5 ms·

McDonald's, Chipotle increases prices after California raises fast-food min wage

17 points by lopkeny12ko 3y ago

johnny99k 3y ago
Is this surprising? This is the direct result of raising minimum wage. After few years, the spending power will be decreased again and it will need to be raised again. Workers shouldn't be demanding a minimum wage increase. They should be looking for ways to increase their value to businesses, which will always increase their wages, regardless of government intervention.
- foxyv 3y ago
  I used to believe the wage price spiral when I was a teenager. As I grew up and lived through the 2008 financial crisis, I realized that increasing wages were only a fraction of the problem compared to the monstrous amounts of wet ink money being piped into investment firms and banks. Now we are seeing monopolistic practices driving prices of basic needs to the moon and then blaming it on workers wanting to make enough to barely live? I'm not buying it.
- randomjoe2 3y ago
  This is such a naive view of the situation. It's so easy to blame minimum wage workers for all the issues when really it's corporate greed eating into the economy
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  > Workers shouldn't be demanding a minimum wage increase. They should be looking for ways to increase their value to businesses, which will always increase their wages, regardless of government intervention. Nah. The minimum wage is "we would pay you less if we could, but we cannot." The business will extract as much as possible regardless of the value workers deliver. They are not going to magically pay you more because you are more efficient or deliver more value, but you might get a pizza party. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/gross-profit https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/gros... > McDonald's gross profit for the twelve months ending June 30, 2023 was $13.900B, a 6.55% increase year-over-year. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CMG/chipotle-mexican-grill/gross-profit https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CMG/chipotle-mexic... > Chipotle Mexican Grill gross profit for the twelve months ending June 30, 2023 was $2.383B, a 30.05% increase year-over-year. Shareholders and management will need to make peace with lower go forward returns and comp, respectively. Workers deserve a living wage and are enabled to get it in the current macro (structural demographics and executive branch posture, NLRB specifically). Robust labor policy and labor organizing is the only antidote for corporate sociopathy. > A Special Report on Greedflation: How Corporations Are Making Record Profits On The Backs of American Families https://www.casey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/greedflation1.pdf https://www.casey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/greedflation1.pdf
  - mortify 3y ago
    >The minimum wage is "we would pay you less if we could, but we cannot." That is what what the minimum wage is, but I'm not sure that's indicative of a flaw. We are all seeking the most value for our money. E.g. I need some repairs done to my roof. One company quoted me $1,800 and another $4,200. Considering I had a recommendation for the first company, I went with them. That is something we all do, and it isn't indicative of sociopathy. If the second company was offering more value (better matching roof shingles, a much shorter time to start, etc) then it might be worth more money. Otherwise, like fast food workers, they're generally interchangeable and by saving money I can choose to spend it on something else of value.
- mplewis 3y ago
  This is empirically incorrect.
  - redwall_hp 3y ago
    It even violates basic causality: price increases lead minimum wage increases by a wide margin, as they're (at best) a CoL adjustment. Though the reality is even with minimum wage increases, the relative spending power of the minimum wage is in the toilet compared to past decades.
- vannevar 3y ago
  Even if you assume that the value of fast food workers has not increased but has remained flat, the Federal minimum wage has declined over time in real dollars. So this is just an overdue correction. The companies chose to raise prices rather than reduce executive compensation (which has soared in recent decades), despite the lack of any evidence that executive value to the business has actually increased. It makes more sense economically to attribute the price increase to the rise in executive pay than it does to blame the minimum wage.
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago
  [dead]
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  The ability of automation to drive the worker contributions lower and lower will far outpace the workers “hustle” in this regard
- mint2 3y ago
  Worker productivity versus wage graphs show that false.
- martin8412 3y ago
