3 ms·
> This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at or below poverty wages, and/or enacting de
by supergeek133 6y ago
> This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at or below poverty wages, and/or enacting dehumanizing controls, it probably shouldn't exist.
Yeah, I agree, but I think another false general assumption people might make is "every retail or food service job is minimum wage" and that every owner is just shortchanging their workers to pay themselves more. That isn't the case across the board.
Best Buy doesn't pay minimum wage, heck even when I started there as a part time computer tech in 2002 I was paid $9.50/hr. That being said with the 1 year $80/share price they can damn well afford to pay more.
My friend who owns the pizza business pays more than his franchise based competitors, he has employees who have worked for him for years because of this. So he's not paying close to minimum wage but the "meta market" for a pizza keeps his prices in a certain range. As I mentioned in a below comment there are other market forces at work here (e.g., a national franchise has buying power for food price reductions, etc).
So knowing his very loyal customer base, if he had to increase prices to support extra cost, they'd probably stay to a certain extent, but maybe that results in less employees or hours. Who knows.
> If you're worried about the job loss or availability of services caused by such a position, there a whole sea of political and socioeconomic thought on how to solve that. It's probably beyond the current conversation.
Yeah, that's my whole point. Any legislation that increases wages has a disproportionate impact based on your business, and SBA says small business makes up 48% of jobs[0].
But like you said, the conversation is a level up from this.
[0]: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-Business-Profiles-US.pdf https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-...