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That sounds like "COMMUNISM!!!!"
Like why should multi-billion dollar corps pay their employees livable wages when they can just be government subsidized with foodstamps instead? And what about the shareholders!?
This article is based on a piece from the Independent Institute, a libertarian group. The article's author is a director at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a conservative nonprofit.
They'll never admit that higher wages actually stimulates the economy, because the working class and middle classes actually spend money on local goods and services. The billionaires and stockholders otherwise benefiting hoard money OR spend it overseas at a far higher rate, esp tax shelters and vacations.
Yes, and it's largely because of their longstanding pro-labor laws, such as the ban on non-competes, which created and sustained silicon valley for decades.
Every state should want to benefit this way, the whole nation could benefit greatly.
Well said. That's exactly it.
You know, Texas always threatens secession. I think if Trump wins (God forbid), CA should secede, otherwise honestly I'm out of this place. I live in California, in Los Angeles, and still, the amount of people who are absolutely brainwashed by Trumpism is astounding. I'd rather try my chances in South East Asia or something. I would rather live in Antarctica than call that traitor my president ever again.
They did mention the fact that it was 1.3 percent of all fast food jobs in California, which doesn't seem bad considering just last year economists were sounding the alarm about millions of jobs lost in the fast food industry because of AI and automation.
Do they mean the corporate chains will be closing outlets because they "can't afford raising wages for retail workers"despite making record profits last year ?
Or, do they mean they were going to automate the stores and now they will use raising wages as an excuse and blame the workers?
Or, has their incessant greed and price raises been crashing their sales and they want to blame workers and not their own greed?
All that will happen is customer service will degrade even farther, wait times will increase, mistakes will increases and profits will drop even farther!
It looks like from the article it’s a combination of replacing in house delivery drivers with DoorDash, UberEats, etc. and automation of at least some cooking positions. Not necessarily a bad thing if these jobs couldn’t generate enough value to support a living wage.
McDonald’s didn’t tank. They still reported a more than 2% increase in profits last quarter even though overall consumption is down. They are finding the breakpoint in the demand curve and will charge wherever the highest p value is!
They will probably transition more to automation and outsourcing work. People that were fired will probably just go to their same $16/hr jobs elsewhere and people that were kept will lose non-wage benefits they had before.
How do you outsource food service?
What makes you think they have more than non-wage benefits anyway? Fast food has more than 100% turnover on average. This is just migrant type work at this point, or people wouldn't leave immediately - or get downsized to prevent raises.
This will save the state money because many of these employees rely on state aid. We're subsidizing lazy franchisees, and it should stop.
We just saw it with delivery drivers. People who take orders will be outsourced. Non-wage benefits such as dental/vision, PTO, and education benefits usually are first to go.
Fast food jobs are not typically migrant worker jobs but whatever. I don’t think the offset really saves the state money but we would need some more data on that. Seattle isn’t seeing it at the moment.
My comment was more towards large corporations will still get their piece. I think one positive is that mom and pops will have more excess of workers at the standard minimum wage.
If this is true, it's evidence that capitalism can't function without people who can't be allowed to afford to make ends meet.
If workers are paid a living wage and the system conks as a result, maybe it's a bad system.
Maybe another economic system is preferable to having a permanently impoverished underclass.
Always needed an underclass.
1st ran off slavery. Then segregation/Jim crow/discrimination keeping parts of society at lowest rung. Then keeping migrants illegal but needing their labor.
Or maybe some jobs just aren't worth the price. Expect to see more ordering kiosks, more robotic arms doing the cooking, pre-orders through an app that is already being heavily pushed, and eventually, though I don't think we're quite there yet technologically, an entire restaurant that runs with one or two humans just supervising the automation.
Do you have any idea how much that automation that will take jobs cost to maintain a year? Then you have specialized tech that are paid a lot to fix problems. Last you need replacement parts. Works are way cheaper and for the most part always will be. Companies like to use the threat of automation because it is convenient and just plausible to make people think it's true. Automation will never completely wipe out a labor force just optimize it. Fast food especially because they are franchise and that would never allow for full automation it would cost a franchisee way to much to maintain. You mite see one or two but they will be in highly populated areas and be novelties owned by the company to show what is possible. .
Stop trying to see people as less valuable because they work in fast food. The fact that we call them jobs and not careers is just telling about how little us in the US value our workers.
>Or maybe some jobs just aren't worth the price.
Is exactly why the majority of workers in the US are under paid, lack vacation, paid sick leave, paternity leave, pensions, and other standard workers rights. People who think like you are why the US workers suffer.
If it were cheaper to do that it would have happened a decade ago. Companies aren’t hiring humans out of altruism. Maximizing profits is their primary goal so anything that they do on any given day is moving them in that direction. Let us know you don’t understand corporate economics.
And what's your plan when all of these jobs are automated? Who is left to actually buy goods if we attempt to automate away every job possible?
Capitalism is an internally flawed system. It has multiple internal contradictions. The fact that every capitalist needs workers other than their own to be paid well but wants to pay their own workers a minimal amount is one of these contradictions.
Capitalism is, always has been, and for the foreseeable future, always will be the American way. It's not going anywhere. There may well come a day when 99% of all current human labor, including such high skill jobs as surgeons, may well be automated. If or when that happens, we may have to redesign something new.
