Restaurant Workers Lose Their Jobs Over Newsom’s $20 Minimum Wage

Not for humans it isn’t.

 

Automation replaces low skill entry level jobs. It's incredibly difficult to automate complex tasks. Especially complex unique tasks. The application of automation even in repetitive simple deployments requires high skill, highly valued labor. By all means, automate. The government's job should be to make sure the labor pool is fully aware of this opportunity. There should be a mechatronics department in every high school. Guidance councilors should be breaking the myth that factories are dirty repetitive sweat shops for stupid people. They offer lucrative, rewarding and stable careers for people with the skill to implement, maintain, and operate the systems that produce.

 

I disagree.

Rewind to the turn of the last century. Automation replaced farm labor. The farm tractor displaced millions of farm laborers. Was that a bad thing, or was it the lynchpin that allowed the vast diversification of production called the industrial revolution?

The larger the free labor pool becomes, the greater the pressure to find a good use for that labor becomes.

 

But low skilled, low experienced, and low educated people are exactly those who need the entry level jobs to earn a little money but more importantly to increase their human capital through on the job experience. Forcing businesses to play an artificially high minimum wage deprives those low skilled people of the on the job opportunity.

 

Yes but at the time 97% of labor was used in farming. Freeing up this labor supply for more productive regarding increasing the standard of living via manufacturing jobs was a very good thing. The two most important factors in the standard of living “hockey stick” were as you point out mechanization of agriculture which spiked productivity and the development of technologies employing fossil fuels to provide inexpensive energy dense power available 24/7.

 

It's a quotient. Just like IQ. It was never a fixed value. It can't be, as every trade is an exchange of value in which the two parties disagree about the actual value exchanged. The buyer values the good more. The seller values the currency more.

 

I'm with you there. I'm not for a minimum wage. The market determines the value of the labor.

I'm more speaking to the people that think they are helping those low skilled workers by artificially inflating the price of low skilled labor. Changing the price does not inherently change the value. It's far better to improve the value of the labor, then it is to moderate the price of it.

 

happens all the time, one will close, another open

 

the market chooses 3rd world wages when they can get away with it

 

Agreed. And with a very high minimum wage employers can’t afford to hire low skilled inexperienced young workers and train them. The biggest losers in all of this increase the minimum wage to help the workers are the low skilled workers who ironically need entry level jobs the most. Once again a progressive policy meant to help instead harms.

 

And the market regulates that too.

If you think people aren't paid enough in a specific market, your best course of action is to enter that market and compete. You'll get the labor, and your competitor will be forced to pay more to compete with you.

 

I'm not sure they do need them the most. Low skill jobs are not just entry level work. There are myriad reasons to take a low skill job. Least of which is to develop skill. Low skill people need to develop skill. We used to do that in our education system. Is there some reason high school students can't learn the skills they would obtain at McDonalds in high school? I don't see a reason why. That's a real low bar to overcome.

 

The public school systems don't educate anymore. Some kids get trapped in situations in which they fail to graduate and have no real work experience. With a high minimum wage they have no opportunity for on the job experience and so end up on public assistance or lives of crime.

 

Fix the problem. Not the effects of the problem

 

The fix is a voucher system - school choice which is favored by IIRC over 80% of low income minority parents. But the Democratic Party is beholden to the teachers unions who are against any form of competition in the public education system.

 

Are most of those that weren't making $20 already immigrant labor?

If a restaurant has quality food, they will do just fine.
Even in the midwest, Mc D's is paying $16/hr starting in some locations.

 

would not work as the corporation that used foreign 3rd world wages would be cheaper

 

And the result is the massive redistribution of wealth away from the middle class and the poor to the richest of the rich:
The top 1% of American earners now own more wealth than the entire middle class
https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...earners-more-wealth-middle-class/71769832007/

Again, what right-wing socialists refuse to understand is that demand is as important to a thriving economy as supply.


`

 

Yes, but if the headline says "Due to Newsom’s $20 Minimum Wage", then it should not be questioned, because the internet is always right.

Who knows, maybe that was the actual reason, but more likely reason is the lack of customers. Usually a raise in operating costs is passed on to the customers (if they exist).

 

Raising wages will stimulate economic growth, reduce reliance on safety nets, and promote overall well-being. For instance, increasing the minimum wage has been shown to boost economic recovery and reduce taxpayer subsidization of low-wage work. Additionally, low wages reduce consumer demand, while hurting innovation and business growth.

 

So what. Wealth creation is not a zero sum game. The more wealth created the better. Wealth creation enables funded demand. Supply always precedes funded demand. If you have the means to demand a Porsche many workers have to trade their human capital for wages to supply the Porsche. It's very simple to understand.

 

It is very simple to understand that wealth hoarding by the richest of the rich hurts the economy. Demand is stifled and third-world economic conditions are created.

 

The richest people do not hoard wealth, they invest it creating more wealth. That is how they have become wealthy. Everyone benefits from wealth creation.

 

No it want, increased production stimulates economic growth. Shift revenue to higher wages only means the company can't spend it on something else.

AGAIN labor is an EXPENSE. It is paid based on it's value just like any product a company purchases. I sold a high end version of the product I sold to manufacturing and other industries. It cost 3 to 4 times other available products. My customers bought it because
It last longer
Therefore less downtime
Therefore less change out cost

The VALUE of the product was higher to the customer and outweighed the additional cost

And I offered better technical support.

No different from YOUR or anyone else's labor.

Back in the late 1970's I had been in management for a couple of years and was working at a small commercial appliance manufacturer over one of it's product lines. I signed up for a course in management supervision at a local community college as a night course. It was taught by a fellow who was in management for then Bell Telephone and used their materials. One on the key points we learned that money was the least effective motivator and that any production gains or employee improvement were short lived.

Make yourself more valuable to your employer, work to ensure the company is successful and your employer makes money. Get your boss promoted and get his job.

If you aren't willing to do those things then heck you don't even deserve minimum wage as it is now.

 

Tell me why you think it is in the best self interest of the riches to hoard all the money and have everyone else poor? Why is it in their best self interest to make sure there is no demand for product and services in the world and a third world economic situations is best for them?