California Gov. Jerry
Brown signed a new $15/hour minimum wage law that’s set to go
into effect by 2022. The politics of the minimum wage issue is fraught with
misinformation.
Of course, liberal logic
on this issue revolves around the axiom that the more you make, the better off
you’ll be concerning your standard of living. That’s partially true. More money
means a greater chance of improving your standard of living, but there’s this
thing called taxation. Yes, it’s the liberal solution to all of society’s ills.
As it turns out, the
bump in pay for these minimum wage workers isn’t going to amount to much. The
increase in overhead for the employer will go through the roof, which means
layoffs, reduced hours, or both.
Seattle has a $15/hour
minimum wage set to be phased in by 2018. The results have hardly been
positive. Workers in the city are actually asking
for fewer hours in order to keep welfare benefits. If a raise in wages was
meant to help combat poverty, it’s a failure on that front.
This week, Fox News’
Neil Cavuto had Naquasia Legrand, a “Fight for $15” leader, on his show to
discuss California’s new minimum wage laws. Legrand, of course, thought it was
great that this happened; as it would increase the amount of money she earns in
order to inject that back into the economy.
Cavuto aptly noted that
the increased overhead is going to force an establishment, like McDonald’s, to
raise their prices on certain items. For some families, a $1.50-2.00 increase
in price is a big deal.
Legrand noted that the
price of the Big Mac has already gone up, but she hasn’t seen a bump in her
salary.
Cavuto then turned to
probably the biggest threat to these workers, which is the elimination of their
job category completely via electronic kiosks and other forms of self-service
that allows customers to order without going through a cashier. Legrand
countered by saying that no one wants to come into the McDonald’s to use a
machine to order.
The problem is that
other franchises are doing it–and spending big money to get there. In 2014,
Panera doled
out $42 million to have electronic kiosks, along with mobile ordering, at
all of their locations within the next three years. CNN reported that
the franchise has no plans to cut jobs, but experts say this is an unavoidable
byproduct. They added that Chili’s and Applebee’s place tablets on their tables
for ordering.
As it turns out, pushing
for a bigger minimum wage could make these workers, like Legrand, obsolete at
an accelerated rate. Let’s face it; the robots are taking over.
Now, without a doubt,
this interview wasn’t nearly as bad as Cavuto’s interview with Keely Mullen, a
student who wanted free college -- and had no clue what she was talking about
concerning how we, as a country, would
pay for it.
Soaking the rich isn’t
logical, moral, or proper economic policy to entertain this progressive pipe
dream of free higher education.
Cavuto mentioned that if
we were to confiscate all the wealth from the top 1 percent, it could only
subsidize one American entitlement program for a year. Mullen said she didn’t
believe that. The whole interview was a shambles.
In this case, Cavuto
actually agrees with Legrand that there should be a hike in the minimum wage,
but doubling the federal rate to $15, as they're doing in California, is a
bit “abrupt.” In 2013 alone, minimum wage hikes were responsible for gutting
over 700,000 jobs.