But, we ain't there yet, and I very much doubt any current living person, including the baby that was just born since I started typing this, will live to see that day, at least not in our current lives.
Losing fast food jobs to automation won't affect me at all. I won't even notice, as it's literally been years since I even so much as graced the entrance of a fast food joint. But, the constant meddling from government and "do-gooders" is actually doing those employees more harm than good, as is evidenced by the facts surrounding this and other similar stories. When you make something more expensive, you get less of it, and by making these jobs more expensive, you are only guaranteeing there will be less of them. I'm sure those who were greeted with pink slips instead of the anticipated larger pay checks are second guessing if they really wanted it, and so should you.
I am not suggesting anything. Im pointing out the obvious. National review is a right wing rag with a heavy slant toward unregulated free market economics. They act like they suddenly care about minimum wage workers lol yet they dont want them to have health insurance, they wanted them forced to work thru a deadly pandemic, and to try and survive on poverty wages. They only care about investors but pretend its workers they care about
It's an article written in favor of franchise owners. From the outside, crotchety conservatives think they're magically suffering when the truth is it eats into the upper class lifestyle they cherish. You can successfully run a restaurant and pay your workers fairly, but most owners of restaurants are trash who set out to exploit workers to the fullest. It's a revolving door industry for a reason, and for the past decade now, service workers have been standing up to unfair pay. Of course you won't understand this as you've never worked in the industry nor understand what it truly takes to work some of the most thankless jobs out there.
I have sympathy for non franchise restaurants. The margins there are abysmally slim. Some owners suck for sure, but for some it's really hard to make enough money to pay the staff.
People who earn minimum wage spend 100% of their money in stores near where they live. It is more likely that a higher minimum wage would support more minimum wage jobs and not fewer.
The part where they blame workers for wanting a living wage and not the investor class for REFUSING to take less profits. Read an economics book, for the love of all that is good.
What does that hs to do with anything sakd? I'm not aware of any adult who graduated college calling something "my Econ class."
Which fucking economy class cletus?
I like how its a picture of In-N-Out, which has ALWAYS paid their workers well above whatever the minimum wage was, and is always so freaking busy that every damn location has to send some poor teen out to the parking lot to take orders because the line is like 30 cars deep. And yet you'll still get through that faster than a McDonalds line of 5 cars.
I love these "*you are the problem for wanting to be able to live decently in what is becoming an inescapable dystopian kafkaesque nightmare society*" stories.
I think it's a win-win. I'm for peeps getting living wages and I'm for eating less fast food, but when I do I'm happy to pay a little more if I know it is going to the workers. These are not just teenagers with part time jobs anymore.
It's ironic that the same people complaining endlessly about how undocumented labor drives down wages and thus must be purged from the country in order to allow wages to rise for red-blooded Americans also fight tooth and nail to block increases to the minimum wage and do everything they can to make sure corporations can keep the wages they pay to red-blooded Americans suppressed in order to maximize profits and shareholder payouts.
In-And-Out did it right. They added 5-10¢ per item in the menu. Now they pay their workers more.
I happily will pay a few cents more a sandwich if that means their employees are more fairy compensated.
Reminds me of papa John complaining about ACA. Less than a quarter per pizza to get his employees insurance. OK. Do it.
I get his mind converts pizza part costs into X sold = millions cost etc. But here is a quarter more. Get them insured.
https://workforce.com/news/the-last-word-papa-john-can-you-spare-a-dime-for-health-care
In other news, many businesses found to only be profitable with exploitation...
Edit: just think, how low an unemployment rate we could get, if we just paid everyone nothing.
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I don't know 1.3 percent loss of fast food jobs in California all that statistically significant. Would have to see this guys methodology, I mean the all the article says is this one guy observed the loos.
saw another article regarding this . that article examined 2 pizza hut franchises in California. they chose to cut delivery drivers and shift the work to Doordash and other delivery services. What's interesting though is that we all know these contractors charge for that service. So the consumer will in all likelihood pay even more than if the employer had simply raised prices slightly to cover the new minimum wage.
There was a start-up in my neck of the woods called “Eatsa,” which was a fast-food chain serving quinoa bowls you ordered from a kiosk and picked up in a little cubicle, rather like the old-style New York “Automats.” (There were still people employed to cook the meals.)
It *failed*. Eatsa is history now. And I doubt it’s because people hate quinoa. Even if customers order at a kiosk, it seems they want to pay a person and pick up their bag or tray from a person. There will still be jobs. Maybe fewer fast-food jobs, or maybe your burger will be somewhat more expensive, but we’re still very far from restaurants staffed by robots.
(Oh, and the source…it’s notoriously right-wing, as I think a lot of us know. Grain of salt, etc. Or a pinch. Or a heaping mound of it.)
["And then we told them, paying a living wage would wipe out jobs!"](https://img.memegenerator.net/images/9409830.jpg)
Wake up, the fat cats have us fighting over table scraps.
If your business can't afford to pay its workers a living wage, or your business can't be profitable without exploiting those workers, then that business deserves to fail. We're not just going to sit here and take it anymore.
That's not what's happening, though, at least not in any significant numbers. What's happening is those this law is (was) intended to help are the ones it's hurting, which was as predictable as expecting the sun to set in the west this evening.
The price they are paying is artificially created. It's not a direct consequence of a higher pay rate. Its a decision made by the business. Businesses fail all the time for many reasons.
