Why Did Seattle Restaurants Lose 1,000 Jobs? Report Blames The Minimum Wage

According to a report released Sunday by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the $15 minimum wage has caused Seattle restaurants to lose 1,000 jobs — the worst decline since the 2009 Great Recession.

“The loss of 1,000 restaurant jobs in May following the minimum wage increase in April was the largest one month job decline since a 1,300 drop in January 2009, again during the Great Recession,” AEI Scholar Mark J. Perry noted in the report.

The citywide minimum wage increase was passed in June of last year. The measure is designed to increase the city minimum wage gradually to $15 an hour by 2017. The first increase under the plan was to $11 an hour in April. According to the report, Seattle restaurants have already faced severe consequences as a result. In contrast, in the six years since the 2009 financial crisis, the industry has been recovering in areas without the $15 minimum wage.

“Restaurant employment nationally increased by 130,700 jobs (and by 1.2%) during that same period,” the report also noted. “Restaurant employment in Washington increased 3.2% and by 2,800 jobs.”

Supporters of the $15 minimum wage often argue it will help the poor and stimulate economic activity. Opponents, however, argue such policies will actually hurt the poor by limiting job opportunities. How little or how much of either outcome usually depends on the study. Nevertheless, even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agrees at least some job loss is expected.

Studies also show that industries with low profit margins, like restaurants, are more likely to be hit the hardest. A June report from the investor rating service Moody’s claims the minimum wage doesn’t even have to go up to $15 an hour for negative effects to occur.

According to a report released Sunday by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the $15 minimum wage has caused Seattle restaurants to lose 1,000 jobs — the worst decline since the 2009 Great Recession.

“The loss of 1,000 restaurant jobs in May following the minimum wage increase in April was the largest one month job decline since a 1,300 drop in January 2009, again during the Great Recession,” AEI Scholar Mark J. Perry noted in the report.

The citywide minimum wage increase was passed in June of last year. The measure is designed to increase the city minimum wage gradually to $15 an hour by 2017. The first increase under the plan was to $11 an hour in April. According to the report, Seattle restaurants have already faced severe consequences as a result. In contrast, in the six years since the 2009 financial crisis, the industry has been recovering in areas without the $15 minimum wage.

“Restaurant employment nationally increased by 130,700 jobs (and by 1.2%) during that same period,” the report also noted. “Restaurant employment in Washington increased 3.2% and by 2,800 jobs.”

Supporters of the $15 minimum wage often argue it will help the poor and stimulate economic activity. Opponents, however, argue such policies will actually hurt the poor by limiting job opportunities. How little or how much of either outcome usually depends on the study. Nevertheless, even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agrees at least some job loss is expected.

Studies also show that industries with low profit margins, like restaurants, are more likely to be hit the hardest. A June report from the investor rating service Moody’s claims the minimum wage doesn’t even have to go up to $15 an hour for negative effects to occur.

Via: The Libertarian Republic

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The Left’s Fight-for-$15 Scam

The current feel-good push for a $15 an hour minimum wage has nothing to do with helping workers and everything to do with advancing the goals of the left wing, especially the labor movement.

This is true despite the occasionally soaring rhetoric of President Obama amid the Left’s incessant whining about “income inequality,” itself a particularly un-American concept, an imaginary evil that dwells only in the nightmares of left-wingers. The fact gets lost that the minimum wage itself and continuing increases in the minimum wage hurt working people. Period. And as economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, minimum wage laws themselves have an inglorious history, having been used to price minorities out of labor markets. If a racist business owner has a choice between a person whose race he likes and someone whose race he doesn’t like and their services cost the same, take a guess whom he’ll pick.

Raising the hourly minimum wage, whether to a job-killing $15 or a higher dollar figure, isn’t intended to aid those who are financially struggling. It’s not compassionate; in fact it’s the opposite. It doesn’t help the poor. It’s a left-wing vote-buying scam that moves money around on an Alinskyite chess board. Democrats desperately want to recapture the House and Senate so they can impose even more destructive progressive policies on the populace. They use the minimum wage, which has become a “motherhood” issue for the Left in recent years. It gets bleeding-heart voters to the polls the way that opposition to same-sex marriage used to get conservative voters to the polls.

Hiking required hourly pay is about redistributing wealth to fat-cat labor unions and recruiting Democratic voters. It allows the gluttonous Left to gorge itself on other people’s money.

No serious economist doubts that raising the minimum wage eliminates jobs from the workforce. How it does this is not rocket science.

Workers whose skills aren’t worth $15 an hour to employers, teenagers for example, won’t get hired. Summer jobs and part-time jobs for students evaporate which makes young scholars more dependent on student loan programs. Businesses like fast food purveyors don’t want to be forced out of business. Justifiably insistent on preserving their profitability, they fire employees and install specialized robots and touch-screen ordering systems. Major restaurant chains and gas station-convenience stores are already doing this.

