7 ms·

I'm sure famously low margin, high risk places like restaurants can easily raise employee wages anywhere form 2 to 6 fold. As I said downthread, all a restauran

by Noos 6y ago

I'm sure famously low margin, high risk places like restaurants can easily raise employee wages anywhere form 2 to 6 fold. As I said downthread, all a restaurant has to pay is $2.13 an hour if they make enough tips to earn an effective wage of over $7.25 an hr in a week. That's $290 a week for 40 hours of work pretax. For a tech comparison look at Amazon's Mechanical Turk. It probably is closer to the $2.13 minimum wage in practice than the $7.25 one for what I hear. Now imagine they had to raise what they paid to make sure its an effective $15 an hour based on spending an hour. You think it would still exist? Would you pay that much? Or is it's value proposition precisely because you can pay them shit wages overall?

boulos 6y ago
To be clear, in California the tipped minimum wage is at least $13/hr state wide (and $14/hr for businesses with 25 employees or more). I believe in San Francisco, it’s also just strictly the same as minimum wage of $16.07/hr (and again for larger businesses, Healthy SF medical coverage is also mandatory [Edit: actually, providing coverage is, not Healthy SF, that’s just the cheapest coverage and so very common], and usually passed onto patrons as a 4% fee on their bill, though this isn’t dictated by statute). So your universe already exists: every restaurant in the state of California already ensures a minimum wage more than 6x the federal minimum.
- etchalon 6y ago
  And … California still has restaurants? I'm told that's impossible. Raising the minimum wage will cause all businesses to close.
  - WillPostForFood 6y ago
    Only 50% of restaurant employees are out of work, not 100%.
  - boulos 6y ago
    I didn’t know about this anecdote before, but apparently Alan Krueger of minimum wage study fame had an interesting follow up: shouldn’t the federal minimum wage be too high somewhere? What about Puerto Rico? Apparently, he didn’t find evidence to suggest a strong effect there. But it’s got me curious to follow up with other territory or county vs state differences in the data. My suspicion is that the current very low minimum wages are just too low to see effects anyway, but that a federal $15/hr would be enough of a jump to see many county-level area median wages suddenly tip over.
- rahimnathwani 6y ago
  "Healthy SF medical coverage is also mandatory" I don't think Healthy SF coverage is mandatory. From what I've read, businesses have two other options: provide a regular healthcare plan, or set aside a fund to reimburse employee healthcare costs as they arise. Restaurants usually go for that last option. "usually passed onto patrons as a 4% fee on their bill, though this isn’t dictated by statute" I find the last part of what you wrote interesting. It's true that this isn't dictated by statute. But it would be surprising and unusual for a statue to dictate that a business must make its customers pay a specific business cost. Of course, there are instances where businesses are responsible for collecting taxes from their customers (notably sales taxes and recycling fees) but these are explicitly taxes on consumers that the business is collecting for the government's convenience, not taxes on the business that the business is tricking consumers into paying, by making them believe they're responsible for them.
  - boulos 6y ago
    Good point, I updated my comment with an edit: Healthy SF isn’t mandated, providing health care is (and the very limited Healthy SF coverage is basically the cheapest option, so most restaurants do that). On the “dictated by statute”, I actually mentioned that because so many people figured it was! Much like sales tax, it’s often on the bill as if it’s a thing that the city has specified and that it was a city program (rather than the city mandating that larger businesses provide coverage). Many restaurants are quite clear about it “we use this money to pay for healthcare for our workers”, but the biggest surprise for me was that the “market rate” ended up settling at about 4%. When some restaurants instead do an $X/patron or $Y/ticket add on, it catches people by surprise. Either way, I find it amusing what people are “willing” to pay for things, especially if we can get closer to living wages for everyone. (I’m all for more “taxes” on bills that somehow people prefer over menu items going up in price). tl;dr: good point, clarified my statements!
    - rahimnathwani 6y ago
      "and the very limited Healthy SF coverage is basically the cheapest option, so most restaurants do that" If someone works only a few hours per week, the 'Healthy SF' coverage can cost more than the minimum employer spend. So it's not always the cheapest option.
imgabe 6y ago
Seven US states do not allow tips to count towards the minimum wage. These places, as far as I know, still have restaurants. Not to mention most of the rest of the world. https://www.minimum-wage.org/tipped https://www.minimum-wage.org/tipped Figure out what your expenses are, and make sure you charge enough to cover them, plus profit. If you can't manage to do that you shouldn't be running a restaurant or any other business. It's not rocket science.

