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$15 minimum wage didn’t hurt NYC restaurants

• joemaller1 7y ago
  Is the author really in Buffalo? That’s the other side of the state. From my personal experience in nyc, and from talking to neighbors who own restaurants, small and family owned businesses are absolutely hurting. They’ve reduced staff, and owners are making up lost hours themselves. Delivery has been mostly outsourced. The price of everything on the menu has gone up. A number of lower-cost restaurants have closed completely. Whatever reported numbers the author based this upon do not tell a complete story.
  • cooljacob204 7y ago
    > Delivery has been mostly outsourced I feel like that is more of a side effect of delivery apps getting popular. But in my opinion if your restaurant cant afford to pay $15 an hour, which still isn't really a livable wage in NYC, then maybe it shouldn't be operating.
    • vorpalhex 7y ago
      So then you think the cost of food should be higher in NYC?
      • cooljacob204 7y ago
        Takeout and dining in? Yes, absolutely. It has already gone up to compensate. I still go out and eat for a few dollars more and people get paid better. Go explore some rent prices in NYC and you will understand why it is necessary.
        • vorpalhex 7y ago
          Sure and that's fine for you and me, but it also is more cost on those who are likely making $15/hr and get a lot of their meals out and about - which means their cost just rose with their paycheck. Remember, making food at home in a nice kitchen is a luxury.
          • lowpro 7y ago
            I think you have this backwards, paying others to make food for you is a luxury. If you can afford a $50 microwave that you can then use to make meals that cost less than a dollar, that is the standard. You don't need a 'nice kitchen' to eat at home. Not to mention, their wage is double the $7.25 national minimum wage, but food prices at these restaurants do not double in response, so they still come out ahead.
            • vorpalhex 7y ago
              You can't live off of microwave noodles and instant rice. Cooking meals not only requires a way to heat food but ingredients which go bad quickly (eg time to go grocery shopping) and time to assemble and cook ingredients (dried beans are cheap but take 12 hours, instant beans still take 10 minutes or so). Then remember food has to be palatable, which is an additional challenge with kids. I'm lucky that I'm in a place now where I can make nice food from relatively raw ingredients and much of that stems from my (relative) wealth.
          • throwaway-hn123 7y ago
            What the fuck are you talking about???? Did you not know that in most of the world, cooking at home is the norm? How come you're so out of touch with reality?
          • deleted 7y ago
            [deleted]
      • pcardoso 7y ago
        Aren't you just making this happen with tipping? I am from Europe and I always find it confusing to deal with prices in the US. First the prices don't contain the taxes, and then I have to add tipping. The price of a meal shows up on the menu as 9.95 and I end up paying around 15.
        • vorpalhex 7y ago
          Please still tip the staff making $15/hr. It's still the custom at most locations.
          • Frost1x 7y ago
            The original point of a tip was to optionaly pay when service goes over and above what they need to do. At some point, it morphed into passing part of the service staff wage to the customer and pretending this was somehow a good thing. It's so entrenched in culture now people just assume even for crap service you tip. At the end of the day, it really gives management an easy out by putting the customer against the service staff for labor rates while the restaurant decides fixed meal costs.
            • scient 7y ago
              Its absolutely ridiculous. Its now to a point where 15-18% is expected even for bad service, and 25% and up for good services. There is no way I'm paying an extra quarter of my bill in tips because the restaurant owner is too cheap and offloads the staff costs directly to their customers.
              • vorpalhex 7y ago
                Then don't eat at those places. That's a valid option - but don't stiff your wait staff.
            • todd8 7y ago
              Its gotten ridiculous, I just wish that we could move away from the tipping culture that we have here in the US. I almost always tip 20%. I even tip 15% for poor service--I figure that there are likely things going on in the kitchen or with other service staff that I'm not aware of, and that tips are often split between everyone so the my tip for poor service is help the other employees busing tables too. My wife often tips 25% or more. Why can't restaurants charge us more, pay their staff better, and then the staff could treat us like we were customers of the restaurant and not expecting us to directly compensate them. For the answer, see my last paragraph. Even for pick up service, say when I place a to-go order for cup of coffee with my Starbucks app and then pick it up from a bin on the counter myself, the app prompts for a tip. At other server-less restaurants, I'm forced to make the choice of tip when I place the order. So why the culture around tipping here in the US. I believe that it's related to why movie theaters can charge so much for popcorn. From Stanford.edu: "The findings empirically answer the age-old question of whether it's better to charge more for a primary product (in this case, the movie ticket) or a secondary product (the popcorn). Putting the premium on the "frill" items, it turns out, indeed opens up the possibility for price-sensitive people to see films. That means more customers coming to theaters in general, and a nice profit from those who are willing to fork it over for the Gummy Bears." [1] In the case of tipping in restaurants, the restaurants are naturally willing to charge more to customers like myself and my wife for the wine+food+service while still making a profit from price sensitive customers that pay less by tipping less for the same wine+food+service. [1] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-does-movie-popcorn-cost-so-much https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-does-movie-popcorn...
      • jaas 7y ago
        Yes. There are many cheap food options in NYC and if they need to charge a bit more to pay a fair wage then so be it. Providing even cheaper prepared food off the backs of staff not getting paid a living wage is not ok.
      • subpixel 7y ago
        Yes, absolutely, and eventually. Restaurants have long been subsidized by workers stuck in a position where they will work for _any_ wage. As that changes, which is demonstrably a good thing, so will prices rise to match costs. It’s similar to the way Uber/Lyft prices will need to rise when their subsidies change terms.
