Restaurant Group Files For Bankruptcy After 'Progressive' Minimum Wage Laws Harm Profitability

As progressives around the country lobby for a higher minimum wage, one restaurant group which employs thousands of individuals has been forced to declare bankruptcy in order to stay in business due to mandated hourly pay increases.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/timothymea...56v6O0LNa8

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You know trouble is right around the corner when your best friend tells you to hold his beer!!

Restaurant Group Files For Bankruptcy After 'Progressive' Minimum Wage Laws Harm Profitability

As progressives around the country lobby for a higher minimum wage, one restaurant group which employs thousands of individuals has been forced to declare bankruptcy in order to stay in business due to mandated hourly pay increases.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/timothymea...56v6O0LNa8

There's always a trade off with various policies and/or demands. Eventually these types of demands will lead to jobs being automated or reduced significantly in manual labor needs. Companies have more than likely been foaming at the mouth with the idea of A.I / Robotics advancing over the years. 

User friendly made systems or self serving made systems to the point to where you push a few buttons and a machine does the manual work for you (and in most cases, does it accurately and saves you the frustration of having to go back to the store for a correction or getting home and just dealing with someone's mistake). Not really sure where we'll be at as a society, especially within the work force over the next thirty-one years but it'll be an interesting Country to live in by 2050. 

I just hope these people on the fringes (politically speaking, on the left and the right) wake up someday and realize that they've created a never ending cycle of a snake eating it's own tail. It's only going to get you so far and last so long.

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"What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie? I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky. The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing; Rush in and die, dogs - I was a man before I was a king."

The Congressional Budget Office recently concluded that bringing the minimum wage up to $15 an hour would mean 1.3 million fewer jobs. I don't know what time frame they were looking at, but regardless that translates to about three points on the unemployment scale.
A lot of people would make that trade!
Tell the unlucky ones that they should be happy staying home and collecting welfare with no job!
I wouldn't make that trade.
the advocates for $15 an hour love to tell these [BLEEP] stories about people trying to feed their families with minimum wage jobs. I have no doubt that there are people in that situation, but I would bet they are not typical of minimum wage earners. This is why we have the EITC. Give wage boost to people who actually are trying to support families, and only to them.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

The problem with artificial increases to the minimum wage is inflation. It's basic economics. If businesses are now having to pay their entry-level and unskilled workers $15 per hour, they're going to have to float that somehow. Then you're going to have all of your entry-level management and semi-skilled workers who are making $12-15 per hour now and bumping their pay, and do you think the guys doing twice the work at the $15-18 per hour level are going to be happy with their pay now that the 16-year-old scrubbing the bathroom floor makes as much/almost as much per hour as they do? It's a ripple effect up the chain where everybody from $20/hour on down wants a raise of some sort, and there are more than a few mid-sized local businesses out there where the person signing the checks is lucky to bring that home at the end of the day. They have to either raise prices and lose to the likes of Walmart, IHOP, Olive Garden and Amazon, cut back staff dramatically and raise everyone's workload, cut back benefits for companies already offering them, or just close. Meanwhile, those of us lucky enough to be removed from those income brackets will see the cost of everything spike. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

If you want to raise the minimum wage to $15 over the course of 10-15 years, fine. It's a jump of roughly 7-10% per year, well ahead of inflation but not so much that curve would immediately crush businesses. Telling a local restaurant that it has to go from paying $2.13 plus tips to paying seven times that amount would kill almost any local restaurant.

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The Congressional Budget Office recently concluded that bringing the minimum wage up to $15 an hour would mean 1.3 million fewer jobs. I don't know what time frame they were looking at, but regardless that translates to about three points on the unemployment scale.
A lot of people would make that trade!
Tell the unlucky ones that they should be happy staying home and collecting welfare with no job!
I wouldn't make that trade.
the advocates for $15 an hour love to tell these [BLEEP] stories about people trying to feed their families with minimum wage jobs. I have no doubt that there are people in that situation, but I would bet they are not typical of minimum wage earners. This is why we have the EITC. Give wage boost to people who actually are trying to support families, and only to them.

....  Don't try to sound sensible.  We know it's a ploy.

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The problem with artificial increases to the minimum wage is inflation. It's basic economics. If businesses are now having to pay their entry-level and unskilled workers $15 per hour, they're going to have to float that somehow. Then you're going to have all of your entry-level management and semi-skilled workers who are making $12-15 per hour now and bumping their pay, and do you think the guys doing twice the work at the $15-18 per hour level are going to be happy with their pay now that the 16-year-old scrubbing the bathroom floor makes as much/almost as much per hour as they do? It's a ripple effect up the chain where everybody from $20/hour on down wants a raise of some sort, and there are more than a few mid-sized local businesses out there where the person signing the checks is lucky to bring that home at the end of the day. They have to either raise prices and lose to the likes of Walmart, IHOP, Olive Garden and Amazon, cut back staff dramatically and raise everyone's workload, cut back benefits for companies already offering them, or just close. Meanwhile, those of us lucky enough to be removed from those income brackets will see the cost of everything spike. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

If you want to raise the minimum wage to $15 over the course of 10-15 years, fine. It's a jump of roughly 7-10% per year, well ahead of inflation but not so much that curve would immediately crush businesses. Telling a local restaurant that it has to go from paying $2.13 plus tips to paying seven times that amount would kill almost any local restaurant.

