their wages up, franchises have only two.  Don’t you just love it when progressives play their little social engineering games with your livelihood and neighborhood? – I mean, it’s pretty clear by now that you can’t expect these people to come in out of the rain, but they are certainly always so enthusiastic when they drive the car into a ditch. Continue reading More inevitable results of the Seattle minimum wage hike.

The fascinating thing about these stories of Seattle restaurant closings…

…is how the comments section here and here is so full of people who refuse to admit that their successful drive to impose a $15/hr minimum wage on Seattle businesses is going to result in the steady exodus of businesses from Seattle (see also here).  This is what happens when you let people who think that ‘capitalism’ is a dirty word run economic policy; it’s like letting a Ptolemic astrologer write your astronomy textbooks, or a phlogiston-believing alchemist plan out your chemistry curriculum.   I mean, I’m sure that some of those economic illiterates meant well, but meaning well doesn’t make payroll. Continue reading The fascinating thing about these stories of Seattle restaurant closings…

Protesters arrested in nationwide pro-fast food automation protests.

Although for some reason they’re calling them ‘minimum wage increase protests:’

Police handcuffed dozens of protesters who blocked traffic in dozens of cities across the country on Thursday in their latest attempt to escalate efforts to get McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food companies to pay employees at least $15 an hour.

The protests, which were planned by labor organizers for about 150 cities nationwide throughout Thursday, are part of a campaign called “Fight for $15.”

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I’ll do it again: the only reason that these jobs aren’t automated now is because it’s cheaper to hire a human. Change that, and the job goes away. Admittedly, at this rate it’s eventually going to be a great time to be a automatic burger dispenser mechanic, but that’s a job that actually requires training.

Via Drudge.

Moe Lane

Witness the endgame of unionizing/raising minimum wage of fast food workers.

Fewer fast food workers.

mickey-dees

Via Legal Insurrection, via Hot Air.  That one station represents three, maybe four part time jobs – and that’s assuming that it processes orders about as fast as a human would.  If it can do so at a higher rate than the equivalent flesh-and-blood cashier then that one item will eliminate about fifteen or so jobs.  And, let me tell you: managers hate having human cashiers.  Human cashiers give out incorrect change, get scammed out of money, ring up the wrong orders, give out unauthorized upgrades in the (usually vain) hopes of impressing the opposite or desired sex, and generally stand there looking vaguely unappealing.  Plus, now you have to give employees medical benefits, despite the fact that turnover is so high in the fast food industry that there’s a reasonable chance that they’ll be gone before the paperwork clears. Continue reading Witness the endgame of unionizing/raising minimum wage of fast food workers.

A handy illustration of the problem with just hiking the minimum wage.

This Tweet says it all:

Continue reading A handy illustration of the problem with just hiking the minimum wage.

Harry Reid deliberately fails to advance his job-killing bill.

If you’re wondering why Republican Senators were perfectly happy to kill Harry Reid’s job-killing bill masquerading as a minimum-wage hike earlier today, this is why:

[Senator John] Thune [R, South Dakota] cited a Bloomberg poll showing 57 percent of the public views the potential loss of 500,000 jobs, a figure projected by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), as an unacceptable tradeoff for raising the minimum wage to a $10.10 hourly rate. The CBO dealt a huge blow to the legislation, the centerpiece of the Democrats’ 2014 agenda, when it warned in February of its impact on jobs.

Continue reading Harry Reid deliberately fails to advance his job-killing bill.

Hey! Twenty three Democratic Senators can do minimum wage math!

Shocking. Why have they hidden their light under a bushel for all these years?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday delayed action on legislation raising the minimum wage, the centerpiece of the Democrats’ 2014 agenda.

[snip]

Reid has not yet unified his caucus on the issue, which is a constant in the Democrats’ election-year playbook. Of the 55 senators who caucus with the Democrats, only 32 have signed on as official co-sponsors of Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-Iowa) bill.

Continue reading Hey! Twenty three Democratic Senators can do minimum wage math!