      • dangerface 7y ago
        Restaurants != Food Having some one else prepare and serve you food is a luxury, they deserve to be paid for their work. If you disagree then do the work yourself no one is stopping you.
  • arzt 7y ago
    Anecdotally I have to agree. Having lived in Manhattan for the past decade, I have seen more restaurants close in the last two years than the previous eight. Most of lower Manhattan's retail footprint is filled with chains (Starbucks etc) rather than neighborhood restaurants.
    • nickdoesdesign 7y ago
      Thats a factor of rising rents not rising wages. Its been well documented that rent seeking is causing this behavior.
    • kiba 7y ago
      If you have to pay something ridiculous like 13k a month, I am sure you go out of business too.
      • BubRoss 7y ago
        If I had to pay that much in rent, I wouldn't go into business.
    • thawaway1837 7y ago
      So restaurants which have the lowest margins (chains) are proliferating but restaurants with higher margins are failing. That seems to indicate that worker pay isn’t really the issue here. And it’s well known the reason restaurants are closing shop is almost because of outrageous rents.
  • coldpie 7y ago
    We don't have to use anecdotes, we have data. Linked from the article is this summary, which links to the full report: http://www.centernyc.org/new-york-citys-15-minimum-wage http://www.centernyc.org/new-york-citys-15-minimum-wage Quote: "During this period, New York City has seen a strong economic expansion of the restaurant industry, outpacing national growth in employment, annual wages, and the number of both limited- and full-service restaurant establishments." Perhaps the disagreement you see is because this study focuses on the workers, instead of the business owners. Food service worker wages and employment rates are up relative to overall growth. This article is dispelling the notion that increasing worker wages will lead to worse outcomes for those workers, which is a common objection to increasing the minimum wage.
    • barry-cotter 7y ago
      “This period” in the quoted report is 2013-2018. The minimum wage hike occurred in late 2018. > Roughly 77 percent of NYC restaurants have slashed employee hours. Thirty-six percent said they had to layoff employees and 90 percent had to increase prices following the minimum wage hike, according to a NYC Hospitality Alliance survey taken just one month after the bill took effect. > Only about 4 percent of survey respondents indicated that none of the above changes took place in their restaurants. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-york-city’s-15-minimum-wage-now-officially-disaster-71761 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-york-city’s-15-mi...
      • ashelmire 7y ago
        As a former service worker, I'd argue that cutting employee hours was exactly the goal. Typically, in a restaurant in Philly or places with similarly lower-than-minimum service wages (which still has the $2.75 or whatever minimum for service workers), you'll be scheduled excessively for hours when the restaurant definitely isn't going to have any business. For example, coming in at 330/4 to start prep for the dinner shift. When labor costs basically nothing, there's no reason not to overschedule them. This reduced the amount of time I could spend outside of work learning to program (for example... since it's what I did hah) or others could spend improving their skills for basically no money. It's a huge detriment to the employees. You'd stand around cleaning for some nitpicky manager making 0/hour effectively, doing untipped cleaning and prep work. Your paychecks will be $0 if you get even a modest amount of tips for the night (it's all taxed). Now restaurants will be more particular about how they schedule employees, and the untipped work actually costs money to have done (if a janitor would have to be paid minimum+ to do it, why should a server do it for $2.75/hr)?
  • Someone1234 7y ago
    It is using New York's official data on the restaurant sector, and other quantifiable studies to make its point. Dismissing it because of "where the author lives" and anecdotes, comes across like you've decided the conclusion and are trying to fit facts to support that preconceived conclusion. Why not look at the actual data and try to address that? It would be a much stronger argument.
  • ilikehurdles 7y ago
    > Delivery has been mostly outsourced This is true in just about every market in the US, including all the ones without minimum wage increases. > The price of everything on the menu has gone up You could say this most years about any restaurant and most years you'd be right. The other years, you'd see smaller servings. > A number of lower-cost restaurants have closed completely The average person eats at fewer restaurants in their entire life than the number of restaurants that close in NYC in any given year. Anecdotes aren't a data point.
    • wolco 7y ago
      Removing smoking from restaurants and bars had a huge effect no one mentions. The industry hasn't recovered.
      • JoBrad 7y ago
        Studies post-ban haven’t shown that. https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2013/12_0327.htm https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2013/12_0327.htm
        • coldtea 7y ago
          Studies from the "center of disease control and prevention" haven't shown that. Hardly the best source to pick a study that says "the smoking ban hurt businesses".
          • CathedralBorrow 7y ago
            Do you have a criticism that goes deeper than pointing to the name of an organization?
            • coldtea 7y ago
              Don't need to, I find that this is a good enough filter for a pareto 80% of cases.
  • pytester 7y ago
    >small and family owned businesses are absolutely hurting likely because profit = revenue - expenses and expenses (in the form of wages) have gone up more than revenue. Raising the minimum wage has always been bad for margins. That's why those restaurants (and economists indirectly on their payroll) try to convince us that it's bad for workers too.
  • coldtea 7y ago
    >From my personal experience in nyc, and from talking to neighbors who own restaurants, small and family owned businesses are absolutely hurting. They’ve reduced staff, and owners are making up lost hours themselves Well, if they were hurt with such a raise, perhaps they were not viable businesses and are better closed. The employees might lose a crappy near-subsistence job, but both the employees and owners can then concentrate their efforts into something better... Somehow Europe manages to have viable restaurants despite decent minimum wage and not tips-oriented compensation...
