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A national $15/hour minimum wage isn't going to fly in places like small town Kentucky or West Virginia. Those places don't have good jobs anymore, and the only

A national $15/hour minimum wage isn't going to fly in places like small town Kentucky or West Virginia. Those places don't have good jobs anymore, and the only businesses left are a drive-thru and a Dollar General. They can barely afford a dozen or so people working at minimum wage now, and they can't run a place with half the employees. Their customers can barely afford to shop there and can't take paying more to cover it. The only reasonable option in this scenario is to close.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Dollar General and other national chain drive thru eateries are substantially profitable (profits in the billions of dollars, DG margins are ~%30). The odds of Dollar General, McDonalds, and company and closing up in rural America is so close to zero, for our purposes we can round down to zero. They might raise prices a bit, and be slightly less profitable to shareholders, but they won't close up shop.
- theandrewbailey 8y ago
  I was thinking more along the lines of a local mom and pop drive thru where people get their daily 6 pack and lottery ticket than a McDonalds.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Then mom and pop will need to work their store, instead of underpaying employees.
    - Alupis 8y ago
      Does this not mean those employees are out of work? Benefit some lucky workers with increased wages, while driving others out of work entirely? We're talking about doubling the national minimum wage. That's a hefty increase, especially for areas where cost of living is quite a bit different than say, California.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
SEJeff 8y ago
One of the biggest Amazon distribution warehouses in the country happens to be in Lexington, KY. I’m sure this $15 / hour wage increase is going to go over very well there. I’m from Lexington, KY originally but live in Chicago now (since there aren’t local jobs for Linux Software Engineers)
- lambda_lover 8y ago
  Lexington, Kentucky is the 60th-largest city in the United States. That is not the "small town Kentucky" that the grandparent is talking about. (S)he is talking about small businesses (or business franchises, like Dollar General) that are barely scraping by in small towns -- a gas station, a diner, a dollar store -- typically with a only 1-3 employees working at a time. A place like that would take a substantial hit from a doubling of the minimum wage. Don't get me wrong -- workers are grossly underpaid in most of the US, and wage gains are good. But those wage gains do have to be relative. In NYC/SF, a $15 minimum wage is just enough to scrape by with a couple of 20-30 hour a week jobs. In a poorer part of the US, a $10 min wage is plenty... but anything more might be enough to kill what few businesses currently survive there.
  - SEJeff 8y ago
    Fair enough, but Dollar General is doing just fine: https://qz.com/1120552/the-retail-apocalypse-isnt-just-amazon-its-that-the-middle-class-is-disappearing/ https://qz.com/1120552/the-retail-apocalypse-isnt-just-amazo... The small mom and pop stores have been closing at record paces due to things like Walmart and Amazon. A higher minimum wage might speed that up, but it just moves things faster in the direction they've been moving for decades already. The thing that blows my mind is what the federal government (by the definition of the IRS) considers the poverty level is based on the cost of food plus inflation, while entirely negating the cost of living. Minimum wage is made based on the poverty level, but the poverty level is wildly inaccurate due to not taking into account housing.
    - lambda_lover 8y ago
      Couldn't agree more. It's also silly that there's a federal poverty level at all -- I see a poverty level as only useful on a scale as granular as county/parish, even state level is probably too large to give any useful data (for reference, I grew up in Northern New York State and now live in NYC, and any New York State poverty level is meaningless in both of those places because they're so disparate). It's a shame that the GOP, which is supposedly anti-federal power consolidation, no longer embraces that ideal. We would likely be better served here in the US by something more akin to a confederacy. On the subject of Dollar General: I imagine the corporation as a whole is profitable, but I'm curious about their franchisees. If it's something like the McDonald's setup, then I imagine that their franchisees could be seriously hurting while the name Dollar General remains lucrative. Unfortunately I don't know much about their structure -- maybe they don't have franchises?
gentaro 8y ago
Why not take this a step further and understand that their customer base will have more money to spend in those stores with a higher minimum wage?
empath75 8y ago
I get that it's inconvenient for everyone in town to get up and leave, but once a region is no longer economically productive, it's the only thing that makes sense.

toomuchtodo 8y ago

Dollar General and other national chain drive thru eateries are substantially profitable (profits in the billions of dollars, DG margins are ~%30). The odds of Dollar General, McDonalds, and company and closing up in rural America is so close to zero, for our purposes we can round down to zero. They might raise prices a bit, and be slightly less profitable to shareholders, but they won't close up shop.

theandrewbailey 8y ago
I was thinking more along the lines of a local mom and pop drive thru where people get their daily 6 pack and lottery ticket than a McDonalds.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Then mom and pop will need to work their store, instead of underpaying employees.
  - Alupis 8y ago
    Does this not mean those employees are out of work? Benefit some lucky workers with increased wages, while driving others out of work entirely? We're talking about doubling the national minimum wage. That's a hefty increase, especially for areas where cost of living is quite a bit different than say, California.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

SEJeff 8y ago

One of the biggest Amazon distribution warehouses in the country happens to be in Lexington, KY. I’m sure this $15 / hour wage increase is going to go over very well there. I’m from Lexington, KY originally but live in Chicago now (since there aren’t local jobs for Linux Software Engineers)

lambda_lover 8y ago
Lexington, Kentucky is the 60th-largest city in the United States. That is not the "small town Kentucky" that the grandparent is talking about. (S)he is talking about small businesses (or business franchises, like Dollar General) that are barely scraping by in small towns -- a gas station, a diner, a dollar store -- typically with a only 1-3 employees working at a time. A place like that would take a substantial hit from a doubling of the minimum wage. Don't get me wrong -- workers are grossly underpaid in most of the US, and wage gains are good. But those wage gains do have to be relative. In NYC/SF, a $15 minimum wage is just enough to scrape by with a couple of 20-30 hour a week jobs. In a poorer part of the US, a $10 min wage is plenty... but anything more might be enough to kill what few businesses currently survive there.
- SEJeff 8y ago
  Fair enough, but Dollar General is doing just fine: https://qz.com/1120552/the-retail-apocalypse-isnt-just-amazon-its-that-the-middle-class-is-disappearing/ https://qz.com/1120552/the-retail-apocalypse-isnt-just-amazo... The small mom and pop stores have been closing at record paces due to things like Walmart and Amazon. A higher minimum wage might speed that up, but it just moves things faster in the direction they've been moving for decades already. The thing that blows my mind is what the federal government (by the definition of the IRS) considers the poverty level is based on the cost of food plus inflation, while entirely negating the cost of living. Minimum wage is made based on the poverty level, but the poverty level is wildly inaccurate due to not taking into account housing.
  - lambda_lover 8y ago
    Couldn't agree more. It's also silly that there's a federal poverty level at all -- I see a poverty level as only useful on a scale as granular as county/parish, even state level is probably too large to give any useful data (for reference, I grew up in Northern New York State and now live in NYC, and any New York State poverty level is meaningless in both of those places because they're so disparate). It's a shame that the GOP, which is supposedly anti-federal power consolidation, no longer embraces that ideal. We would likely be better served here in the US by something more akin to a confederacy. On the subject of Dollar General: I imagine the corporation as a whole is profitable, but I'm curious about their franchisees. If it's something like the McDonald's setup, then I imagine that their franchisees could be seriously hurting while the name Dollar General remains lucrative. Unfortunately I don't know much about their structure -- maybe they don't have franchises?

gentaro 8y ago

Why not take this a step further and understand that their customer base will have more money to spend in those stores with a higher minimum wage?

empath75 8y ago

I get that it's inconvenient for everyone in town to get up and leave, but once a region is no longer economically productive, it's the only thing that makes sense.