So you walk into a restaurant and the meal that you have purchased before is about $10. Well now you come in to eat and now the same meal costs $13. My Question is, when does minimum wage become so high to where tipping is no longer a thing. I mean now in California they are going to be making $20 an hour. Why should I tip you at all when I’m going to be paying in my meal for your higher wage?
Whether you believe in a higher minimum wage or not. Just some things to think about. Some pros about higher minimum wage according to Business insider. Lift 900,000 people out of poverty, raise income for 17 million people (one in 10 workers), to the tune of $509 billion over 10 years, and potentially increase wages for another 10 million people who currently make close to $15. Now all that sounds lovely doesn’t it? I mean if I were to sell raising the minimum wage to you then that wouldn’t be a bad start. At least it would be a high school argument to get all those people who may be voting for this to want it to happen.
Problem is the latter of the argument where it reduces employment by 1.4 million jobs, increases the federal deficit by $54 billion over 10 years, and increases prices for goods and services. Now to address the national debt which I am sure not many people are going to be worried about when they are only worried about the dollar amount of their paycheck going up. The national debt goes up and your dollar, or in this case 20 dollars is no longer 20 dollars. Due to inflation and as your dollar goes down, costs go up. You may be getting paid 20 an hour but now your expenses to go out to eat, gas, cost of living in general are going up. Nothing has changed because the economy now has to adjust yet again to those who just want to feel better about themselves when they have not even earned it.
The best part is those people that are not challenging themselves at all. No incentive for people to work harder, longer hours, help a business achieve any amount of growth. It is all on the customer now. What happens when people don’t want to buy your product anymore? If it is now 25 dollars for a big mac and coke. Fast food will no longer be an option for those who make the average minimum wage. Customers find alternatives that are cheaper. Then when a company has decided that profits have started slipping, they will tend to look at employees as expenses. INC.com has a great article about how Amazon saves billions due to their robots in the warehouse. The same article states how Amazon cuts operating costs by $22 million (22%).
Now you have to assume that a billion-dollar company that is allowed to buy a company in order to input robots into the workforce will simply just stop the hiring process for a while and have a robot that can be operated by 1 person and be able to do 80% of the workload. Pay them $20 an hour and now avoid all the cost of needing extra employees. Just a thought but all of those who think that you should be able to feed a family of 4 on a waitress’s salary just wait for the inevitability of working for a company that will do the same thing that car washers do when they went fully automation and only need 1 person in the gas station to turn on the machine. Go to a grocery store and you’ll find 6 registers and 1 person at self-checkout. This is what companies do to maximize profits.
For those of you trying to get ahead in life by making it more expensive for others, just remember your skills are what will save you when you’re replaced by a robot that can do low skill jobs…Bangov Actual, out.
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