    • dwild 7y ago
      > The employees might lose a crappy near-subsistence job, but both the employees and owners can then concentrate their efforts into something better... Before the hike, both the employee and owners could do that... yet they didn't. Is the existence of a lower paid job make it harder to create something better? That seems really backward, because there will always be lower paying job. > Somehow Europe manages to have viable restaurants despite decent minimum wage and not tips-oriented compensation... Where does Europe has an higher minimum wage than $15 USD? That's excluding tipping which can bring that wage MUCH higher. You can't really compare viability when the wage is actually lower....
    • scient 7y ago
      Impossible, go away with your socialist ideas! /s
    • alfromspace 7y ago
      What if the alternative is unemployment?
      • Freak_NL 7y ago
        What makes the US unique that it needs to forego minimum wage? Unemployment isn't much different from most countries in Europe or other comparable economies.
        • eej2ya1K 7y ago
  • jkingsbery 7y ago
    An article that supports this: https://nypost.com/2019/09/29/15-minimum-wage-hike-is-hitting-hurting-nyc-restaurants/ https://nypost.com/2019/09/29/15-minimum-wage-hike-is-hittin... > Gabriela’s isn’t alone. In a survey of 324 full-service restaurants, the New York City Hospitality Alliance found that 76.5 percent of respondents cut staff hours and 36.3 percent eliminated jobs, including whole layers of middle management, in response to mandated wage increases. > To cope, restaurateurs like the Milners are moving from large-scale restaurants to small spaces. The Milners have Gabriela’s Taqueria at West 44th Street and Eighth Avenue. It seems unlikely the original article is telling the full story.
    • mattzito 7y ago
      Ehhhhh - so, the Post is notoriously anti-minimum wage hikes, and the NYCHA is a restaurant owners association, so it makes sense that they are anti-wage hike. I would say that from my experience with the restaurant industry here, it definitely puts pressure on restauranteurs with marginal businesses. If you have a labor-intensive restaurant with thin margins, it hurts you. However, the restaurants with strong businesses, it's not really affecting. A far greater impact on the typical restaurant is delivery, which is an increasing percentage of their business with a lower margin for many traditional restaurants, given the cut that Grubhub/Seamless/etc. take.
      • jkingsbery 7y ago
        Whatever the bias of the publisher, the article from the NY Post contradicts this research backed by data on a couple of fronts: * "massive layoffs in the restaurant industry are unlikely," but the survey indicated that a large number of restaurants have eliminated jobs or cut hours * "...because owners need a certain number of staff to operate a full-service kitchen," but at least in the anecdotes from the interview in the NYPost article, restaurant owners are moving to smaller venues that require less staff or moving to "common space" layouts.
  • WhompingWindows 7y ago
    To respond to your anecdata: In a capitalist system, isn't it their fault for not being able to compete? Why should we lower wages for thousands of workers because you personally know failing businesses?
    • subject117 7y ago
      Employees who could have been hired by these businesses won’t be now. This creates more competition for the workers because it decreases the supply of jobs. (ECON 101)
• dplgk 7y ago
  Ok, revenue is up because they are charging more for products to cover min wage. But is profit up?
  • trentnix 7y ago
    Of course not. If it was, they'd have led with it. But by arguing revenue is up, it's almost always burying the lede that profit is not.
    • namarie 7y ago
      Is profit the ultimate objective of every human activity? Isn't it enough that the minimum wage raise has helped employees better their living conditions even if at maybe a cost in employer profits?
      • trentnix 7y ago
        Without profit, someone doesn't get paid. If you don't pay the landlord he can kick you out. If you don't pay the electric company, you can't keep the lights on. If you don't pay the gas bill, the gas company can turn off your heater and your stove. If you don't pay your vendors, you can't by food to cook and sell. If you don't pay your Internet Service Provider, you can't run credit cards. If you don't pay the bank you've got a loan with, they can shut your whole operation down. Restaurants are notoriously low margin and owner-operator endeavors. So more often than not, the first person that doesn't get paid is the owner, who sinks hour after hour into the place to try and keep the doors open. But eventually the owner has to pay their own mortgage, car payment, etc. So while profit may not be the ultimate objective of every human activity, it is essential if you want to stay in business. And if you don't? Your workers find out the hard way that the real minimum wage is $0.
• lr4444lr 7y ago
  The author fails to answer one of the hypotheses she raises: were hours cut?
• trentnix 7y ago
  If raising the minimum wage didn't have an adverse affect on revenue and employment, then clearly it's time to raise the minimum wage again. Right? Why not $50/hr? $100/hr? If increases wages increases revenue, why have all of these restaurant owners been damaging their business by paying lower wages?
  • snarf21 7y ago
    I'm missing something here. Nothing says that the profit didn't get cut by a large amount. Who cares if you make $100K in revenue if you have $120K in costs? Maybe you'd prefer to have $80K in revenue and $75K in costs so you actually have a profit.
  • dicytea 7y ago
    What kind of a joke of a strawman is this? No one is implying that revenue will infinitely positively increase alongside minimum wage.
  • 0027 7y ago
    Yeah because if we pay a restaurant worker $100 an hour, they will eat 10 as much...right? The reason of why this might be beneficial is likely because restaurant workers aren't just paying for car insurance, rent, health insurance, etc, and can afford a luxury-- like eating out.
  • dangerface 7y ago
    > why have all of these restaurant owners been damaging their business by paying lower wages? Because they want that money for them selves? Ask a dumb question get a dumb answer.
• TheMagicHorsey 7y ago
  I'm surprised that the natural wage in NYC was not that much already ... given how expensive that place is. I wonder if employment falls as a result of the wage being raised. I have family that runs a maid service business in San Jose. The minumum wage is much lower than $15 and they are already talking about closing up their business. I assume that if the wage is raised to $15 that the business will surely close. Which is sad because the maid service business is already the only source of employment for the women who work there. They aren't choosing to work there against other options. Its the only flexible hour work they can get, and they are allowed to keep their kids with them when they work ... which other employers don't allow. I'm sure if given the choice between no work and the maid service work, they'd probably choose the maid service work. But that choice wouldn't be up to them and the employer.