Some of the newly unemployed people end up on welfare which helps to expand the size and scope of government. People who are dependent on the government tend to support Democrats. It’s a big win-win for the Left no matter how you look at it.

New York’s loud left-wing demagogue of a governor, the relentlessly strident Andrew Cuomo (D), wants to impose the $15 an hour wage mandate on a specific industry without bothering to consult the state legislature in Albany because he knows such a move is a crowd pleaser. A panel of lapdogs appointed by Cuomo gave him political cover by recommending last week that the minimum wage be raised to $15 for all fast-food restaurant chains of a certain size in New York State.

Via: Canada Free Press

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DEMOCRATS DIVIDED BY MINIMUM WAGE HIKE

The latest economic slogan of the hard left is to push the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. This would almost double the current federal minimum, which was raised to $7.25 an hour just six years ago.

Democrats universally still support a higher government-mandated minimum wage, mind you. The debate is over how high to government should push.

During his Presidency, Barack Obama has supported increases to $9 an hour and, in the midst of his reelection fight, a hike to $10.10 an hour.

The push for an increase to $10.10 an hour was so widespread across the left, in fact, that the Congressional Budget Office last year issued an analysis of the economic impact of such an increase. Unsurprisingly, the CBO found that the hike would cause half a million Americans to lose their jobs.

The CBO analysis found that about 16 million Americans, who currently earn somewhere between the current minimum and the new $10.10 hourly wage, would see an increase in their earnings.

So, using the most conservative estimate of possible job loss, a little over 10 percent of those with jobs would see some kind of benefit.

Those who would receive a benefit are not the caricature portrayed by the media. The average family income of a minimum wage worker is $53,000 a year, far above the national poverty level. This is simply because most minimum wage jobs represent a second or third job within a family. Only 4 percent of minimum wage workers are a single parent working full-time. About half of minimum wage workers are under 25.

A far better way to assist low-income workers struggling to raise a family on a minimum wage job is a boost in the Earned Income Tax Credit, which rewards those working. A job, even a minimum wage job, is still the best anti-poverty program. More than two-thirds of minimum wage workers receive a raise within the first year of employment.

A minimum wage is really a starter wage. As employees gain more skills and experience, they move up the job ladder. A government mandated increase in the minimum wage makes these first jobs more expensive for a business to offer, so there are fewer.

The negative consequences are far greater than simply the loss of 500k jobs. For many, those eliminated jobs were their first entry-point into the labor market. Low-skilled workers may have just enough knowledge to fill a $7.25 an hour position, but not enough to fill one at a higher minimum wage.

There is a great deal of debate over how extensive job losses are from a government increase in the minimum wage. Both sides of the debate tend to exaggerate the economic impact. The reality is that few Americans earn anything close to the minimum wage, so the macro effects aren’t enormous.

The human effects on those who can’t find a job at the higher wage level are enormous, though. That cost doesn’t fit into a slogan though.

This new push for $15 an hour seems to have come out of a union-backed effort to raise wages for fast-food restaurants across the country. This is part of a long-standing union effort to organize these businesses. Federal minimum wage levels don’t apply to union collective bargaining agreements, after all.

Democrat Presidential candidate 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

16%

 has embraced the $15 an hour level. Frontrunner Hillary Clinton has endorsed this wage level for fast-food restaurants in New York City, but has been silent on what the federal minimum wage should be outside of the Big Apple.

Congressional Democrat leadership is backing an increase to $12 an hour, as is President Obama currently.

Republican Leadership is opposing an increase but, if history is a guide, will eventually go along with a more modest increase. Conservatives will, as always, oppose an increase as the bad economics that it is, among other valid reasons. Of course, given their treatment by most business organizations in Washington, conservatives may want to rethink how strongly they want to oppose an increase.

Like most political slogans, an increase in the minimum wage polls very well with the public. There is little evidence, though, that many voters actually base their decisions on the issue.

Still, there is a certain morbid pleasure in watching the Democrats trying to outbid each other in their political appeals on the issue. Given that Democrats are preternaturally wired to spend other people’s money and dictate how they should run their lives, one wonders why Obama and Congressional Democrats are being so coy.

It certainly raises the question: if $10.10 an hour is so obviously a good economic policy, why not $15 an hour? Please show your work.

Via: Breitbart

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NEW YORK GOVERNOR’S PANEL VOTES UNANIMOUSLY FOR $15 AN HOUR MINIMUM WAGE FOR FAST FOOD WORKERS!!

The Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo is determined to destroy what little employment we have in this state just for political points as his political panel recommends that fast food workers’ minimum wage be raised to $15 an hour!

I love this girl who says the raise will “transform” her life. Yeah, if she’s the lucky one to get the raise instead of being unemployed. Then she’ll be magically transformed onto welfare!

