Minimum wage laws = boycott restaurants

Absentglare said:

Now you must be joking. Who is asking for a $50 minimum wage? That's absurd.

The highest $tip/hr is in San Francisco where they can expect $13/hr in tips. Even adding another $10/hr wage that's only halfway to your ridiculous $50/hr number.

High end restaurants do get well-paid wait staff. But at your low end places, they could be working for as little as $2.13/hr- any additional salary must come in the form of charity from customers.

And waiters in Italy often make 8-10 euros per hour, which is about 4-5 times higher than our tip-capable minimum wage.

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You do not know what the hell you are talking about.. Servers making 13hr would indicate an income to the restaurant of $65 per hr. per server. NO restaurant could survive on that.

Cephus said:

People who are trying to live on a minimum wage job are doing it wrong, period. The whole point is to live within your means. If you cannot afford to have a family while working a crappy job, either get a better job so you can afford it or don't have a family. It's how personal responsibility works.

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There are many problems with that.

A few: living in an area with affordable transport TO the minimum wage job, the affordability of any such area, the actual budget of a minimum wage job (low enough that people with two full time MW jobs often have to take some government benefits on top), the lack of reasonable childcare options, and so on and so forth.

There are a million more and any attempt to describe them at length would get the "tl;dr" treatment.

Cephus said:

Maybe you liberals ought to figure that out.

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Maybe you conservatives ought to take the first honest look in a mirror you've ever taken and work out just how much of your current life situation is down to luck - no matter HOW much work you have otherwise put in. It is way too damn easy to chalk someone else's station up to personal failures, even if YOU went through a tougher life overall than them.
'

Who were your parents? Did you have the possibility of support in emergency from family or friends? Where were you born? Did you grow up in an inner-city borderline war zone, a trailer park, a suburb, a city? What is the color of your skin (gasp - I know, any mention of race is the "race card" but I did it anyway)? WHEN were you born?

There are so many factors out of your control that may or may not have shaped where you are now. My life experience has shown me that people generally chalk up far more to their own personal awesomeness - and therefore personal awfulness of those less well situated - than they actually deserve.

But that requires introspection and thought. It's a lot easier to **** on everyone below you, and maybe, just maybe, one can get a bit of a buzz going from self-righteousness.

Cephus said:

I'm not forcing them to do anything, they are choosing to do so of their own free will. And they don't work for $2.13 an hour, they make minimum wage at the very least, a lot of them make much more than that based on tips. But they choose to do it, nobody holds a gun to their head and forces them to take that job, do they? Personal responsibility. Rent a clue.

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The minimum wage for jobs that receive tips is $2.13 an hour. No amount of of your desire to deny it can change that fact.

You seem to think that the restaurant owner is not responsible for compensating employees. Perhaps you should rent your own clues (although, i much preferred forming my own opinion, rather than doing what you're doing and blindly adopting the opinion paid for by business interests).

Absentglare said:

It sounds like you're trying to kill businesses to guarantee the closure of the circular logic you are trying to apply.

It turns out, areas that have restaurants who are forced to meet higher minimum wages also have much more financial success. The theory is that having high turnover of disgruntled employees is bad for business. Too bad those moronic business owners don't know what's good for them.

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So why is San Francisco seeing one of the worst restaurant recessions? http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...SxxraVZlTzplV0OlLHj-xA&bvm=bv.142059868,d.amc

jdog said:

The recent minimum wage laws which will cause increases in restaurant costs for labor to nearly double in many areas are being passed on to customers. Many restaurants are now assessing a "surcharge" of between 3 to 5% on the check total. So lets add this up, a 20% tip, a 8.5% sales tax, and now a 3-5% surcharge on top of what is already in many cases a very overpriced meal to begin with.

I have had it. I will make a conscience effort going forward to reduce my patronage to restaurants, not because it creates a financial hardship, but because I can no longer enjoy going to a restaurant when I feel I am being ripped off.

The money I would have spent eating out will be instead diverted to increase the contributions to retirement and my kids educational accounts.

This is typical of what happens when governments interfere in the free market. I predict many restaurants which are struggling will go under as people react to higher prices and their employees will lose their jobs.