  • ryan93 7y ago
    Entry level jobs in austin now pay 15. Who in NYC would work for less?
• Merrill 7y ago
  >Even a one-time increase of 10% to 15% is unlikely to dissuade large numbers of customers from dining out. That would amount to an extra $1.20 on a $12 burger. On the other hand, an extra $1.20 on a $3.50 burger might dissuade large numbers of customers from dining out. A $12.00 burger is pretty high end in most parts of the country.
  • coldpie 7y ago
    > On the other hand, an extra $1.20 on a $3.50 burger might dissuade large numbers of customers from dining out. That's the whole point of the article. The experiment has been performed and they are analyzing the results. The results are that people accept a 10% increase and/or that the buying power of increased wages at the bottom expanded the market enough to make up for your hypothetical lost income.
• someonehere 7y ago
  San Francisco is hurting from this aspect and food delivery partnerships. Didn’t read the article but they all blame the minimum raise hike, high rent, and the amount that food delivery services eat out of their bottom line. Many have stated they regretted working with food delivery businesses and would have preferred just serving customers in house.
  • WhompingWindows 7y ago
    Is SF as a whole hurting, or just restauranteurs? If their businesses are hurting in a capitalist society, maybe they should look at their practices, re-evaluate, and survive the competition, or else bust. I don't have too much sympathy for those entrepeneurs going into a notoriously difficult industry who then complain that paying lower-class wage workers slightly more is killing their investment.
• rjplatte 7y ago
  Yeah, NYC is rich as hell. There's simply enough cash to go around, so this can work. In my small town, this would kill so many small businesses.
• enobrev 7y ago
  I don't know a ton about the economics but my living experience lines up with this article. At least half of my closest friends are in the service industry. I spent most of my 20s and 30s in NYC before the wage increase. Those friends generally couldn't afford much of anything, outside of rent and a steady supply of cigarettes. It's the reason bartenders tend to "give the bar away" in NYC. Because their friends can't afford much else. Then I moved to Seattle and noticed something entirely different. Same sort of friends - mostly service industry. And this was before the increase to $15/hr, when it was $12/hr. What was starkly different was that our new friends could actually afford to do things. Nice dinners, bars around town where we didn't know the bartenders, movies, trips to Portland and Vancouver. Same jobs, but with money to spend. And then there's the side that was close to home. My wife was, for the first 2/3 of our relationship, a bartender. In NYC she had her good weeks, pulling in over $2k and her bad weeks, making somewhere around $100 for the week. Hard to say what was "normal" and impossible to predict. It was impossible to plan around her income so I basically just asked her to give me half and it would essentially even out. Then we moved to Seattle, again at $12/hr minimum (she was making $17-$20 I think) and our whole situation was different. We were already doing fine because I make a good living but now I could finally count on her contribution. We were able to save, plan trips, etc in ways we couldn't before because now we had a baseline amount that she would always make. The tips we're just a cherry on top. And then we moved to Chicago with a shitty mimimum wage for servers and my wife left the industry entirely. She had gotten used to some stability in her income and now with a low minimum wage for servers, there is none. Even at a nice theater gig, she was making less than any job she had in Seattle and again relying upon the whims of her customers rather than the stability of the industry.
  • linuxftw 7y ago
    Retail jobs aren't meant to be bread-winner jobs. Any zero-skill job is going to pay whatever the local market minimum is. There are two ways to raise the minimum market wage. First is minimum wage laws. Second is to increase labor demand or shorten labor supply. There's clearly a surplus of no-skilled labor in the US, yet we're still importing more of it. Businesses are capitalizing on the market conditions and exploiting the labor surplus, that's why we're seeing the proliferation of so many chain restaurants and and other little-to-no-value businesses.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• tosser0001 7y ago
  Why is $15/hr the magic number? Just because it's some round number? If raising the minimum wage has had nothing but positive effects, why not raise it to $20/hr - or some other number calculated for maximum benefit - who knows what that would be?
  • WhompingWindows 7y ago
    Do you think it'd be as snappy if Bernie was up there at the podium asking for $14.79 per hour? These are arbitrary numbers, when thinking on an economy-wide scale, because $15/hr does a LOT more for someone in a small town than a big city. The point is to pick something reasonably high, a non-starvation wage, that is also easy to market to the masses. I don't think economists are huge fans of $15/hr across the board, so $20/hr would probably be abhorrent to them. But economists can be totally wrong and still keep their jobs and respect due to the political use of economics these days.
  • linuxftw 7y ago
    I would be in favor of raising it to $30/hr. Labor would become so valuable, so many people would start their own independent businesses. There would be no way to enrich the middle managers and the useless executives, they'd have to make reasonable salaries. Of course, we'll have to raise tariffs to keep all the jobs from shifting overseas, but things would level out eventually.
• bhupy 7y ago
  Costs to consumers are up, too. Minimum wage is a way to guarantee a minimum standard of living to employees, but we collectively pay for it through increased prices for goods and services, which disproportionately burdens the poor. The EITC/UBI is also a way to guarantee a minimum standard of living, and we collectively pay for that through progressive taxes, the burden for which disproportionately falls on the rich.
