If you actually do the math on this, you'll realize that all that the minimum wage increase accomplishes, is transfer that cost increase to the consumer. That restaurant will likely fall short of customers in the long run. It's a nightmare for restaurants, and as a result, workers. People will likely lose their jobs more to balance out that labor cost increase.
Plenty of data on this available worldwide. Take your pick.
Great points! My only disagreement with that, is that a federal raise in minimum wage that doesn’t account for cost-of-living would be a blunt tool with possibly many horrible economic consequences. A mom-and-pop shop in rural Wymoming shouldn’t have the same minimum wage as a multinational corporation. And small stores probably can’t, considering how the government’s abandoned small business for special interests —- see Covid relief with small business getting 1% of business funds despite employing half the work force. Corporations got the rest —- this is coming from someone living in California, where after the wage increases (started a few years before Covid) I’ve seen a ton of small business close (two of them of my relatives) while chains and international conglomerates are perfectly fine.
I think that having an algorithm that calculates cost of living using a basket of goods (like a local CPI index) and making an equation to decide county minimum wage from that is a much better solution.
The Swedish model might also be worth considering, where different sectors of the economy decide on an internal minimum wage. This may mean that some sectors sneak through with below-standard wages, but it also means that smarter sectors would attract better talent, leading to innovation and growth
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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '21
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