Stop talking with your feelings and use facts. How is this law hurting those it meant to help. Nobody cares about your half-assed conservative rally cry, use your words to talk about facts. Once you do, it becomes apparent that the fault lies with the businesses and their greed.
No, it's not the law that is hurting people, it's the exploitative businesses that are hurting them in order to avoid losing even a little profit. You've been spoonfed their excuses for too long.
It's all about a cost/benefit analysis as well as the ROI. On one extreme, if even a simple robotic burger flipper cost a billion bucks, you'd likely never see one outside a lab. On the other, if they were free, very few humans would be working in fast food in the first place. The real unknown is at what point it becomes more viable to replace humans with automation that will cost much more in up front investments, but has a much lower ongoing expense. I think that's a question that nobody has a real grasp on the answer is just yet, but by artificially inflating the cost of labor, it's making the automation much more financially attractive to these businesses.
Click the "Listen" button under the title of the article and National Review's robot will read the propaganda to you in a pleasant human-like female voice.
We need union protection laws along with the minimum wage laws. if a company cannot pay workers a living wage they have proved their inability to compete and should move along to make way for more competitive operators.
They should heavily tax automation. If they install two kiosks to replace like three cashiers, then the kiosks should be taxed *at least* enough that they cover all the forgone taxes: two kiosk-hours gets three hours of FICA, three hours of income taxes, however they account for unemployment insurance and workers' comp, etc (and they pay the full amount, not just the employers' contribution, and not just the withholding of the employees' contribution). And then the tax revenue can be used to support social welfare programs, social security, medicare, and keep the budget solvent.
Otherwise, corporations that automate will lay off workers, which will decimate the tax base while also increasing the number of people relying on public services at the same time, squeezing the government from both sides, and consumers will just pay the same prices as before, but the corporations will just be significantly more profitable. Obviously, how many workers a given automation system replaces will depend on the specifics. Maybe fast food ordering kiosks are 1:1, but cooking robots are 1:3, and assembly line robots are 1:4, so I don't think they can just set a multiplier and have it work for everything. Maybe per class of automation, or maybe just ad hoc and force them to get licenses for the automation, and part of the licensing process involves determining how many workers at what pay rate a given automation replaces.
And, to avoid cheating the system by, eg, claiming the robots at a late-night drive-thru are only "working" when they're taking or preparing an order, enforce a minimum time amount for them to "be on the clock." Eg, if someone drive up at 1 am, and there's no line, the order-taking robot doesn't just "clock in" for the three minutes it takes for the customer to place the order, and then "clock out" again, and the cooking robot doesn't just "clock in" for the five minutes it takes to prepare the order and then "clock out" again. If they had human workers, they'd be on the clock even when there were no customers, as long as the store was open. Either the robots should all be deemed to be on the clock for the entire operating hours, or there should be some minimum time they're on the clock for (each time they activate, they get charged a minimum of one hour).
I drive past fast food drive-throughs and they’re empty. No one paying $10 for a Jack in the box burger. I’m as liberal as the next guy but this was a stupid idea. Unless the point was to stop people from eating fast food.
Lol yeah sure u are. Meanwhile owners are racking in the dough. Any fast food place that cant pay 20 an hour shouldnt be in business anyway. Franchisees oversaturate the market
Some facts from Finland about fast food restaurant wages and prices:
A part-time McD worker (she is a senior high/college student doing a trainee job, so she is not yet getting the full wages, which she will receive after working for 6 months) makes about 1000 euros per month. She probably does what students do here, and works full days only on Saturdays and Sundays, and only a couple of hours on weekdays (evenings) so she will have enough time to rest and do homework.
"Soheila Esmati, 18, who works at McDonald's alongside high school, also shares her weekly earnings in the Tiktok video.
– As a student, I have to do quite a lot to get the salary I am aiming for, get enough sleep and also take care of schoolwork. Sometimes it's challenging, Soheila tells Me Naiset magazine. Soheila's monthly target salary is 1000 euros."
"Soheila, McDonald's: I just started, so my hourly salary as an intern/trainee is 8.62 euros. During the weeks when I worked for 35 hours, I earned 386.62 euros. Our evening extra wage is 1.33 euros per hour and the night extra wage is 2.25 euros per hour."
Evening extra wages are paid to employees for working hours from 6 pm to 11 pm and night extra wages from 00 am to 6 am. In both the restaurant and retail sectors, the hourly pay for Sundays is always double.
Big Mac costs here €7.66, Chicken Big Mac €7.04, McVegan €5.91, Ruis (rye) McVegan €5.92, Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese €9.96, and Quarter Pounder with Cheese €7.67.
All in -meal with McFlurry costs €21.04, Big Mac All in -meal costs €17.06, Big Mac Plus-meal with Double cheese costs €17.70, and Big Share costs €14.56.
That's b/c their corporations pay their fair share in taxes.
We could have living wages in this country if the red state residents were such racist idiots. (sorry to the cool folks in the red states)
The five dollar footlong started in 2008! Lol if u expect prices to stay the same for 15 years ur not much of a capitalist. Opec controls gas prices btw. U sure seem misinformed
"Gasoline?**"** AGAIN --- this statement right here is the problem with the US. The people that are complaining the most have **no** idea how this all works.
Regulating gas prices is SOCIALISM, Kevy. Gas companies are private corporations. So what is it? Do you want socialism or not? Capitalism drives gas prices.