  This is simply the result of greed from the owners. McDonald's in Denmark has had lower/same prices as the US depending on currency exchange rate while giving full benefits and higher salaries to their workers. McDonald's Denmark is rated among the best places to work. The difference is that the franchise taker doesn't get to underpay workers to prop up their own compensation. If they want higher compensation, they'll have to work for it and expand.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    I ate McDonald's in Aarhus once (2006) and remember it being even more expensive than Switzerland, where I was living at the time. These days, big macs are expensive in the USA (we paid $6.50 in Seattle yesterday for just one big mac), I'm pretty sure that is competitive Denmark today, right?
    - martin8412 3y ago
      A Big Mac in Denmark as of July 2023 costs 38DKK, which with today's currency conversion rate comes to $5.46. DKK is pegged to EUR, so the conversation rate follows the EUR to USD fluctuations.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Ya, I think the Euro was much more dear in 2006 compared to the Swiss Franc. Now it is very much the opposite.
- jakobson14 3y ago
  This guy has Stockholm syndrome. Doesn't matter how much value you generate for The Company. They're perfectly happy to take it from you for free if they can get away with it. Without bargaining power and leverage, either through unions or scarcity of labour, there's no natural limit to how little a company will pay it's employees. Used to be that knowledge workers were scarce, now everyone is getting degrees. The scarcity of the engineering labour pool that meant people could get good jobs without a union is gone. If you want a good job, get a union.
nerdjon 3y ago
I would love to know how much the increase actually is. There is a local place that put up a sign that to pay all of their staff a livable wage they were increasing all of their prices by something like $0.20 (not percent). A very minor increase in cost compared to the benefits. If we are seeing a similar increase from these stores this is a complete non issue. However I also feel like if we are going to do this we need to eliminate tips or at the very least the expectation of them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- JJMcJ 3y ago
  Prices in Swedish McD's are comparable to US prices, even though minimum wage there is about US$22/hour.
fwungy 3y ago
I heard on NPR that rising prices were actually a good thing, thus this is a good thing too.
- TurkishPoptart 3y ago
  That sounds like a way of narrative distortion - convincing people that higher prices are somehow a good thing, when all this does is hurt the working poor more than anyone else. Shame on NPR.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Shame on you for passing judgment on NPR based on someone’s unspecific offhand anecdote
    - TurkishPoptart 3y ago
      Shame on you for shaming me for expressing my opinion on the internet....
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    > That sounds like a way of narrative distortion - convincing people that higher prices are somehow a good thing, when all this does is hurt the working poor more than anyone else. Shame on NPR. It's NPR-- their heart is in the right place, but their understanding of the world is academic. They think the way things should work is the way things actually do.
    - fwungy 3y ago
      NPR is just nice and comfortable people telling themselves comforting stories. Truth isn't the point, it's about feeling ok, like the world is in order, no matter what.
thegrim33 3y ago
This is an insanely politicized topic so it's basically impossible to actually discuss, but of course you see all the comments here and elsewhere about "corporate greed" and it's just so interesting to me to think about when conspiracy theories are allowed to be held and when they're not. What's being proposed is a grand conspiracy theory. That across most companies across all the states in the country they've all decided to be evil and greedy together, they're all supposedly run by greed heartless bureaucrats, and in the last few years in particular they've all decided together, in a grand conspiracy, to unanimously raise prices at the same time and extract as much profit as possible. Yes, it's all a grand conspiracy involving thousands of people and companies that are all evil and greedy. It's definitely not just that economic and political decisions that were made have had an effect. It's corporate greed that's the problem. The conspiracy doesn't even make sense. If all these companies were so greedy, wouldn't the best way for a company to make money in this world of greedy corporations be to just keep lower prices, which would result in stealing all of the business from the companies that raised prices, and thereby making more money?
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago
  [dead]
- edmundsauto 3y ago
