The long road to economic ruin begins with a single ludicrous step…
Martina Phelps says the Seattle City Council’s historic vote Monday to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour could change her life.
Phelps, 22, earns $9.47 per hour working for a McDonald’s restaurant near downtown. She wants to move out of her mother’s South Seattle home, and she wants to go back to school. She says those things could happen now that the city will have the nation’s highest minimum wage.
“It’s hard right now,” she told USA TODAY hours before the midafternoon vote. “I have been trying to save up for school, but I just can’t do it. This would mean a lot.”
The council unanimously approved the measure before a packed house.
The plan, which includes a lower training wage aimed at teenagers, will phase in the higher, local minimum over three to seven years, depending on the size of the business and benefits they provide employees. Next April 1, when the plan takes effect, every worker will get at least a $1-an-hour raise.
City officials estimate that about a quarter of workers earn less than $15 an hour. Full-time work at that rate translates to about $31,000 a year.
Okay. So let’s do the math here: what are the advantages, if you’re a business owner or prospective franchisee, of opening a small business that requires you to pay above market value for labor? What’s the incentive? Your love of microbrews and rain? Because this will end up costing jobs, driving up end product prices, and creating a scenario under which far fewer people can afford to purchase discretionary goods.
Meaning, you end up either with a gentrified city — which the flannel-clad hipsters evidently don’t see coming — or else you’re on your way to becoming Detroit on the Puget Sound, which anyone with any economic sense can see coming, a fact that sadly rules out the same flannel-clad hipsters who believe they won a victory today. I can’t wait to see the revolt when forced wage increases are met with cuts to, say, free in-store WiFi. Because REVOLUTION!
The victory, such as it is, is typical of leftist agitators. They’ll reap the immediate rewards, then leave the city barren when the businesses leave and the next generation of workers can find no entry level work.
They’re like locusts, these people. Only they don’t have the courtesy to bury themselves under ground for 7-years at a time before bothering the rest of us again.
Anyone wish to bet on how many of the members of the Seattle City Council have actually employed people and paid wages? Or have attempted to provide a good or service to the public in order to make a living? We business owners should be grateful they didn’t decide to make the minimum wage $50.00 dollars an hour.
One guarantee, if the rainy city – our Republic lasts until the $15 is completely phased in: Seattle will be the most highly robotic up-sized meal markets in the nation.
But fast-food only, please. I had dinner at my local Chili’s a couple weeks ago. They had, lonely on the table at our booth, a robotic order menu, by which we were to complete our dinner selections and place our orders. I’d already had a couple adult beverages, so I ‘politely’ had the thing removed. It’s one thing to automate a McDonald’s or Arbys, but a restaurant needs refrain from these tactics. Trot out human wait staff or lose business.
That’s going to be hard on Starbuck’s, isn’t it?
Beck read an article about someone in that situ who got the big per-hour raise but lost paid vacations, healthcare, overtime, tips, and other perqs that went with the job.
I think it was in the hotel industry, catering or summat, so the tips were added on to the bill, not paid by individuals.
The guys on RedEye Radio Network (not the Fox crew) observe that the morons accuse management of stiffing their workers (because greed) but will go right ahead and eat the wage increase mandated by law. They won’t be greedy and pass the increase on somewhere else. They’ll take it out of their own salaries and bonuses.
Won’t someone rid us of these magical thinkers who believe they can Set Things Right because they’re so incandescently clever?
In SeaTac just south of Seattle they already have the $15 min wage.. and it’s not going so well.. Lost bennies, fewer hours, downsizing , closings.. Just what was expected.. Funny though, they exempted the airline workers from the m$15 min if I recall correctly.. It’s just hotel and fast food workers
I’m waiting for the $15 maximum wage to settle in on the grudge crowd.
seattle be cheap $1oo0.oo/hr
it is bs money make it $20,000/hr
>HATTIESBURG, Mississippi
UPDATE 11:10 p.m. CDT: With 89% of precincts reporting, McDaniel’s lead is about 3,500 votes.<
link
i wanna marry me a minimum wage seattle superstar
i wanna make my mama proud
in the time of chimpanzees
i was a monkey!
Though I have to admit when I hear about cray-cray stuff like this, I think, DO IT!
The faster the better.
The RedEye Radio guys also point out that the minwage is being implemented gradually. Why gradually? To minimize the negative impact they deny the minwage has.
Do it anyway, Seattle. You deserve it good and hard.
this is why kurt cobain went there to blow his diseased brains out onto the linoleum
cause the seattle people are so hopelessly stupid
black hole sun
dumbest. song. ever.
it always made nirvana look way way better when people realized that soundgarden were hopelessly pretentious prancing fags
and that song about the black hole sun always does the trick
on behalf of poor dead kurt I thank you, garden of the sound
I thank you a whole lot
You ready for a $7 latte, Seattle?
Mr. B these are pretty much the same momos who’ve been paying $10+ for a happy hour glass of wine at any number of Howard D. Schultz’s cloyingly self-righteous Starbucks locations for like three years know
but if they don’t like wine they’re more than welcome to overpay for gravy-loving obamawhore oprah winfrey’s tea drinks
***
preguntele
why don’t we call her Dr. Winfrey like that Angelou whore?
it’s a goddamn conundrum i tell you what
Seattle libtard: “Yay! The minimum wage is now $15/hour!”
Employer: “Nope. The minimum wage remains what it has always been: $0/hour. Buh-bye. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Oh, and say hello to your robotic replacement.”
I had lefty friends trumpeting Seattle’s decision on FB. Because caring and shit, I guess. Or, and I’m just spitballing here, because they’re borderline retarded and have no fucking clue. Frankly, I’ve stopped arguing with them about economics, minimum wage, and supply and demand, because I’ve had more success teaching my cat calculus. Oh sure, she doesn’t learn squat, but she doesn’t squawk at me about being racist. Instead, she simply curls up next to me, purrs, and drops off to sleep. I think that I prefer that.
Black Hole Sun was Soundgarden, nitwit.
Chris Cornell could recite his grocery list over kazoos and armfarts and it would be of better quality than virtually all of the Eurotween pap that the yellow peril has linked here over the years.
i know it was soundgarden pickle you did not read very good or maybe i was unclear
soundgarden sucks america’s ass
‘feets unclear?
Naaaaaah.
no sometimes it happens
Yeah, sometimes I don’t read so well.
My apologies for calling you a nitwit, this time.
There is enough stupid liberal shit here in Seattle to laugh at and hate… You dont have to be hatin on Soundgarden… A lot of their stuff rocks.. though admittedly I’m no big fan of Black Hole Sun…
Try Outshined..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNh-iw7gsuI
..and while we’re on the subject try some Alice in Chains
Would?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgL3OogsvUw
I wonder if the $15 minimum wage applies to the illegals that cut the grass and clean the house for our political elite betters?
no worries Mr. Slart