To The Minneapolis And Saint Paul City Councils

To: Our Bobbleheaded Overlords
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: “Fight For Fifteen!”

All,

From a friend of this blog, here’s where the $15/hour minimum wage leads, inevitably and inexorably:

It’s at Seattle/Tacoma International Airport – an early adopter of the #FightFor15 – in case you were wondering. Photo courtesy Brian Skon.

Let me just take a moment to say, I don’t think the “#FightFor15” has anything to do with raising worker wages, or taking any sort of care of the little guy. If it were, you’d be fighting for the only sustainable minimum wage there is – widespread prosperity

No. This is about virtue-signaling to your base (and I don’t mean minimum wage earners) and showing small business who’s boss.

That is all.

Posted

February 21, 2017

Business, The Economy and The Markets

Mitch Berg

Tags:

Open Letters

Comments

29 responses to “To The Minneapolis And Saint Paul City Councils”

Emery Incognito

February 21, 2017

Raising the minimum wage is a hidden tax on business.
mnbubba

February 21, 2017

The true minimum wage is $0. As many more people will find out if they pass these stupid ordinances.
TheFedSucks

February 21, 2017

Forcing up compensation with government won’t fix this http://bit.ly/2kULVCC
TheFedSucks

February 21, 2017

This is the most elegant takedown of statist inflationism you will ever read http://bit.ly/2m7FPjU
Joe Doakes

February 21, 2017

The phrase “A hidden tax on business” reveals Leftist thinking. It implies that if the greedy business owner would simply pay his taxes, all would be well but nooooo, the thieving bastard has to maintain his wicked “profit margin” by stealing wages from the workers or worse, by throwing them hungry and homeless into the street! Workers of the world, unite, all you have to lose is your chains! Rise up and Fight for Fifteen! Fight!
Joe Doakes

February 21, 2017

I remember reading National Review when William F. Buckley, Jr., still ran it, a column in which he asked why Democrats were such pikers. If $15 an hour will help the poor and cause no ill effects, why not $100 and we’ll all be rich?
TheFedSucks

February 21, 2017

Fake 0% interest rates just favor the substitution of capital for labor and jack up the cost of living. Leftist Keynesianism just harms people so they need more government. Leftism is evil.
The Big Stink

February 21, 2017

Mandate wealth through legislation!!! Eat your thesis, kids. Make it wordy. It will have to sustain you until the harvest.
justplainangry

February 21, 2017

JD for the win (again) in his exposure of the commissar eTASS’ Marxist roots.
Emery Incognito

February 21, 2017

Probably fake news…
“THE MINIMUM WAGE IS A TAX INCREASE”
https://www.google.com/amp/www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/07/14/the-minimum-wage-is-a-tax-increase/amp/?client=safari
Chuck

February 21, 2017

Mitch..did you link to this? Philly puts in a large tax on pop. The syrup providers increased their prices to cover the tax, which in turn lead to the retailers increasing prices. Then Philly gov’t threw a fit over the price increases.

As far as $15 an hour minimum…..go to an urban Walmart. They employ a lot of people…for probably around $9-11 an hour…..who otherwise would have a very difficult time finding work. Punch Pizza is not going to hire these people.
Mitch Berg

February 21, 2017

Chuck,

s far as $15 an hour minimum…..go to an urban Walmart. They employ a lot of people…for probably around $9-11 an hour…..who otherwise would have a very difficult time finding work. Punch Pizza is not going to hire these people.

Yep. I covered this a few years ago.
nerdbert

February 21, 2017

Chuck, I think you were referring to this reaction by the Philly mayor that proves he’s got as much economic training and sense as Emery. Short version: mayor gets soda tax on distributors, soda distributors pass along the cost increase, retailers pass along cost and post signs showing exactly where the cost increase came from, consumers protest and mayor whines about “gouging” by companies that were operating on margins lower than the implemented tax.
SmithStCrx

February 21, 2017

I’m actually looking forward to this at my local McDonald’s. The most common cause of misorders is the personal entering the info. Let me enter my own darned order and I won’t complain about the other idiot doing it wrong.
Ian in Iowa

February 21, 2017

In leftist fantasy land, good intentions cancel out any “unforeseen” consequences.
J. Ewing

February 21, 2017

Aw, let the leftists have their fantasy, willya? Besides, without jobs, they will have more free time to be out protesting the fact they don’t have jobs. The only way to get their attention is to let them know BEFORE they succeed, while they are still marching, that the kiosks are on order, and behind them comes the robotic burger-flipper. Right now these things pay for themselves in about six months. Double wages and it goes down to 3 months. With capital that much cheaper than wages, it’s practically a no-brainer, meaning even the protestors should be able to figure it out.
justplainangry

February 21, 2017

With capital that much cheaper than wages, it’s practically a no-brainer, meaning even the protestors should be able to figure it out.