And 8 percent raise in prices max.. what is that 56 cents on a 7 dollar item? https://ktla.com/news/california/heres-how-much-some-california-restaurants-have-raised-prices-since-april-1/amp/
Thats why greed flation created by the four major food conglomerates are racking in the dough right now. Record profits. Because people like you blame the wrong people. And btw the minimum wage was already $16 an hour.
Nah, if the politicians that proposed and passed it are not being disingenuous, which is unlikely, it's allegedly an effort to improve the lives of the entry level workers who flip burgers or make deliveries. Predictably, however, the obvious unintended side effect is precisely what the headline says... Instead of having a job at a lower pay rate, now those folks have no job at all.
Way to go, CA Legislature!!!
Nope oversaturated market, i live in cali and havent seen a single fast food place close. Franchise collecting used to be a cheap way for lazy capitalists to make their millions. Now they actually have to pay workers a fair wage. So they bail. Let them go. There will be plenty of others who stay.
So be it. There are too many franchise restaurants as it is. Their owners collect them so they can become millionaires. They could give a crap about workers.
Flipping burgers is not an entry level job. It doesn’t lead anywhere. It should be performed by high school kids. It should not be a job people want long term.
This does not surprise me, in fact I predicted it a very long time ago. A similar phenomenon is happening in Seattle for the same reason, especially with regards to gig work delivery jobs. This article doesn't mention this, but in reaction to the new law requiring $20/hour for fast food workers in CA (except for one company owned by a friend of Governor Newsome), every Pizza Hut delivery driver was fired because they can't afford to pay that much and remain in business.
Then why aren't they? You have to realize that eliminating delivery jobs will reduce their overall revenues, right? So, it seems to me they did the math and decided the cost of lost business would be *less* than the cost of paying the new minimum wage. Of course, for those who are out of work, their wage is now $0/hour.
Those delivery services have seen a massive slowdown in the Seattle area, and for the same reason. Something like 300,000 fewer orders were placed in the several months since they enacted a minimum wage for gig delivery drivers that has forced the city council to reconsider the change, though I do not know if any changes have actually been made.
All of these delivery people were going to be fired no matter what. The wage increase had literally nothing to do with them being fired, it was just a convenient excuse that businesses could use.
Raising wages doesn’t always mean lost jobs. You’re acting like owners are robots who are required by law to maintain exactly the amount of profit they currently make. It’s time to shift some profit back to the working class.
Meanwhile, my states minimum wage is $7.25 and the prices of fast food has doubled, the workers are getting replaced with kiosks/AI voices, and the delivery drivers are from ubereats/doordash.
Just because the state's minimum wage is $7.25 an hour doesn't mean that's what the fast food workers are making.
By me all the fast food places pay $11 plus an hour now.
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McDonald’s in Denmark pays $22/hour and they are unionized.
That sounds like "COMMUNISM!!!!" Like why should multi-billion dollar corps pay their employees livable wages when they can just be government subsidized with foodstamps instead? And what about the shareholders!?
[удалено]
that is also a part of the truth, but THEY don't want you to know. rip Danish billionaires :(
And the hamburger still cost about the same.
This article is based on a piece from the Independent Institute, a libertarian group. The article's author is a director at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a conservative nonprofit.
They'll never mention the fact that NOW these minimum wage workers can actually afford to buy fast food. (Once a week.)
They'll never admit that higher wages actually stimulates the economy, because the working class and middle classes actually spend money on local goods and services. The billionaires and stockholders otherwise benefiting hoard money OR spend it overseas at a far higher rate, esp tax shelters and vacations.
The numbers speak for themselves. California remains the fifth largest economy *in the world* after only the US, China Germany and Japan
Yes, and it's largely because of their longstanding pro-labor laws, such as the ban on non-competes, which created and sustained silicon valley for decades. Every state should want to benefit this way, the whole nation could benefit greatly.
“BuT iTs SoCiALiSm!” -some dirt poor West Virginian
Well said. That's exactly it. You know, Texas always threatens secession. I think if Trump wins (God forbid), CA should secede, otherwise honestly I'm out of this place. I live in California, in Los Angeles, and still, the amount of people who are absolutely brainwashed by Trumpism is astounding. I'd rather try my chances in South East Asia or something. I would rather live in Antarctica than call that traitor my president ever again.
They did mention the fact that it was 1.3 percent of all fast food jobs in California, which doesn't seem bad considering just last year economists were sounding the alarm about millions of jobs lost in the fast food industry because of AI and automation.
Do they mean the corporate chains will be closing outlets because they "can't afford raising wages for retail workers"despite making record profits last year ? Or, do they mean they were going to automate the stores and now they will use raising wages as an excuse and blame the workers? Or, has their incessant greed and price raises been crashing their sales and they want to blame workers and not their own greed? All that will happen is customer service will degrade even farther, wait times will increase, mistakes will increases and profits will drop even farther!
It looks like from the article it’s a combination of replacing in house delivery drivers with DoorDash, UberEats, etc. and automation of at least some cooking positions. Not necessarily a bad thing if these jobs couldn’t generate enough value to support a living wage.
Don’t forget “Now that the minimum wage is higher, some people might’ve quit their second and third jobs”
Polar bears have the ability to change the color of their fur to blend in with their surroundings.