  > That across most companies across all the states in the country they've all decided to be evil and greedy together...and in the last few years in particular they've all decided together, in a grand conspiracy, to unanimously raise prices at the same time Not necessarily accurate - the current situation (high prices) could be a result of seeing one company do it successfully, without blowback (initially), and copying it. I'm not clear why it would require explicit co-operation. Additionally, companies can change prices within a single quarter based on their observation of the market. > wouldn't the best way for a company to make money in this world of greedy corporations be to just keep lower prices, which would result in stealing all of the business from the companies that raised prices, and thereby making more money? Only under the rational economic model of consumers, where people change their buying habits due to price increases. But store loyalty/convenience/location/familiarity is sticky, and there were few other options out there. The stores that cut prices would face lower margins as well, so they would have to do more work for similar-ish profit, which increases wage cost. Either way, as you said, this is insanely politicized and I'm pretty sure any one person's interpretation reflects more about their own biases than any explanatory power of the price increase phenomenon.
hgs3 3y ago
Minimum wage is a red herring. If workers want real change how about tying worker pay to some percentage of CEO pay? Example: if your average employee is legally required to earn, say, 1/10th of what the CEO earns then if the McDonalds CEO makes $9,200 [1] an hour they'll have to pay their average employee $920 an hour. Of course this isn't sustainable so in practice worker pay will drive CEO pay: if the CEO wants to earn more, they'll need to pay their employees more. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mcdonalds-starbucks-ceos-more-9-110100507.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mcdonalds-starbucks-ceos-more...
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  That’s just punishing businesses that are labor intensive and rewarding companies that can offload as much as possible to contractors
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  I don't think this is sustainable either, especially since most McDonalds are franchises and the "CEO" of their franchise probably only barely clears 6 figures. I'm pretty sure the price changes are guidance to franchisees, and some will have prices that are more or less. There are also some corporate stores to consider (I used to work for a corporate store when I was in HS/first two years of college). And why is this weird? Have you seen McDonalds pricing in Switzerland?
- 4death4 3y ago
  Minimum wage is a red herring. Everything other than unionization is a red herring. Countries with strong labor don't even need a minimum wage. Think about a place you consider to have strong workers rights. You might think of northern European countries like Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, etc. Many are surprised to learn that these countries don't (or didn't until recently) have a minimum wage. In many ways, requiring a minimum wage is a sign that your labor pool doesn't have enough leverage at the bargaining table. Without bargaining power, management is always going to find a way to screw you.
  - ETH_start 3y ago
chrisbolt 3y ago
The article this tweet is referring to: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/30/mcdonalds-chipotle-to-raise-california-menu-prices-as-fast-food-wages-rise.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/30/mcdonalds-chipotle-to-raise-...
Avshalom 3y ago
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/11/business/chipotle-prices-inflation/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/11/business/chipotle-prices-... TLDR Chipotle has raised prices several times in the last couple of years.
hotpotamus 3y ago
I live in Texas where the minimum wage hasn't increased since 2007 I believe (I was making it at that time actually). I haven't looked at a McDonald's menu from back then, but I suspect the prices are higher today.
- pix128 3y ago
  Yes. There are a lot of factors that cause price increases but it's convenient to blame it on the workers.
  - jakobson14 3y ago
    It's convenient to raise prices whenever you are presented with an excuse. Opportunistic price increase.
_8j50 3y ago
Minimum wage should be enforced by implementing a tax that is relative to employee compensation. If you pay minimum wage, you pay maximum corporate tax (or a new tax), something like 49%. Every dollar/hr on average you raise reduces it by 5% until the min 5%. So, if avg compensation is +$8, tax is 9%. This assumes they will raise prices no matter what, the max tax can be lowered when they charge less. Basically force them to accept low profits or close down locations.
- egberts1 3y ago
  ... And if the CEO is paid $1.00 yearly salary?
  - _8j50 3y ago
    That makes no difference, you don't factor in management pay above a certain amount at all. I don't believe in the whole "ceo gets paid X, that's bad" thing, it's never bad for someone else to get paid whatever they can get paid.
theogravity 3y ago
Wonder if that explains McDonald's hash browns going for $3 a piece now in the bay area. They can't be worth more than $1 for that size.
ETH_start 3y ago
There is no alternative to letting the market set prices. Mandatory price floors on labor create unemployment where there would otherwise be none, while creating economic deadweight that reduces per capita productivity and with it per capita income. The only way to increases wages on an economy wide basis is to institute policies to increase per capita productivity, and that can only be done by restricting growth in the size of the population or accelerating growth in total productivity.