From the execrable New York Times:

A panel appointed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo recommended on Wedesday that the minimum wage be raised for employees of fast-food chain restaurants throughout the state to $15 an hour. Wages would first be raised in New York City and then the rest of the state.

The $15 wage would represent a raise of more than 70 percent for workers earning the state’s current minimum wage of $8.75 an hour. Advocates for low-wage workers said they believed that the mandate would quickly spur pay raises for employees in other industries across the state.

“Chalk one up for the 99-percenters,” said Bill Lipton, director of the Working Families Party in New York, which has campaigned for the $15 minimum wage. “There’s clearly a new standard for the minimum wage and it’s actually a living wage for the first time in many, many decades.”

Awesome!! I can’t wait to see the headlines of people being laid off by businesses in NYC just like they did in Seattle! LOL!!

Via: The Right Scoop

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Sanders Battles Boehner on Min. Wage: ‘Who’s Out of the Mainstream?’

2016 Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders responded on Face the Nation Sunday morning to criticism from House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) that he was “out of the mainstream” with his desire to raise taxes to pay for his policies.

“Well, let me respond to that issue by issue, and you determine who’s out of the mainstream,” Sanders said.

“I want to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. A recent Wall Street Journal poll said majority of the American people want to do that. John Boehner is not going to bring up any legislation in the house to raise minimum wage. Many want to get rid of the concept of minimum wage.”

Sanders repeated the formula with Social Security and infrastructure.

“In terms of who’s out of touch with the American people, I’d say Republican party is,” he concluded. “They want to give tax breaks to billionaires, not help the middle class.”

Via: Mediaite

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DC Bumps Its Minimum Wage To Highest In The Nation But Activists Still WANT MORE

NEVER ENOUGH

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser was proud to announce Wednesday the minimum-wage hike that took effect that day, though just across town activists were still fighting for more.

At $9.50, the District of Columbia minimum wage was already higher than any state in the nation before it rose to $10.50 Wednesday.

“Raising the minimum wage will give tens of thousands of Washingtonians a raise and boost the bottom lines of our local businesses,” Bowser said. “It’s good for workers, businesses and our economy,”

The minimum-wage hike came as part of a three-year initiative approved by the D.C. council in 2013 that will see it climb again in 2016 to $11.50– but some in the city still want more.

At a Board of Elections hearing later Wednesday afternoon, activists fighting for a $15 minimum wage attempted to get a ballot referendum in place to vote for another wage increase.

The “Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2016,”  a copy of which was obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation, would continue the city’s incremental minimum wage increases, starting at $12.50 in 2017. It would creep up again each year until reaching $15.00 per hour by 2020.

Upon reaching $15.00 in 2020, the minimum wage would then increase annually to match the rising cost of living in the city.

D.C. government employees, though, would be exempt from the minimum wage levels if the law goes into effect.

If the board decides that the proposed initiative deserves a spot on the ballot, the activists will need to collect more than 20,000 signatures on a petition before it makes its way to voters.

Via: Daily Caller

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HILLARY PHONES IT IN FOR FAST FOOD WORKERS

Speaking to a gathering of fast food workers and voicing her support for a $15 minimum wage, Hillary Clinton said, “I want to be your champion” to the assembled group.

Well, we do know special orders never upset the Clinton Foundation. It’s also accurate to say Hillary phoned in her support.

Appearing by phone at a meeting of 1,300 workers, Clinton voiced her most emphatic support yet for the nationwide Fight for $15 movement, which is also seeking to unionize fast food giants like McDonald’s.

Perhaps more important to the multi-millionaire presidential candidate was that she paid her dues to Big Labor, including the SEIU. Campaigns and foundations do not run on bread, or hamburger rolls, alone.

Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry told the crowd that Clinton’s call shows “how powerful people around the world are listening to this movement to change our world.”

Clinton also expressed broader support for organized labor union and the right to bargain collectively.

The appearance marks the Clinton campaign’s latest attempt to shore up her left flank and de-emphasize the centrist pragmatism that marked her husband’s presidency and her own record as senator and secretary of state.

Via: Breitbart

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Unions Are Utterly Shameless. Here’s the Real Story Behind Their Minimum Wage Campaign.

Utterly shameless. There really is no other way to describe what some unions are trying to pull when it comes to the minimum wage.

The issue, of course, has been in the news quite a bit lately, especially in Los Angeles, with supposedly incensed workers waving their “Fight for 15” placards. It’s all perfectly packaged for the media, an alleged David versus Goliath fight. Will those mean ol’ fast-food joints and other stingy employers finally start paying a “living wage”? Tune in for the dramatic video.

Never mind that a substantial hike in the minimum wage would price many unskilled workers right out of the market. Goodbye, entry-level jobs for men and women who will later become workers making a much better wage at a job with more responsibilities.

