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You probably remember Subway's famous "five-dollar footlong" promotion as much for the obnoxiously catchy jingle as for the sandwiches themselves. (Sorry for getting that stuck in your head all day.)
The sandwich chain recently resurrected the promotion in a national advertising campaign promising foot-long subs for just $4.99—but the special deal won't fly at one Subway restaurant in Seattle, where owner David Jones posted a sign this week giving customers the bad news.
Sadly, the consequences of high minimum wages, excessive taxation, and mandate-happy public policy are not limited to the death of cheap sandwiches. The cost of doing business in Seattle is higher than the Space Needle, and the unintended consequences of those policies are piling up too.
The biggest cost driver, as Jones' sign mentions, is Seattle's highest-in-the-nation minimum wage. It went from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015, then to $13 per hour in 2016, with a further increase to $15 per hour planned.
The result? According to researchers at the University of Washington's School of Public Policy and Governance, the number of hours worked in low-wage jobs has declined by around 9 percent since the start of 2016 "while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent." The net outcome: In 2016, the "higher" minimum wage actually lowered low-wage workers' earnings by an average of $125 a month.
And now those same employees will have to pay more for sandwiches from Subway—and everything else too.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:04PM (3 children)
We're not speaking of minor increases here.
To give an example of how deceptive the assertion of the last sentence is, consider the case of Puerto Rico. They are indeed "slightly positive" after minimum wage was increased (over the period 1974 to 1983) to match US mainland minimum wage. But that happened by about 2-3 million Puerto Ricans moving off the island between 1980 and present to places with higher wages. That has resulted in two effects that are ignored in the studies above: cost of living and increased migration.
The great unanswered question here is what does a lower demand for labor look like? People aren't just going to stop working. They'll move, they'll accept lower pay relative to their costs, accept workplaces with more difficult conditions, etc. And that's what we see. Much has already been written of the decline in wages+benefits relative to productivity in the US. Much has been written of the "greed" of employers. Much has been written about living wages and the people who don't receive that arbitrary threshold of income. That's all signs of reduced demand for labor just as one would expect from a half century of policies that make US labor more expensive.
Yes. Next question.
Then don't pay those employees, if you don't like it. The policies create the (alleged) problem. But really what problem is there here? You wanted to support these employees. And that had the effect of supporting this company's profits. It's working as intended.
Or we could look at what works. Your angst is the result of half a century of supposedly helping out the US worker. Destroying jobs and forcing people into high cost of living areas is not fixing the problem.
Meanwhile, I predict Fresno [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:04AM (2 children)
It's my understanding that we've basically been leeching off Puerto Rico for decades without doing any real reinvestment to build them up. That's why they are having major infrastructure problems now. Because they aren't a state and we've never treated them like one.
Yet you have no answer for how America doesn't turn into a 3rd world shithole if we don't pay people enough to be simultaneously employed and housed and fed. Or perhaps you're fine with that happening.
Wow. Now that's integrity. But will you go so far as to admit you believe "poor people" to be genetically inferior? You feel it in your bones, don't you? I'll bet you even wish you could have Bill Gates' genetically superior baby.
Don't pay... Oh, you mean don't provide welfare checks so people can feed their children while working at Walmart. What reveals your intellectual dishonesty most clearly is how you continue to shy away from acknowledging that these corporations we're talking about are making record profits and therefore have no reason not to pay their employees a reasonable wage. Record. Profits. Not revenue. Profits.
High cost of living areas are created by the fact that we don't place any limits on the upper end of income levels and the limitations we place on developing new housing, not by having a reasonable minimum wage.
Guess we'll just see about Fresno.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Sunday January 14 2018, @04:56AM (1 child)
And yet we have:
In other words, Puerto Rico receives more in net benefits per capita from the federal government than two thirds of the states. If spending at levels comparable to far wealthier states is not reinvestment, then what is?
I certainly do have an answer here. Get out the way of employers. One of the most obvious things about an economy is that just because you have a need, doesn't mean that you have a means to fulfill that need. You need the infrastructure in place. For example, most people have a need to not die. But we don't have any sort of infrastructure that would allow us to radically extend our lifespans beyond the usual range. No matter how much one could pontificate about the importance of not dying, it's not going to matter in today's world.
Same goes for space colonization. One can decide that humanity living off of Earth is the most important thing ever, but mere money isn't going to make that happen. We'll need to build all kinds of Earth and space-side infrastructure to make that happen down the road.
At least with your above paragraph, we have the means to do so. But it involves maintaining infrastructure for employing people gainfully. The key part of that infrastructure are employers. Without them, it's just as impossible as having your 200th birthday, or living on Mars would be without the corresponding medical or space-side infrastructure. I'm tired of people telling me what they want, without offering a way to get that (or worse proposing all sorts of road blocks to getting the very thing they claim to want). Thus, my usual response that you don't actually deserve this thing any more than you deserve that 200th birthday or that Mars bungalow. And if you're not going to try to get it with approaches that actually work, then of course, you won't get it. Economics like most of reality doesn't go away merely because you can't be bothered to think rationally.
Your race-baiting is noted.
There's no problem here. Subsidize the companies that employ these people and there is no problem. But you can't have that. Envy is your downfall.
Of course, I already explained how that is incorrect. A reasonable minimum wage in San Jose is not a reasonable minimum wage in Fresno or Puerto Rico.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 14 2018, @05:02AM