17 points by lopkeny12ko 3y ago

Is this surprising? This is the direct result of raising minimum wage. After few years, the spending power will be decreased again and it will need to be raised again. Workers shouldn't be demanding a minimum wage increase. They should be looking for ways to increase their value to businesses, which will always increase their wages, regardless of government intervention.

foxyv 3y ago
I used to believe the wage price spiral when I was a teenager. As I grew up and lived through the 2008 financial crisis, I realized that increasing wages were only a fraction of the problem compared to the monstrous amounts of wet ink money being piped into investment firms and banks. Now we are seeing monopolistic practices driving prices of basic needs to the moon and then blaming it on workers wanting to make enough to barely live? I'm not buying it.
randomjoe2 3y ago
This is such a naive view of the situation. It's so easy to blame minimum wage workers for all the issues when really it's corporate greed eating into the economy
toomuchtodo 3y ago
> Workers shouldn't be demanding a minimum wage increase. They should be looking for ways to increase their value to businesses, which will always increase their wages, regardless of government intervention. Nah. The minimum wage is "we would pay you less if we could, but we cannot." The business will extract as much as possible regardless of the value workers deliver. They are not going to magically pay you more because you are more efficient or deliver more value, but you might get a pizza party. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/gross-profit https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/gros... > McDonald's gross profit for the twelve months ending June 30, 2023 was $13.900B, a 6.55% increase year-over-year. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CMG/chipotle-mexican-grill/gross-profit https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CMG/chipotle-mexic... > Chipotle Mexican Grill gross profit for the twelve months ending June 30, 2023 was $2.383B, a 30.05% increase year-over-year. Shareholders and management will need to make peace with lower go forward returns and comp, respectively. Workers deserve a living wage and are enabled to get it in the current macro (structural demographics and executive branch posture, NLRB specifically). Robust labor policy and labor organizing is the only antidote for corporate sociopathy. > A Special Report on Greedflation: How Corporations Are Making Record Profits On The Backs of American Families https://www.casey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/greedflation1.pdf https://www.casey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/greedflation1.pdf
- mortify 3y ago
  >The minimum wage is "we would pay you less if we could, but we cannot." That is what what the minimum wage is, but I'm not sure that's indicative of a flaw. We are all seeking the most value for our money. E.g. I need some repairs done to my roof. One company quoted me $1,800 and another $4,200. Considering I had a recommendation for the first company, I went with them. That is something we all do, and it isn't indicative of sociopathy. If the second company was offering more value (better matching roof shingles, a much shorter time to start, etc) then it might be worth more money. Otherwise, like fast food workers, they're generally interchangeable and by saving money I can choose to spend it on something else of value.
mplewis 3y ago
This is empirically incorrect.
- redwall_hp 3y ago
  It even violates basic causality: price increases lead minimum wage increases by a wide margin, as they're (at best) a CoL adjustment. Though the reality is even with minimum wage increases, the relative spending power of the minimum wage is in the toilet compared to past decades.
vannevar 3y ago
Even if you assume that the value of fast food workers has not increased but has remained flat, the Federal minimum wage has declined over time in real dollars. So this is just an overdue correction. The companies chose to raise prices rather than reduce executive compensation (which has soared in recent decades), despite the lack of any evidence that executive value to the business has actually increased. It makes more sense economically to attribute the price increase to the rise in executive pay than it does to blame the minimum wage.
PM_me_your_math 3y ago
[dead]
jncfhnb 3y ago
The ability of automation to drive the worker contributions lower and lower will far outpace the workers “hustle” in this regard
mint2 3y ago
Worker productivity versus wage graphs show that false.
martin8412 3y ago
This is simply the result of greed from the owners. McDonald's in Denmark has had lower/same prices as the US depending on currency exchange rate while giving full benefits and higher salaries to their workers. McDonald's Denmark is rated among the best places to work. The difference is that the franchise taker doesn't get to underpay workers to prop up their own compensation. If they want higher compensation, they'll have to work for it and expand.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  I ate McDonald's in Aarhus once (2006) and remember it being even more expensive than Switzerland, where I was living at the time. These days, big macs are expensive in the USA (we paid $6.50 in Seattle yesterday for just one big mac), I'm pretty sure that is competitive Denmark today, right?
  - martin8412 3y ago
    A Big Mac in Denmark as of July 2023 costs 38DKK, which with today's currency conversion rate comes to $5.46. DKK is pegged to EUR, so the conversation rate follows the EUR to USD fluctuations.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      Ya, I think the Euro was much more dear in 2006 compared to the Swiss Franc. Now it is very much the opposite.
jakobson14 3y ago
This guy has Stockholm syndrome. Doesn't matter how much value you generate for The Company. They're perfectly happy to take it from you for free if they can get away with it. Without bargaining power and leverage, either through unions or scarcity of labour, there's no natural limit to how little a company will pay it's employees. Used to be that knowledge workers were scarce, now everyone is getting degrees. The scarcity of the engineering labour pool that meant people could get good jobs without a union is gone. If you want a good job, get a union.

nerdjon 3y ago

I would love to know how much the increase actually is. There is a local place that put up a sign that to pay all of their staff a livable wage they were increasing all of their prices by something like $0.20 (not percent). A very minor increase in cost compared to the benefits. If we are seeing a similar increase from these stores this is a complete non issue. However I also feel like if we are going to do this we need to eliminate tips or at the very least the expectation of them.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
JJMcJ 3y ago
Prices in Swedish McD's are comparable to US prices, even though minimum wage there is about US$22/hour.

fwungy 3y ago

I heard on NPR that rising prices were actually a good thing, thus this is a good thing too.