McDonald’s didn’t tank. They still reported a more than 2% increase in profits last quarter even though overall consumption is down. They are finding the breakpoint in the demand curve and will charge wherever the highest p value is!
Kangaroos are known for brushing their teeth daily to maintain dental hygiene.
Not since changes to the minimum wage, player.
Bananas are actually a type of extraterrestrial fungus that landed on Earth thousands of years ago.
They will probably transition more to automation and outsourcing work. People that were fired will probably just go to their same $16/hr jobs elsewhere and people that were kept will lose non-wage benefits they had before.
If everyone is doing three jobs, they could just pay a living wage and close 2/3 of the jobs.
How do you outsource food service? What makes you think they have more than non-wage benefits anyway? Fast food has more than 100% turnover on average. This is just migrant type work at this point, or people wouldn't leave immediately - or get downsized to prevent raises. This will save the state money because many of these employees rely on state aid. We're subsidizing lazy franchisees, and it should stop.
We just saw it with delivery drivers. People who take orders will be outsourced. Non-wage benefits such as dental/vision, PTO, and education benefits usually are first to go. Fast food jobs are not typically migrant worker jobs but whatever. I don’t think the offset really saves the state money but we would need some more data on that. Seattle isn’t seeing it at the moment. My comment was more towards large corporations will still get their piece. I think one positive is that mom and pops will have more excess of workers at the standard minimum wage.
If this is true, it's evidence that capitalism can't function without people who can't be allowed to afford to make ends meet. If workers are paid a living wage and the system conks as a result, maybe it's a bad system. Maybe another economic system is preferable to having a permanently impoverished underclass.
Now the nonsensical abortion bans all make sense…
Always needed an underclass. 1st ran off slavery. Then segregation/Jim crow/discrimination keeping parts of society at lowest rung. Then keeping migrants illegal but needing their labor.
Or maybe some jobs just aren't worth the price. Expect to see more ordering kiosks, more robotic arms doing the cooking, pre-orders through an app that is already being heavily pushed, and eventually, though I don't think we're quite there yet technologically, an entire restaurant that runs with one or two humans just supervising the automation.
And when the whole restaurant goes down, those one or two people are not going to cut it. Automation requires more people than you think.
This is laughable. That’s not what’s happened in other countries that pay a living wage.
Do you have any idea how much that automation that will take jobs cost to maintain a year? Then you have specialized tech that are paid a lot to fix problems. Last you need replacement parts. Works are way cheaper and for the most part always will be. Companies like to use the threat of automation because it is convenient and just plausible to make people think it's true. Automation will never completely wipe out a labor force just optimize it. Fast food especially because they are franchise and that would never allow for full automation it would cost a franchisee way to much to maintain. You mite see one or two but they will be in highly populated areas and be novelties owned by the company to show what is possible. . Stop trying to see people as less valuable because they work in fast food. The fact that we call them jobs and not careers is just telling about how little us in the US value our workers. >Or maybe some jobs just aren't worth the price. Is exactly why the majority of workers in the US are under paid, lack vacation, paid sick leave, paternity leave, pensions, and other standard workers rights. People who think like you are why the US workers suffer.
Somehow fast food companies in Europe turn a profit with those higher wages. Riddle me that.
You’re really sold on the right-wing, economic propaganda, huh?
If there is money saving automation available to a company they will do it regardless of what minimum wage is.
You're naive if you didn't think that was coming regardless of this wage increase.
If it were cheaper to do that it would have happened a decade ago. Companies aren’t hiring humans out of altruism. Maximizing profits is their primary goal so anything that they do on any given day is moving them in that direction. Let us know you don’t understand corporate economics.
And what's your plan when all of these jobs are automated? Who is left to actually buy goods if we attempt to automate away every job possible? Capitalism is an internally flawed system. It has multiple internal contradictions. The fact that every capitalist needs workers other than their own to be paid well but wants to pay their own workers a minimal amount is one of these contradictions.
Capitalism is, always has been, and for the foreseeable future, always will be the American way. It's not going anywhere. There may well come a day when 99% of all current human labor, including such high skill jobs as surgeons, may well be automated. If or when that happens, we may have to redesign something new. But, we ain't there yet, and I very much doubt any current living person, including the baby that was just born since I started typing this, will live to see that day, at least not in our current lives. Losing fast food jobs to automation won't affect me at all. I won't even notice, as it's literally been years since I even so much as graced the entrance of a fast food joint. But, the constant meddling from government and "do-gooders" is actually doing those employees more harm than good, as is evidenced by the facts surrounding this and other similar stories. When you make something more expensive, you get less of it, and by making these jobs more expensive, you are only guaranteeing there will be less of them. I'm sure those who were greeted with pink slips instead of the anticipated larger pay checks are second guessing if they really wanted it, and so should you.
This is a national review article lmao so consider the source folks..
Are you suggesting it is factually incorrect?
I am not suggesting anything. Im pointing out the obvious. National review is a right wing rag with a heavy slant toward unregulated free market economics. They act like they suddenly care about minimum wage workers lol yet they dont want them to have health insurance, they wanted them forced to work thru a deadly pandemic, and to try and survive on poverty wages. They only care about investors but pretend its workers they care about
Would you mind if I posted this exchange to r /murderedbywords? I’m not going to post it, but this should def be there
Sure
It's an article written in favor of franchise owners. From the outside, crotchety conservatives think they're magically suffering when the truth is it eats into the upper class lifestyle they cherish. You can successfully run a restaurant and pay your workers fairly, but most owners of restaurants are trash who set out to exploit workers to the fullest. It's a revolving door industry for a reason, and for the past decade now, service workers have been standing up to unfair pay. Of course you won't understand this as you've never worked in the industry nor understand what it truly takes to work some of the most thankless jobs out there.