  • dangerface 7y ago
    > we collectively pay for it through increased prices for goods and services, which disproportionately burdens the poor. Employees provide services not goods, so the cost of services goes up, but the cost of goods such as food stays the same. The rich disproportionately use services over the poor who cant afford to pay some one else and just do the work themselves. Example: The rich go to restaurants while the poor cook at home.
    • bhupy 7y ago
      What? The cost of labor is an input into the production of basically all goods we consume. You’re right that a lot of employees provide services, but a lot of them work at factories or stores that produce/sell goods also (retail). Poor people purchase from this value chain, too. Markets are remarkably good at minimizing the input required to produce a unit output. The reason why labor costs have fallen so dramatically is because markets have minimized the input cost of labor. This is good for ALL consumers. However at the end of the day, labor’s gotta eat. This is where welfare comes in.
      • dangerface 7y ago
        > The cost of labor is an input into the production of basically all goods we consume. True but most products are not produced in America, the products that are made in America, are made by robots, the cost of labor on goods in America is just not significant. In contrast to services which are all done in America by American people this is huge. > This is good for ALL consumers. However at the end of the day, labor’s gotta eat. This is where welfare comes in. You got your classes mixed up the working class are the consumers not the rich. A rise in wages for workers means consumers have more money to spend which is good for consumers and business.
• sornaensis 7y ago
  I don't understand why minimum wage isn't just increased somewhat quickly over a few years. e.g. 7.25 -> 8.25 -> 10.25 -> 13.25 Over a few years to allow businesses to adjust their margins gradually. Increasing the income at the bottom will increase spending, which should be good for businesses like these that are employing low skill/pay workers.
  • mywittyname 7y ago
    Because a gradual increase had the chance to be neutered by future politicians. It's rare to get the opportunity to actually increase minimum wage, so it makes sense to get several years worth of increases in one go.
  • thatfrenchguy 7y ago
    That’s what they did in Seattle & San Francisco
    • sornaensis 7y ago
      Ah, I did not know that.
• RocketSyntax 7y ago
  Do small businesses like mom and pop shops pay minimum wage? Just curious who the policy actually impacts.
• 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
  I don't understand why people still tip if they make 15 per hour. As it writes in the article they have tip credit but the employer would still have to cough that 15 bucks if they didn't make enough in tips.
  • squeaky-clean 7y ago
    As someone who put themselves through college on pizza delivery... > but the employer would still have to cough that 15 bucks if they didn't make enough in tips. This gets you fired. You'll get your requested increased compensation in your next check, and the following week you're reduced to about 5 hours of work total. The following week after that you're let go for poor performance because if you're the only employee asking for tip compensation you're basically admitting you don't get tipped as well as other employees. Not that I agree earning low tips is synonymous with poor performance, but try convincing a stereotypical crappy manager that. It's also one of those situations where the people getting screwed over don't really have the means to defend themselves. If $400 in missing wages is a big deal (as it should be), one isn't really able to hire a lawyer to take care of the case for them. Also people lie. I worked at Burger King as a teen and the manager would lie to everyone, saying if he found out they were applying for other jobs they would be fired. Super illegal, and he has no way of even knowing outside of reference calls. But pretty much every older employee believed him and didn't want to risk homelessness because they tried switching jobs. I remember telling him something along the lines of "Fuck off, I'm 16 and live with my parents"(he thought I was older), but it didn't hit me until years later that he was basically keeping the other employees his prisoners.
    • graeme 7y ago
      The OP was saying if min wage is $15 workers get that automatically without having to ask. You seem like you’re replying to something else? Or does the law only give $15 if there aren’t tips?
      • shakestheclown 7y ago
        Depends on the location and industry, but it looks like for NYC 11+ employee companies it's $12.50 cash wage / $2.50 tip credit for hospitality service, $10/$5 for food service. https://labor.ny.gov/formsdocs/factsheets/pdfs/p717.pdf https://labor.ny.gov/formsdocs/factsheets/pdfs/p717.pdf
• barry-cotter 7y ago
  There may be a careful analysis of the effect of a $15 minimum wage on the restaurant industry in New York but this isn’t it. It doesn’t mention whether entry of low skilled workers into the industry decreased, the effect of the change on hours worked, substitution away from labour or decreases in non-pecuniary compensation. It could be that every single one of these points to the minimum wage hike having small to non-existent effects but the article reads like a brief, not an analysis. Compared to the Seattle minimum wage study. They had an objective study set up and when they didn’t like the results they got some political hacks to re-analyze the data and release their results beforehand. http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/seattle-is-getting-an-object-lesson-in-weaponized-data/ http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/seattle-is-getting-an-obje... > Two weeks. Two studies on minimum wage. Two very different results. > Last week, a report out of the University of California—Berkeley found “Seattle’s minimum wage ordinance has raised wages for low-paid workers, without negatively affecting employment,” in the words of the Mayor’s Office. That report, produced by the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at Berkeley, was picked up far and wide as proof that the doomsday scenarios predicted by skeptics of the plan were failing to materialize. > And while another study that came out Monday from researchers at the University of Washington doesn’t exactly spell doomsday either, it wasn’t exactly rosy. “UW study finds Seattle’s minimum wage is costing jobs,” read the Seattle Times headline Monday morning. The study found that while wages for low-earners rose by 3 percent since the law went into effect, hours for those workers dropped by 9 percent. The average worker making less than $19 an hour in Seattle has seen a total loss of $125 a month since the law went into effect. Edit: RickJWagner points out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21386070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21386070 > business owners ... say the extra money comes with an unforeseen cost: higher good prices, fewer working hours and layoffs. > “Many people working in the restaurant industry wanted to work overtime hours, but due to the increase, many restaurants have cut back or totally eliminated any overtime work,” Andrew Riggie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, told Fox News. “There’s only so much consumers are willing to pay for a burger or a bowl of pasta.” > Roughly 77 percent of NYC restaurants have slashed employee hours. Thirty-six percent said they had to layoff employees and 90 percent had to increase prices following the minimum wage hike, according to a NYC Hospitality Alliance survey taken just one month after the bill took effect. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-york-city’s-15-minimum-wage-now-officially-disaster-71761 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-york-city’s-15-mi...