by Noos 6y ago

boulos 6y ago

To be clear, in California the tipped minimum wage is at least $13/hr state wide (and $14/hr for businesses with 25 employees or more). I believe in San Francisco, it’s also just strictly the same as minimum wage of $16.07/hr (and again for larger businesses, Healthy SF medical coverage is also mandatory [Edit: actually, providing coverage is, not Healthy SF, that’s just the cheapest coverage and so very common], and usually passed onto patrons as a 4% fee on their bill, though this isn’t dictated by statute). So your universe already exists: every restaurant in the state of California already ensures a minimum wage more than 6x the federal minimum.

etchalon 6y ago
And … California still has restaurants? I'm told that's impossible. Raising the minimum wage will cause all businesses to close.
- WillPostForFood 6y ago
  Only 50% of restaurant employees are out of work, not 100%.
- boulos 6y ago
  I didn’t know about this anecdote before, but apparently Alan Krueger of minimum wage study fame had an interesting follow up: shouldn’t the federal minimum wage be too high somewhere? What about Puerto Rico? Apparently, he didn’t find evidence to suggest a strong effect there. But it’s got me curious to follow up with other territory or county vs state differences in the data. My suspicion is that the current very low minimum wages are just too low to see effects anyway, but that a federal $15/hr would be enough of a jump to see many county-level area median wages suddenly tip over.
rahimnathwani 6y ago
"Healthy SF medical coverage is also mandatory" I don't think Healthy SF coverage is mandatory. From what I've read, businesses have two other options: provide a regular healthcare plan, or set aside a fund to reimburse employee healthcare costs as they arise. Restaurants usually go for that last option. "usually passed onto patrons as a 4% fee on their bill, though this isn’t dictated by statute" I find the last part of what you wrote interesting. It's true that this isn't dictated by statute. But it would be surprising and unusual for a statue to dictate that a business must make its customers pay a specific business cost. Of course, there are instances where businesses are responsible for collecting taxes from their customers (notably sales taxes and recycling fees) but these are explicitly taxes on consumers that the business is collecting for the government's convenience, not taxes on the business that the business is tricking consumers into paying, by making them believe they're responsible for them.
- boulos 6y ago
  Good point, I updated my comment with an edit: Healthy SF isn’t mandated, providing health care is (and the very limited Healthy SF coverage is basically the cheapest option, so most restaurants do that). On the “dictated by statute”, I actually mentioned that because so many people figured it was! Much like sales tax, it’s often on the bill as if it’s a thing that the city has specified and that it was a city program (rather than the city mandating that larger businesses provide coverage). Many restaurants are quite clear about it “we use this money to pay for healthcare for our workers”, but the biggest surprise for me was that the “market rate” ended up settling at about 4%. When some restaurants instead do an $X/patron or $Y/ticket add on, it catches people by surprise. Either way, I find it amusing what people are “willing” to pay for things, especially if we can get closer to living wages for everyone. (I’m all for more “taxes” on bills that somehow people prefer over menu items going up in price). tl;dr: good point, clarified my statements!
  - rahimnathwani 6y ago
    "and the very limited Healthy SF coverage is basically the cheapest option, so most restaurants do that" If someone works only a few hours per week, the 'Healthy SF' coverage can cost more than the minimum employer spend. So it's not always the cheapest option.

imgabe 6y ago

Seven US states do not allow tips to count towards the minimum wage. These places, as far as I know, still have restaurants. Not to mention most of the rest of the world. https://www.minimum-wage.org/tipped https://www.minimum-wage.org/tipped Figure out what your expenses are, and make sure you charge enough to cover them, plus profit. If you can't manage to do that you shouldn't be running a restaurant or any other business. It's not rocket science.