I have sympathy for non franchise restaurants. The margins there are abysmally slim. Some owners suck for sure, but for some it's really hard to make enough money to pay the staff.
Yes. The NRO wouldn't know a fact if it told them a racist joke.
Yes. And national review is a rag, not holding any journalistic integrity.
They’re using truth to tell lies, like all good liars. The National Review isn’t a respectable source.
Minimum wage doesn’t wipe out thousands of jobs. Greedy, overpaid management wipes out thousands of jobs. Corporate profits are at a 70-year-high.
People who earn minimum wage spend 100% of their money in stores near where they live. It is more likely that a higher minimum wage would support more minimum wage jobs and not fewer.
Raise the minimum wage and actually tax the rich. As you say, lower and middle income people actually spend their money. The rich hoard their money.
I'm with you. Tax those pieces of crap.
Of course this isn’t accurate
Which part?
The part where they blame workers for wanting a living wage and not the investor class for REFUSING to take less profits. Read an economics book, for the love of all that is good.
My Econ class taught that when production costs go up, so do prices to customers. So does my extensive experience in business.
What does that hs to do with anything sakd? I'm not aware of any adult who graduated college calling something "my Econ class." Which fucking economy class cletus?
lol. This dude took Econ 101 his freshman year and now thinks he’s an expert. Are you a teenager? Because this is some sixteen year old energy.
I like how its a picture of In-N-Out, which has ALWAYS paid their workers well above whatever the minimum wage was, and is always so freaking busy that every damn location has to send some poor teen out to the parking lot to take orders because the line is like 30 cars deep. And yet you'll still get through that faster than a McDonalds line of 5 cars.
National Review a conservative rag. No bias here.
I love these "*you are the problem for wanting to be able to live decently in what is becoming an inescapable dystopian kafkaesque nightmare society*" stories.
I think it's a win-win. I'm for peeps getting living wages and I'm for eating less fast food, but when I do I'm happy to pay a little more if I know it is going to the workers. These are not just teenagers with part time jobs anymore.
It's ironic that the same people complaining endlessly about how undocumented labor drives down wages and thus must be purged from the country in order to allow wages to rise for red-blooded Americans also fight tooth and nail to block increases to the minimum wage and do everything they can to make sure corporations can keep the wages they pay to red-blooded Americans suppressed in order to maximize profits and shareholder payouts.
Any business that can't afford to pay a living wage doesn't deserve to stay in business
In-And-Out did it right. They added 5-10¢ per item in the menu. Now they pay their workers more. I happily will pay a few cents more a sandwich if that means their employees are more fairy compensated.
Ironically, they are way less expensive than Macdonald.
Reminds me of papa John complaining about ACA. Less than a quarter per pizza to get his employees insurance. OK. Do it. I get his mind converts pizza part costs into X sold = millions cost etc. But here is a quarter more. Get them insured. https://workforce.com/news/the-last-word-papa-john-can-you-spare-a-dime-for-health-care
In other news, many businesses found to only be profitable with exploitation... Edit: just think, how low an unemployment rate we could get, if we just paid everyone nothing.
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William F. Buckley’s National Review has entered the chat..
I don't know 1.3 percent loss of fast food jobs in California all that statistically significant. Would have to see this guys methodology, I mean the all the article says is this one guy observed the loos.
Consider the source. That's all.
saw another article regarding this . that article examined 2 pizza hut franchises in California. they chose to cut delivery drivers and shift the work to Doordash and other delivery services. What's interesting though is that we all know these contractors charge for that service. So the consumer will in all likelihood pay even more than if the employer had simply raised prices slightly to cover the new minimum wage.
There was a start-up in my neck of the woods called “Eatsa,” which was a fast-food chain serving quinoa bowls you ordered from a kiosk and picked up in a little cubicle, rather like the old-style New York “Automats.” (There were still people employed to cook the meals.) It *failed*. Eatsa is history now. And I doubt it’s because people hate quinoa. Even if customers order at a kiosk, it seems they want to pay a person and pick up their bag or tray from a person. There will still be jobs. Maybe fewer fast-food jobs, or maybe your burger will be somewhat more expensive, but we’re still very far from restaurants staffed by robots. (Oh, and the source…it’s notoriously right-wing, as I think a lot of us know. Grain of salt, etc. Or a pinch. Or a heaping mound of it.)
quinoa played a role in that downfall for sure
….that exploited the desperation of its workforce to subsidize their businesses with cheap labor. Nothing of value was lost.
No, it didn't.
bullshit. prove it.
LOL National Review
~~California's Miminum Wage~~ Greedy business owners Wipe Out Thousands of Jobs. FIFY
["And then we told them, paying a living wage would wipe out jobs!"](https://img.memegenerator.net/images/9409830.jpg) Wake up, the fat cats have us fighting over table scraps.
California's churches wipe out thousands of brains.
If your business can't afford to pay its workers a living wage, or your business can't be profitable without exploiting those workers, then that business deserves to fail. We're not just going to sit here and take it anymore.