And never mind how this minimum wage hike would make the price of fast food soar. A huge part of the draw for fast food, after all, is the fact that it’s relatively cheap. Take that away, and now it’s goodbye to the industry, which, of course, will hardly help the workers who are supposed to benefit from the wage increase.

Employers, after all, don’t have a bottomless safe in the backroom from which to pull vast reserves of cash for these salaries. They’ll react by cutting hours, for one thing. Labor expert James Sherk, for example, found that raising the minimum wage to $15 would cause a 36 percent drop in hours worked in fast food.

Think of what such a hike would mean for a major city such as Los Angeles. “If the effects are the same for all low-wage food-service occupations,” writes economist Salim Furth, “the ‘Fight for 15’ will cost more than 20,000 Angelenos their jobs in those occupations alone.” We can expect the same type of effect everywhere if such a drastic hike is enacted.

Of course, we don’t hear about any negative effects from much of the media or from breathless proponents of such “wage equality.” Or if we do, the effects are shrugged off as the scaremongering tactics of employers who just don’t want to pay up.

But it’s harder to ignore the fact that the same Los Angeles unions who campaigned so hard and so successfully for a $15 minimum wage want unionized companies to be exempted from the new requirement.

As Rusty Hicks, head of the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, told the Los Angeles Times: “With a collective bargaining agreement, a business owner and the employees negotiate an agreement that works for them both. The agreement allows each party to prioritize what is important to them. This provision gives the parties the option, the freedom, to negotiate that agreement. And that is a good thing.”

A new low in hypocrisy? Oh, no. It’s even worse than that.

Via: The Daily Signal

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Survey: $15 Minimum Wage Could Shutter 1 in 5 NY Fast Food Joints

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BY: Bill McMorris  
June 5, 2015 3:20 pm

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D.) promised minimum wage hikes for fast food New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D.) promised minimum wage hikes for fast food restaurants could shut down one out of every five chain restaurants in the state, according to a new survey.

The Employment Policies Institute, a free market think tank and critic of minimum wage hikes, surveyed nearly 1,000 self-described fast food entrepreneurs about how they would respond to statewide, industry-specific wage hikes. More than 20 percent of respondents said they were “very likely” to go out of business if the state raises the minimum wage for fast food joints to $15, a 70 percent increase from the current $8.75 statewide minimum wage.

Such a hike could spur higher costs for customers and reduced employment opportunities and hours for workers. Business owners responded overwhelmingly that such policies would hurt the very workers that Cuomo and activists claim to want to help.

Only 5 percent of respondents said they were “unlikely” to raise prices to cope with a $15 wage; 70 percent said they were very likely. In order to retain customers and remain competitive, a majority of the owners said they would be forced to cut employee hours or curb hiring.

“Low single-digit profit margins, which are typical for the fast food industry, explain why business owners in the state report considering a series of off-setting measures to adapt to a $15 minimum wage,” the report says.

Cuomo is seeking to increase wages on the fast food industry through a three-member board that is debating a potential $15 wage at chain restaurants. EPI analyst and report author Michael Saltsman attended Friday’s hearing, criticizing both Cuomo’s methods and also the policy.

“Our survey shows that a dramatic minimum wage hike would have the same negative effect in New York that it’s having on the west coast. Employers and employees should hope the wage board can tune out the noise and take a careful look at the consequences,” Saltsman said. “An unelected board hearing where proponents shout down the other side—is this what democracy looks like?”

Via: WFB

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MCDONALDS TO INSTALL COMPUTER ORDERING SYSTEMS! NO $15 AN HOUR!

Congratulations liberals! You’ve freed thousands from minimum wage McJobs. And put them on McWelfare! But that’s what you McDo, isn’t it, libs?

The problem with liberals is they function primarily in emotion and a keen ability to ignore reality. They have been trained by their college professors (most of whom teach because they can’t earn a living in the real world) that there is always more of someone else’s money to spread around to “the people.” And there’s always the ‘EVIL CORPORATION’ where the CEO makes millions while line employees make minimum wage. It’s just awful and wrong!! But, unfortunately for liberals, it’s reality!

But liberals never realize that the business model of fast food restaurants requires virtually zero skills of their employees. Traditionally, McDonalds and others offered first jobs to kids in high school. It taught them how to work, to arrive promptly, to deal amicably with the public, to shoulder responsibility, etc. More than anything, it taught kids that they didn’t want to work at McDonalds the rest of their lives.

Like being born into poverty, there is no shame in working at McDonalds. There should be great shame in never working to rise above either poverty or a McJob. Enter the liberal mindset. Libs believe those McWorkers are victims too stupid to work and rise above their current state. Like the black trolls who comment on this page, liberals blame their every problem on someone else. Blacks have whitey and the mythical white privilege, liberals have evil corporations.

Via: Angry White Dude

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