• diogenescynic 7y ago
  I don’t think high minimum wages really hurt employment as much as small/family business ownership rates since this just increases the startup capital and operating cost needed to run a business. So for some cities the trade off is probably worth it, but this is also why you see the same chains all over and a lot of unique/niche stores dying out.
  • Ensorceled 7y ago
    Amazon, Walmart, and Costco are killing most of those stores, not minimum wage increases.
    • trentnix 7y ago
      Nonsense. Of course increased operational costs for businesses most sensitive to labor costs has an adverse effect on small business. That such increases occur at the same time price competition shrinks margin - such as price competition from the volume sellers you mention - simply exacerbates the problem.
      • Ensorceled 7y ago
        Since real dollar wages are stagnant or declining for decades, with recent changes in minimum wage laws either barely correcting or not correcting this disparity, how can this be nonsense? How can decreasing real dollar operational costs (wages) be an increased cost?
• RickJWagner 7y ago
  For another point of view, "Roughly 77 percent of NYC restaurants have slashed employee hours. Thirty-six percent said they had to layoff employees and 90 percent had to increase prices following the minimum wage hike" https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-york-city%E2%80%99s-15-minimum-wage-now-officially-disaster-71761 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-york-city%E2%80%9...
  • MrsPeaches 7y ago
    "Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation"
    • ilikehurdles 7y ago
      > In July 2015, the magazine published an article by Maria Butina advocating improved relations between the Russian Federation and a future US Republican Presidential administration.[1] In 2018, Butina was arrested by the FBI and charged with conspiring to act as an unregistered Russian agent.[2][3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Interest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Interest I totally forgot about this scandal/conspiracy against the US until looking up the source. The leadership is also almost entirely famous neocons you've seen on trial. Besides that, there are plenty of problems with the isolated statistics presented in the article, as they are worded to be deceptive.
  • tom_mellior 7y ago
    These points are mentioned in the featured article as well.
  • dghughes 7y ago
    That is the biggest problem these days even here in Canada. A few years ago at my old job I finally got a big raise from $14 to $24/hour. Then almost immediately reduced to part-time from full-time but the same duties. I toughed it out hoping for a reversal but one day I was abruptly laid off without notice. Then three people were hired to do my job. It seems business have no realistic view of employees. You're merely an "FT" or "PT" in manager parlance. Working minimum wage is more difficult than it was years ago due to it being stuck at a specific rate for decades. But hours worked is just as important and the trend to cut everyone to part-time was an even bigger disaster. Even the Fight for Fifteen group has been fighting for $15 for many years. They should be adjusting the rate for inflation, by now it should probably be $17.
• Ensorceled 7y ago
  The comments on these types of articles always hurt my brain. Blaming minimum wage increases for McDonald's, Walmart, pretty much everybody bringing in automated tellers for instance. I'm always bemused by the arguments against minimum wages, they almost always boil down to "My business can't survive unless my employees are living in poverty." which, in reality for a lot of businesses, is "I won't be as profitable if I have to pay a living wage". If people really believed this, there would be staged minimum wages: Walmart pays $25 minimum while small, struggling restaurants pay $15.
  • navigatesol 7y ago
    >I'm always bemused by the arguments against minimum wages, they almost always boil down to "My business can't survive unless my employees are living in poverty." which, in reality for a lot of businesses, is "I won't be as profitable if I have to pay a living wage". There are some jobs that don't create $15/hour in value. Why is that hard to imagine? Minimum wage dictates that those jobs and the products they provide will not exist. Whether you think that's a net benefit to society is another question.
    • smudgymcscmudge 7y ago
      There are also people who aren’t capable of producing $15 of value in an hour. A $15 minimum wage means they are less likely to be employed.
    • TeMPOraL 7y ago
      "Value" in economics is somewhat arbitrary. When both you and all your competitors have to pay at least $15/hour for a necessary piece work, you'll all pass the cost onto the consumer and suddenly the work will be creating $15/hour in value.
      • barry-cotter 7y ago
        No, because all of the people who were marginal customers will just forgo your product or service. You can pass on all of an increase in costs for goods with price inelastic demand. If demand is elastic you either have to eat the margin or go out of business.
• voyager2 7y ago
  When I started washing dishes, minimum wage was $1.50. Hard to get used to inflation of 1000%.
  • maaaats 7y ago
    > Hard to get used to inflation of 1000%. I think that's a common problem when discussing things with one's parents. "You make twice the amount I did at that age!", "Yes, but tuition is twenty times as high!".
  • ilikehurdles 7y ago
    The average cost of tuition at public universities in 1970 was $470. In 2017, it was $9,970. Health spending was $355 per person in 1970 ($1,797 if you adjust to 2017 dollars). In 2017 it was $10,735. The median price of a home in 1970 was $23,600, and last april it was $339,000. We have less than half the number of pensions in the US than we did then. Contributions to retirement plans have grown by more than 10x and we have a lot less financial security now despite this. 1,000% is a fantasy. We're well above that on many aspects.
  • ainiriand 7y ago
    Oh my god! How long was that? I was working in a restaurant long ago in Spain but I made like 5 euro per hour.