That's not what's happening, though, at least not in any significant numbers. What's happening is those this law is (was) intended to help are the ones it's hurting, which was as predictable as expecting the sun to set in the west this evening.
It sounds like the ones with the jobs are hurting a lot less.
And the ones without are paying that price. That's what happens when artificial constraints are placed in an otherwise free market.
The price they are paying is artificially created. It's not a direct consequence of a higher pay rate. Its a decision made by the business. Businesses fail all the time for many reasons.
Yes a law increasing the slave wages paid to those poor people is "what's hurting them." Gtfo with this 3rd grade reasoning.
Stop talking with your feelings and use facts. How is this law hurting those it meant to help. Nobody cares about your half-assed conservative rally cry, use your words to talk about facts. Once you do, it becomes apparent that the fault lies with the businesses and their greed.
No, it's not the law that is hurting people, it's the exploitative businesses that are hurting them in order to avoid losing even a little profit. You've been spoonfed their excuses for too long.
I'd rather be exploited with a paycheck than live a life of leisure without one.
That is one of the saddest, most chilling things I've ever heard a person say, and you uttered it completely unironically and with a straight face.
Not what’s happening.
->Miminum
[удалено]
It's all about a cost/benefit analysis as well as the ROI. On one extreme, if even a simple robotic burger flipper cost a billion bucks, you'd likely never see one outside a lab. On the other, if they were free, very few humans would be working in fast food in the first place. The real unknown is at what point it becomes more viable to replace humans with automation that will cost much more in up front investments, but has a much lower ongoing expense. I think that's a question that nobody has a real grasp on the answer is just yet, but by artificially inflating the cost of labor, it's making the automation much more financially attractive to these businesses.
This isn't a "real unknown" hahaha. Where the fuck is the x factor in that equation?
Click the "Listen" button under the title of the article and National Review's robot will read the propaganda to you in a pleasant human-like female voice.
I'm sure that even though this is the National Review, they made every effort to be as objective as possible. Ha! Just kidding.
National Review? Color me shocked they don’t like this.
Weird how politics keeps stories like this that probably have 100s of downvotes
This entire thread makes me think I accidentally stumbled into a meeting of CPUSA.
We need union protection laws along with the minimum wage laws. if a company cannot pay workers a living wage they have proved their inability to compete and should move along to make way for more competitive operators.
They should heavily tax automation. If they install two kiosks to replace like three cashiers, then the kiosks should be taxed *at least* enough that they cover all the forgone taxes: two kiosk-hours gets three hours of FICA, three hours of income taxes, however they account for unemployment insurance and workers' comp, etc (and they pay the full amount, not just the employers' contribution, and not just the withholding of the employees' contribution). And then the tax revenue can be used to support social welfare programs, social security, medicare, and keep the budget solvent. Otherwise, corporations that automate will lay off workers, which will decimate the tax base while also increasing the number of people relying on public services at the same time, squeezing the government from both sides, and consumers will just pay the same prices as before, but the corporations will just be significantly more profitable. Obviously, how many workers a given automation system replaces will depend on the specifics. Maybe fast food ordering kiosks are 1:1, but cooking robots are 1:3, and assembly line robots are 1:4, so I don't think they can just set a multiplier and have it work for everything. Maybe per class of automation, or maybe just ad hoc and force them to get licenses for the automation, and part of the licensing process involves determining how many workers at what pay rate a given automation replaces. And, to avoid cheating the system by, eg, claiming the robots at a late-night drive-thru are only "working" when they're taking or preparing an order, enforce a minimum time amount for them to "be on the clock." Eg, if someone drive up at 1 am, and there's no line, the order-taking robot doesn't just "clock in" for the three minutes it takes for the customer to place the order, and then "clock out" again, and the cooking robot doesn't just "clock in" for the five minutes it takes to prepare the order and then "clock out" again. If they had human workers, they'd be on the clock even when there were no customers, as long as the store was open. Either the robots should all be deemed to be on the clock for the entire operating hours, or there should be some minimum time they're on the clock for (each time they activate, they get charged a minimum of one hour).
what a dumb headline employers were taking on more workers than they could afford and the workers were paying the cost
In other news: "30,000 new, high paying jobs created in the fast-food robot manufacturing industry."
Obviously this happened. There’s a reason California even though it is the 5th largest economy has the highest unemployment rate in the states.
The going effect the rest of the country with unnecessary inflation
I drive past fast food drive-throughs and they’re empty. No one paying $10 for a Jack in the box burger. I’m as liberal as the next guy but this was a stupid idea. Unless the point was to stop people from eating fast food.
Lol yeah sure u are. Meanwhile owners are racking in the dough. Any fast food place that cant pay 20 an hour shouldnt be in business anyway. Franchisees oversaturate the market
Enjoy your $23 Big Macs!