I mean we're definitely going to get to a $15 minimum wage eventually. Florida has the right idea, I think, with the small annual increases.
It's fine for the very bottom rung to get an automatic bump when there is inflation. The rest of us need to be out there earning our wage bumps.
Back in the seventies a lot of people got automatic wage increases due to inflation. That's bad; you get a feedback effect and even more inflation.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

The problem with artificial increases to the minimum wage is inflation. It's basic economics. If businesses are now having to pay their entry-level and unskilled workers $15 per hour, they're going to have to float that somehow. Then you're going to have all of your entry-level management and semi-skilled workers who are making $12-15 per hour now and bumping their pay, and do you think the guys doing twice the work at the $15-18 per hour level are going to be happy with their pay now that the 16-year-old scrubbing the bathroom floor makes as much/almost as much per hour as they do? It's a ripple effect up the chain where everybody from $20/hour on down wants a raise of some sort, and there are more than a few mid-sized local businesses out there where the person signing the checks is lucky to bring that home at the end of the day. They have to either raise prices and lose to the likes of Walmart, IHOP, Olive Garden and Amazon, cut back staff dramatically and raise everyone's workload, cut back benefits for companies already offering them, or just close. Meanwhile, those of us lucky enough to be removed from those income brackets will see the cost of everything spike. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

If you want to raise the minimum wage to $15 over the course of 10-15 years, fine. It's a jump of roughly 7-10% per year, well ahead of inflation but not so much that curve would immediately crush businesses. Telling a local restaurant that it has to go from paying $2.13 plus tips to paying seven times that amount would kill almost any local restaurant.

Pretty much this. Minimum wage increases are nothing more than politicians pandering to the unskilled for votes. What the unskilled people don't realize is that no matter what the minimum wage is increased to, they will remain the lowest paid people in the country paying the same amount for products and services relative to the increase. And really, all minimum wage increases serve to do is erode the savings of others.

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Who decided $15 is the arbitrary number that is considered a "living wage" anyway?

AI/Robot Tax conversation will happen within a decade.

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Who decided $15 is the arbitrary number that is considered a "living wage" anyway?

$15/hr in Jacksonville is solidly middle class. $15/hr in LA is "good luck existing" money. I too wonder where that blanket figure came from.

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Who decided $15 is the arbitrary number that is considered a "living wage" anyway?

$15/hr in Jacksonville is solidly middle class. $15/hr in LA is "good luck existing" money. I too wonder where that blanket figure came from.

Same type of blanket figure as the "11 million illegal immigrants" in this country the MSM has used for the past decade. 

Is 30K a year considered middle class for a single person?

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Who decided $15 is the arbitrary number that is considered a "living wage" anyway?

$15/hr in Jacksonville is solidly middle class. $15/hr in LA is "good luck existing" money. I too wonder where that blanket figure came from.

Nah, it's still Poverty level but you can survive.

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$15/hr in Jacksonville is solidly middle class. $15/hr in LA is "good luck existing" money. I too wonder where that blanket figure came from.

Nah, it's still Poverty level but you can survive.

That seems about right, at least for Jacksonville it does. You would be lucky to bring home $1600 - $1800 per month after taxes at $15 an hour with a guaranteed 40 hour work week. It's doable. You can survive. But you wouldn't be able to afford very many luxuries. You would literally have to live within your means. You would also be looking at a rough area, give or take, with rent and square footage. 

You could find a roommate to split the cost with in a two bedroom or a partner to share the bed and rent with in a one or two bedroom. It's possible. My friend moved back here about three months ago from Texas. He's able to make ends meet working at Publix with three boys all under the age of ten to cloth and feed while his wife works at CVS. 

It's not ideal. But you have to make due with the hands you're dealt in life. Pick-up a skill or trade that pays more if you want to live differently. But there's always a trade off. I am certainly lucky to be in my position in life. But I have to work my [BLEEP] off weekly, well after hours from my standard 40+ hour work week on a daily basis.

While being subjected to making decisions after hours that revolve around money and whether or not it results in a happy customer or a pissed off customer based on a service failure or service being successful (which most of them take very little time to tell you how awesome you've been doing but don't hesitate to tell you to kick rocks the moment something bombs). They'll be asking for a meeting within 24 hours with the "sky is falling" rhetoric with sales and operations people involved after you hit 97% all year and one little load misses the mark.

Never fails here. Especially during peak season. It's high pressure. High anxiety. And a lot of dirty finger pointing most of the time.

It's nice to have a house I am barely able there to enjoy. But it's also nice to have a safe nest of money in my account for the few times I actually get to take time off from work for awhile. Everybody wants top billing in life but they are not willing to climb up that ladder a little bit more to reach for that top shelf. There's a price to pay for that and a toll it takes on all of us. And it varies based on profession.

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"What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie? I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky. The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing; Rush in and die, dogs - I was a man before I was a king."

$15/hr in Jacksonville is solidly middle class. $15/hr in LA is "good luck existing" money. I too wonder where that blanket figure came from.

Nah, it's still Poverty level but you can survive.

So, basically putting a large strain on businesses while eliminating 0% of social financial services abuse?

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