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So...the best way to protest government policies that favor wage workers is to bankrupt entrepreneurs?

jdog said:

So why is San Francisco seeing one of the worst restaurant recessions? http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...SxxraVZlTzplV0OlLHj-xA&bvm=bv.142059868,d.amc

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They're not, that article has a picture of a San Francisco restaurant but it is discussing a nationwide recession. I can give you a simple and obvious explanation for a nationwide recession:

Mr Person said:

And yet, the kind of restaurants that pay minimum wage (ie, fast food primarily) charge roughly the same in European countries with very high minimum wages as compared to their American franchises. There really isn't a great price difference, certainly enough not to affect your "kids educational accounts."

You're only going to see truly disruptive effects if a locality raises its minimum wage by a great degree in comparison to other localities. As a national policy, a raised minimum wage simply does not have the kind of effect that doom-and-gloom conservatives insist it will have.

Oddly enough, a raised minimum wage is exactly the kind of thing a supply-sider would be backing if supply-side wasn't generally so retarded. The people who make the raised minimum wage are actually going to spend just about ALL of that wage, unlike rich people and corporations, which only invest (aka SPEND) if there is demand to meet and not the other way around.

Anyway, if a 3%-5% increase in restaurant costs (assuming this isn't just more made-up BS) renders going out unaffordable, you probably shouldn't be going out to begin with.

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jdog said:

In the first place if you knew anything, you would know all restaurants pay minimum wage to at least some of their workers, not just fast food.
The discussion on fast food workers is mostly irrelevant for this discussion, because most large chains will replace their fast food workers with automation in the next few years.

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Wow. Really?

Ignoring the stupid personal insult, fast food restaurants between countries are the perfect counter-point specifically BECAUSE they have not been fully replaced with automation, as they well. MORE of their employees are MW than any other type of restaurant AND they barely increase prices in Euro-zone countries with far higher MW than we have here.

You haven't bothered to explain why you think that higher-end restaurants with fewer workers on MW will be more affected by a higher MW than fast food chains, which have - again - MORE MW workers.


(Who were you talking about anyway? The dishwasher? Wait staff that is, in the US, generally excused from MW laws in light of our tip-culture?)





Sounds like you looked at my lean, decided a "gotcha" zinger was appropriate, and spat some nonsense out without reading my post.

Absentglare said:

They're not, that article has a picture of a San Francisco restaurant but it is discussing a nationwide recession. I can give you a simple and obvious explanation for a nationwide recession:

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Outdated chart.

CriticalThought said:

So...the best way to protest government policies that favor wage workers is to bankrupt entrepreneurs?

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When a market model no longer works, then it succumbs to circumstances. Governments are composed of idiots who only understand their errors at great cost to innocent people. I do not create the reality, I only acknowledge it.

Mr Person said:

Wow. Really?

Ignoring the stupid personal insult, fast food restaurants between countries are the perfect counter-point specifically BECAUSE they have not been fully replaced with automation, as they well. MORE of their employees are MW than any other type of restaurant AND they barely increase prices in Euro-zone countries with far higher MW than we have here.

You haven't bothered to explain why you think that higher-end restaurants with fewer workers on MW will be more affected by a higher MW than fast food chains, which have - again - MORE MW workers.


(Who were you talking about anyway? The dishwasher? Wait staff that is, in the US, generally excused from MW laws in light of our tip-culture?)





Sounds like you looked at my lean, decided a "gotcha" zinger was appropriate, and spat some nonsense out without reading my post.

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I guess you are not quite bright enough to understand that most non fast food restaurants are not going to be able to afford replacing their human employees with automation like the large fast food chains.

jdog said:

Outdated chart.

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Umm... the federal minimum wage is low in real dollars. An updated chart won't change that.

Most waiters and waitresses DON'T make anywhere near minimum wage. Hell...I'm in the Midwest, and I know waitresses that pull in $200 a night in tips.

Velvet Elvis said:

Most waiters and waitresses DON'T make anywhere near minimum wage. Hell...I'm in the Midwest, and I know waitresses that pull in $200 a night in tips.

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Right, but some people work in smaller towns with less traffic.

Deuce said:

Right, but some people work in smaller towns with less traffic.

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But they still have to make minimum wage, by law. If they don't make it up in tips, their employers have to pay them at least minimum wage.