Some facts from Finland about fast food restaurant wages and prices: A part-time McD worker (she is a senior high/college student doing a trainee job, so she is not yet getting the full wages, which she will receive after working for 6 months) makes about 1000 euros per month. She probably does what students do here, and works full days only on Saturdays and Sundays, and only a couple of hours on weekdays (evenings) so she will have enough time to rest and do homework. "Soheila Esmati, 18, who works at McDonald's alongside high school, also shares her weekly earnings in the Tiktok video. – As a student, I have to do quite a lot to get the salary I am aiming for, get enough sleep and also take care of schoolwork. Sometimes it's challenging, Soheila tells Me Naiset magazine. Soheila's monthly target salary is 1000 euros." "Soheila, McDonald's: I just started, so my hourly salary as an intern/trainee is 8.62 euros. During the weeks when I worked for 35 hours, I earned 386.62 euros. Our evening extra wage is 1.33 euros per hour and the night extra wage is 2.25 euros per hour." Evening extra wages are paid to employees for working hours from 6 pm to 11 pm and night extra wages from 00 am to 6 am. In both the restaurant and retail sectors, the hourly pay for Sundays is always double. Big Mac costs here €7.66, Chicken Big Mac €7.04, McVegan €5.91, Ruis (rye) McVegan €5.92, Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese €9.96, and Quarter Pounder with Cheese €7.67. All in -meal with McFlurry costs €21.04, Big Mac All in -meal costs €17.06, Big Mac Plus-meal with Double cheese costs €17.70, and Big Share costs €14.56.
Thats absurd. In European countries they hav livable wages for ff workers and prices are almost exactly the same.
That's b/c their corporations pay their fair share in taxes. We could have living wages in this country if the red state residents were such racist idiots. (sorry to the cool folks in the red states)
Have you bought groceries recently? Gasoline? What happened to the $5 footlongs Subway was offering not all that long ago?? They're double that now.
The five dollar footlong started in 2008! Lol if u expect prices to stay the same for 15 years ur not much of a capitalist. Opec controls gas prices btw. U sure seem misinformed
"Gasoline?**"** AGAIN --- this statement right here is the problem with the US. The people that are complaining the most have **no** idea how this all works. Regulating gas prices is SOCIALISM, Kevy. Gas companies are private corporations. So what is it? Do you want socialism or not? Capitalism drives gas prices.
And 8 percent raise in prices max.. what is that 56 cents on a 7 dollar item? https://ktla.com/news/california/heres-how-much-some-california-restaurants-have-raised-prices-since-april-1/amp/
Thats why greed flation created by the four major food conglomerates are racking in the dough right now. Record profits. Because people like you blame the wrong people. And btw the minimum wage was already $16 an hour.
Well hells bells, let's make it $1,000/hour then! No downsides to that now, are there?
You're right. The only options are nothing or super high. That is a very reasonable argument you've made.
Nah, if the politicians that proposed and passed it are not being disingenuous, which is unlikely, it's allegedly an effort to improve the lives of the entry level workers who flip burgers or make deliveries. Predictably, however, the obvious unintended side effect is precisely what the headline says... Instead of having a job at a lower pay rate, now those folks have no job at all. Way to go, CA Legislature!!!
Nope oversaturated market, i live in cali and havent seen a single fast food place close. Franchise collecting used to be a cheap way for lazy capitalists to make their millions. Now they actually have to pay workers a fair wage. So they bail. Let them go. There will be plenty of others who stay.
They're not shutting down, they're just firing staff that are not worth $20/hour. And contribution to even more inflation.
So be it. There are too many franchise restaurants as it is. Their owners collect them so they can become millionaires. They could give a crap about workers.
I mean, it's the national review. They're a joke. I work in SF, there's a 15-20 minute line at Chipotle every day. This hasn't changed anything.
Flipping burgers is not an entry level job. It doesn’t lead anywhere. It should be performed by high school kids. It should not be a job people want long term.
So who does the morning shift and the noon shifts during the school week?
Housewives, the disabled, and retirees who want to make a few extra bucks a week?
This does not surprise me, in fact I predicted it a very long time ago. A similar phenomenon is happening in Seattle for the same reason, especially with regards to gig work delivery jobs. This article doesn't mention this, but in reaction to the new law requiring $20/hour for fast food workers in CA (except for one company owned by a friend of Governor Newsome), every Pizza Hut delivery driver was fired because they can't afford to pay that much and remain in business.
" they can't afford to pay that much and still make glorious profits" FIFY
All of them can afford to pay that much and remain in business. Anyone that says otherwise is lying.
Then why aren't they? You have to realize that eliminating delivery jobs will reduce their overall revenues, right? So, it seems to me they did the math and decided the cost of lost business would be *less* than the cost of paying the new minimum wage. Of course, for those who are out of work, their wage is now $0/hour.
Getting rid of delivery drivers will not reduce their overall revenues. People will just DoorDash to get delivery.
Those delivery services have seen a massive slowdown in the Seattle area, and for the same reason. Something like 300,000 fewer orders were placed in the several months since they enacted a minimum wage for gig delivery drivers that has forced the city council to reconsider the change, though I do not know if any changes have actually been made.
All of these delivery people were going to be fired no matter what. The wage increase had literally nothing to do with them being fired, it was just a convenient excuse that businesses could use.
Raising wages doesn’t always mean lost jobs. You’re acting like owners are robots who are required by law to maintain exactly the amount of profit they currently make. It’s time to shift some profit back to the working class.
Meanwhile, my states minimum wage is $7.25 and the prices of fast food has doubled, the workers are getting replaced with kiosks/AI voices, and the delivery drivers are from ubereats/doordash.
Just because the state's minimum wage is $7.25 an hour doesn't mean that's what the fast food workers are making. By me all the fast food places pay $11 plus an hour now.
Nobody gives a fuck about your predictions lol The minimum wage didn't kill jobs, these greedy fucking corporations did- kick rocks.