They did already – Gates is calling for a special “robot tax” for every human job misplaced.
In The Mailbox: 02.21.17 : The Other McCain

February 21, 2017

[…] Tank: MSNBC Host Forgets About Obama’s Secret Talk With Russian President Shot In The Dark: To Our Bobbleheaded Overlords On The Minneapolis & St. Paul City Councils STUMP: South Carolina Pensions – Liability Trends The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – […]
Joe Doakes

February 21, 2017

Oh, no, J. Ewing. That’s not gonna happen. That’s not who we are, in America. There’s no saving money through automation. Not anymore.

If you bring in robots to replace workers, then we’ll tax the robots to pay for the welfare we give to the workers who were replaced by the robots. It still comes out of your end.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/17/bill-gates-job-stealing-robots-should-pay-income-taxes.html

Oddly, no mention of taxing the software program that put poor Bob Cratchit out of a job. Just an oversight, I’m sure.
bosshoss429

February 21, 2017

JD;

Excellent take on a software tax.

Shortly after Windows NT was released a few years back, I seem to remember a rumbling among corporate IT executives to file a class action suit against Billy Gates for forcing his next release on his customers before it was ready for prime time. They were ticked about all of their losses when Microsoft’s unstable stuff crashed their systems. I don’t know why it never got more traction. I also know that at least one company, millions over budget on an implementation of Oracle, pulled the plug on the project and banned the implementation contractor from any further projects there. In over 25 years in the IT industry, I don’t recall ever hearing of an Oracle implementation that went well, let alone be done on time and on budget. Of course, all of the big implementers blame Oracle, not themselves.
Seflores

February 21, 2017

Automated ordering has been around for a while. This place was my first more than ten years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-e0BwJY3wQ
Who would want to pay to constantly staff 3-6 registers for the ebb and flow of the unpredictable rush ($15 minimum wage or not)?
Just like Pay at the Pump has nearly eliminated full service (except where Democrat Party Policy like Oregon & New Jersey reigns with an iron boot) automated ordering will do away with these entry level no skill j-o-b-s.
Minimum wage ‘activists’ are doing two things: Being virtuous with Other People’s Money. The other thing is that the unions like UFCW & SEIU have fine print in the bills that union employers are exempt and can pay less than minimum. So the union gets more dues from their lower paid workforce and non-union shops get a kick in the bottom line with higher HR costs. Win-Win.
justplainangry

February 21, 2017

I don’t recall ever hearing of an Oracle implementation that went well

Dude, wait until you have to implement SAP!
Bill C

February 21, 2017

I’m actually looking forward to this at my local McDonald’s. The most common cause of misorders is the personal entering the info. Let me enter my own darned order and I won’t complain about the other idiot doing it wrong.

SmthStCrx, this is PRECISELY the thing that turned me from a $15 minimum wage foe into a huge proponent. For a couple years, my ratio of accurate to inaccurate orders in the drive-thru was less than 1:1. I got SO SICK of people who couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to what I was asking for, who were too stupid to be using something as complicated as a cash register, who didn’t really want to be working there, or who had such a low capability to speak English that they couldn’t understand what I was asking for. The picture above is music to my ears…..uhh…..eyes.
bikebubba

February 21, 2017

Regarding errors, the funniest bit of poka-yoke I’ve ever seen is how most big fast food operators are doing their cash registers with pictures instead of words. Not a compliment to our schools, to put it mildly. That said, getting rid of the kid at the cash register merely pushes the errors back into the kitchen, no?

But that said, people only need to remember two things about the minimum wage. First, as mnbubba noted, the real minimum wage is always zero. Second, society pays a cost when people fail to get their first job in terms of crime and welfare. In other words, increasing the minimum wage serves only to increase crime and welfare costs and expand urban “dead zones” beyond their current boundaries.

After a few more advocates of $15/hour get robbed or killed, perhaps even the left will understand this. I am not, however, holding my breath.
bosshoss429

February 21, 2017

jpa;

Yes, I know SAP ain’t much better.
Joe Doakes

February 21, 2017

The do-it-yourself menu might be good for competent people, who can enter it correctly. But what happens when it’s too complex for people like, well, former employees who were laid off to save money?

If a Person Whose Life Matters enters the wrong order so she receives the wrong food, and management refuses to give it to her free, will that be a racissssssss hate crime that would justify tearing up the place to protest corporate oppression?

In other words, will self-service menus be better for the company, or worse?
Mammuthus Primigenius

February 22, 2017

So what do you do with the bottom 60%? Or the bottom 80%?
TheFedSucks

February 22, 2017

Human beings have always lived with a sightly deflationary economy–i.e. better living through the increased purchasing power brought on by progress. Increased trade, specialization, inventions, and, eh, hem better governing systems.

Then Woodrow Wilson centralized the government and gave us the Fed. Better living though inflationist debt growth.

The only way to keep the game going is by taxing inflating wages, inflating business income and inflating asset bubbles. You can’t tax deflation.

Now technology and globalized labor is going to take us back to a natural deflationary economy the hard way. There is no GDP for Medicare, Social Security, and the vast majority of government pensions because demographics are killing output.
TheFedSucks

February 22, 2017

https://twitter.com/brentclanton/status/834108582144651264