    • voyager2 7y ago
      As I look at http://www.thedigeratilife.com/blog/federal-minimum-wage-history/ http://www.thedigeratilife.com/blog/federal-minimum-wage-his... I see the minimum wage was actually $1.60 at the time, but I was paid $1.50. Might have had to do with the fact that I was 15.
      • runako 7y ago
        Fun comparisons around a $1.60 minimum wage in 1968: - An hour of labor would buy ~4.7 gallons of gasoline. If minimum wage had kept pace, it would be $12.32. - Average home could be bought with ~15k hours of minimum-wage labor (around 8 years). Had minimum wage kept pace, it would be $14.96. - Average car price was $2,822. Using this as the sole deflator would put an equivalent minimum wage at $20.89 today. - The average public university tuition + room & board cost $1,143, which could be earned in 714 hours at minimum wage (this could be physically accomplished in a summer of hard work). If minimum wage had kept pace with these fees, it would be $27.28 per hour. (There are not enough clock hours in a summer break, assuming no sleep, to earn enough at minimum wage to pay for a year of the average public university.)
• macspoofing 7y ago
  The only positive argument that is ever made for minimum wage is that sometimes it does not have a perceivable adverse effect in a strong economy. There is never an attempt to explain the cases where there is a minor or major adverse effect. Even when it doesn't noticeably hurt, a minimum wage doesn't actually make anything better. It doesn't improve poverty rates. It doesn't improve employment rates. It doesn't lift anybody out of poverty. It has no beneficial, measurable side-effect. And there is plenty of economic research that shows it hurts more than it helps. Just like rent control, it is popular with progressives because it 'feels' right. >In fact, some people — including those from the Economic Policy Institute — have posited that a minimum-wage increase will actually lead to an increase in employment because of the effects of giving low-wage workers a raise. Other advantages to restaurants may include lower turnover rates and better job performance. Why are we still speculating about this??? We've been studying the impact of minimum wage laws for decades. This is just hopeful thinking by progressives activists.
  • fogetti 7y ago
    Someone didn't do his homework today. Maybe you should go back to school if you skipped history lessons: > Minimum wage legislation emerged at the end of the nineteenth century from the desire to end sweated labor which had developed in the wake of industrialization.[19] Sweatshops employed large numbers of women and young workers, paying them what were considered nonliving wages that did not allow workers to afford the necessaries of life.[20] Source: Wikipedia And to respond to your question: We've been studying the impact of minimum wage laws for decades. Its clear that it imroves everyone's life substantially (even people who earn lot more). Why are we still discussing this? These comments are just hopeful thinking of regressive activists.
    • macspoofing 7y ago
      Just because a policy emerged to fight specific conditions, doesn't mean that a) it was actually a good policy to do that and b) that those conditions still apply. So I'm not sure what that reference to sweatshops in the 1800s has to do with anything. >Its clear that it improves everyone's life substantially (even people who earn lot more) Ok. You know how to use search-and-replace. But I am serious. Since you're fond of Wikipedia, feel free to actually read the article on minimum wage[1], you'll see that it mirrors what I argued: in most cases, the minimum wage has detrimental effects (especially for low-income and young workers, employment rates in general, and small businesses), occasionally it has no perceptible detrimental effects. No evidence that shows it actually IMPROVES anything. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Empirical_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Empirical_studies
• zer0faith 7y ago
  As a business owner if I am required to pay my workers at minimum 15$ an hour I will need to off set the impact to my bottom line. This can be done by: Automate whatever can be https://www.forbes.com/sites/edrensi/2018/07/11/mcdonalds-says-goodbye-cashiers-hello-kiosks/#2eb695366f14 https://www.forbes.com/sites/edrensi/2018/07/11/mcdonalds-sa... Raise the price of goods and services Outsource to other countries (if cost is cheaper) For those that aren't aware typical rent in NYC on a corner lot for a restaurant is about 18k per month.
  • maxerickson 7y ago
    You may also accept the change to your bottom line or close.
    • Vaslo 7y ago
      But that should be my choice, not the government’s.
      • maxerickson 7y ago
        That's what I said about the flaming pond of gasoline in my front yard. (My point being, it'd be a lot more interesting if you listed some specific reasons you think minimum wage is bad regulation, rather than just protesting it in general terms)
    • RHSeeger 7y ago
      There are a lot of businesses that barely make enough for the owner to make a living. For those, "lower bottom line" isn't an option.
      • maxerickson 7y ago
        I did not edit my comment to add the "or close" after this comment was made, it was there from the start.
      • lightbyte 7y ago
• not_a_cop75 7y ago
  I mean 15 dollars an hour might be enough to live in a sewer in New York. It's hard to imagine this has a huge affect on anyone.
  • swebs 7y ago
    NYC is surprisingly affordable if you're not in Manhattan https://www.padmapper.com/apartments/new-york-ny/l-38104265/under-1000?box=-74.30015,40.55659,-73.59139,41.03416 https://www.padmapper.com/apartments/new-york-ny/l-38104265/...
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
• eigenrick 7y ago
  Assuming that the min. wage increase has been great for NYC, I fear this would be used as "evidence" that a such a minimum wage would work everywhere in America. NYC is one of the most expensive places in the US to live and work. Meanwhile there are entire diners in America that make $30/hr. They do just fine because they pay $200/mo in rent. A minimum wage of $15/hr would be silly.
  • thrower123 7y ago
    If anything, we need less centralization on this kind of thing, and more deferral to lower jurisdictions. Trying to pass a national standard in the USA is going to be inappropriate almost everywhere. If New York City needs a minimum wage of $20, fine, as long as Jackson, Mississippi can have a $7.50 wage, if that is appropriate there.
• imtringued 7y ago
  The problem with minimum wages is that displaced workers who can't perform minimum wage work still need the little money they could get from a less than minimum wage job. The government would have to offer a job guarantee that is below minimum wage to cover these people on a case by case basis.
• program_whiz 7y ago
  Wow, so by raising to $15, business is booming (guess it increased sales and decreased costs). Why stop at $15?! Lets raise to $200 per hour, and then revenue and employment should be go even higher. Sounds like it doesn't affect how much the restaurants are charging customers either, so we don't have to worry about that, we can just rest easy knowing we have lifted people from poverty without any tradeoffs to society just by changing one number.
• xracy 7y ago
  "According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, if low-wage workers have more money in their pockets, they will have more money to spend, potentially expanding the number of consumers who can afford to eat out." ^ This seems to me to be the most brain-dead obvious response to trickle-down economics, and income inequality. Like, More people getting money, means more money flowing. We should tax the rich for this reason alone. Otherwise money stagnates, and doesn't do anything. It's functionally useless. Jeff Bezos has admitted as much saying something to the effect of "I don't know what to do with all of my money".
  • chibg10 7y ago
    The brain-dead obvious response to this is that Jeff Bezos isn’t hiding his money under a mattress. He’s (directly or indirectly) investing in ventures that employ people anyway, and the mechanisms that allocate his investment funds are possibly better at producing productivity returns than e.g. having several thousand people eat out one extra time per month. There are reasonable responses to the above but nothing about these discussions appear brain-dead obvious to me.
• robomartin 7y ago
  Every time I see a discussion about minimum wage I see at least three things: 1- You can immediately tell who has experience running a non-trivial business. Let's define that as a business that actually makes physical products (not private labeling something someone else makes) and has, say, more than ten employees. People who are not exposed to business mathematics say things that cause any business owner to immediately go for a forehead slap and jaw drop. 2- Nobody ever fires-up Excel to do some math before opening their mouths. 3- The intense effects of an educational system that has indoctrinated people with the most ridiculous of ideas. These include such things as "corporate greed" and business owners wanting to build a business on top of people "not earning a living wage". There's more. Lots of truly ridiculous ideas. If I haven't lost you, read-on, you might just learn something. I was going to put together a quick spreadsheet in an attempt to educate those who might be interested in actually thinking through the problem and, as part of the process, learning something. However, I fear the effort will have few takers. It's easier for people to stay with comfortable preconceived notions than to be exposed to mathematical facts that destroy what they've been told. Most people are not interested in learning they are wrong. Instead I found this [0]. It's a decent article which exposes the numbers for starting and running a basic restaurant. Anyone with non-trivial business experience has gone through this kind of math many times. After a while you understand the business equation viscerally and know what such things as government-forced costs --be it wages, regulatory or other costs-- can do to a business. Most businesses do not run with huge lavish profit margins. This is certainly true of most restaurants. Competition is such that profits tend to find equilibrium somewhere above zero but certainly not very high above zero, in most cases likely not double-digits. Which means most businesses operate at a very delicate balance on the very edge of financial insolvency if they are not run carefully. Anyhow, if you care to learn and not say things that truly make absolutely no sense whatsoever in the context of the reality, versus the fantasy, of running a business, please read this article, do the math and then do a little more research. As an exercise, take this article and increase your labor costs in steps between 25% and 50%. In this exercise, please explain how you are going to stay in business, what changes you would implement and how these will affect your product, ability to compete with others, ability to survive economic downturns or additional competition (you don't get the entire market to yourself) and long term viability of your business. Forced, artificially high minimum wage causes damage to the very people who actually support politicians who push for these populist measures in order to get their votes. It's a very destructive force that actually hurts a lot of people rather than help them. The politicians, ironically, actually benefit from pushing for these populist ideas because voters will never do the math and understand they are slitting their own throats. The politician wins elections and continues to make millions atop a very well protected hill while truly doing nothing, or worse, causing harm, to the people they are supposed to help. Don't believe me? OK, do the same exercise suggested above and DOUBLE labor costs. If a high minimum wage is so good, well, why not go to $30 per hour then? Another important point: Forcing a hike in minimum wage shifts the entire cost of labor upwards. Why? The person who was making $15 per hour when minimum wage was $10 will demand a raise when the $10 worker starts making $15. So, the $15 worker moves up to $20, the $20 to $25 and so on. It's a chain reaction up the labor cost scale with pernicious effect. For a deeper dive into restaurant labor costs, read [1]. You'll be surprised to learn how tight the range of labor costs is for different types of operations in order for a restaurant to remain viable. [0] https://www.7shifts.com/blog/restaurant-costs/ https://www.7shifts.com/blog/restaurant-costs/ [1] https://www.7shifts.com/blog/restaurant-labor-cost/ https://www.7shifts.com/blog/restaurant-labor-cost/
• edanm 7y ago
  There's a certain assumption that minimum wage advocates have that I don't really connect with. The idea is that of the business having responsibility for making sure their employees have a "living wage". Why is it on the business? This seems like such an old-school, patronizing view of the relationship between a business and its employees. It's a business transaction between two parties - nothing more. If we as a society believe that people shouldn't be earning so little money, then fine - we can tax richer people and give the money to people making less. But that's on everyone in the society, not just the specific business owners that just happen to employ these specific workers.
• ankushnarula 7y ago
  Rebuttal to the New School study: https://www.minimumwage.com/2019/08/the-new-schools-bogus-analysis-on-nyc-restaurant-growth/ https://www.minimumwage.com/2019/08/the-new-schools-bogus-an...