TurkishPoptart 3y ago
That sounds like a way of narrative distortion - convincing people that higher prices are somehow a good thing, when all this does is hurt the working poor more than anyone else. Shame on NPR.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Shame on you for passing judgment on NPR based on someone’s unspecific offhand anecdote
  - TurkishPoptart 3y ago
    Shame on you for shaming me for expressing my opinion on the internet....
- jstarfish 3y ago
  > That sounds like a way of narrative distortion - convincing people that higher prices are somehow a good thing, when all this does is hurt the working poor more than anyone else. Shame on NPR. It's NPR-- their heart is in the right place, but their understanding of the world is academic. They think the way things should work is the way things actually do.
  - fwungy 3y ago
    NPR is just nice and comfortable people telling themselves comforting stories. Truth isn't the point, it's about feeling ok, like the world is in order, no matter what.

thegrim33 3y ago

This is an insanely politicized topic so it's basically impossible to actually discuss, but of course you see all the comments here and elsewhere about "corporate greed" and it's just so interesting to me to think about when conspiracy theories are allowed to be held and when they're not. What's being proposed is a grand conspiracy theory. That across most companies across all the states in the country they've all decided to be evil and greedy together, they're all supposedly run by greed heartless bureaucrats, and in the last few years in particular they've all decided together, in a grand conspiracy, to unanimously raise prices at the same time and extract as much profit as possible. Yes, it's all a grand conspiracy involving thousands of people and companies that are all evil and greedy. It's definitely not just that economic and political decisions that were made have had an effect. It's corporate greed that's the problem. The conspiracy doesn't even make sense. If all these companies were so greedy, wouldn't the best way for a company to make money in this world of greedy corporations be to just keep lower prices, which would result in stealing all of the business from the companies that raised prices, and thereby making more money?

PM_me_your_math 3y ago
[dead]
edmundsauto 3y ago
> That across most companies across all the states in the country they've all decided to be evil and greedy together...and in the last few years in particular they've all decided together, in a grand conspiracy, to unanimously raise prices at the same time Not necessarily accurate - the current situation (high prices) could be a result of seeing one company do it successfully, without blowback (initially), and copying it. I'm not clear why it would require explicit co-operation. Additionally, companies can change prices within a single quarter based on their observation of the market. > wouldn't the best way for a company to make money in this world of greedy corporations be to just keep lower prices, which would result in stealing all of the business from the companies that raised prices, and thereby making more money? Only under the rational economic model of consumers, where people change their buying habits due to price increases. But store loyalty/convenience/location/familiarity is sticky, and there were few other options out there. The stores that cut prices would face lower margins as well, so they would have to do more work for similar-ish profit, which increases wage cost. Either way, as you said, this is insanely politicized and I'm pretty sure any one person's interpretation reflects more about their own biases than any explanatory power of the price increase phenomenon.

hgs3 3y ago

Minimum wage is a red herring. If workers want real change how about tying worker pay to some percentage of CEO pay? Example: if your average employee is legally required to earn, say, 1/10th of what the CEO earns then if the McDonalds CEO makes $9,200 [1] an hour they'll have to pay their average employee $920 an hour. Of course this isn't sustainable so in practice worker pay will drive CEO pay: if the CEO wants to earn more, they'll need to pay their employees more. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mcdonalds-starbucks-ceos-more-9-110100507.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mcdonalds-starbucks-ceos-more...

jncfhnb 3y ago
That’s just punishing businesses that are labor intensive and rewarding companies that can offload as much as possible to contractors
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
I don't think this is sustainable either, especially since most McDonalds are franchises and the "CEO" of their franchise probably only barely clears 6 figures. I'm pretty sure the price changes are guidance to franchisees, and some will have prices that are more or less. There are also some corporate stores to consider (I used to work for a corporate store when I was in HS/first two years of college). And why is this weird? Have you seen McDonalds pricing in Switzerland?
4death4 3y ago
Minimum wage is a red herring. Everything other than unionization is a red herring. Countries with strong labor don't even need a minimum wage. Think about a place you consider to have strong workers rights. You might think of northern European countries like Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, etc. Many are surprised to learn that these countries don't (or didn't until recently) have a minimum wage. In many ways, requiring a minimum wage is a sign that your labor pool doesn't have enough leverage at the bargaining table. Without bargaining power, management is always going to find a way to screw you.
- ETH_start 3y ago

chrisbolt 3y ago

The article this tweet is referring to: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/30/mcdonalds-chipotle-to-raise-california-menu-prices-as-fast-food-wages-rise.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/30/mcdonalds-chipotle-to-raise-...

Avshalom 3y ago

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/11/business/chipotle-prices-inflation/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/11/business/chipotle-prices-... TLDR Chipotle has raised prices several times in the last couple of years.

hotpotamus 3y ago

I live in Texas where the minimum wage hasn't increased since 2007 I believe (I was making it at that time actually). I haven't looked at a McDonald's menu from back then, but I suspect the prices are higher today.

pix128 3y ago
Yes. There are a lot of factors that cause price increases but it's convenient to blame it on the workers.
- jakobson14 3y ago
  It's convenient to raise prices whenever you are presented with an excuse. Opportunistic price increase.

_8j50 3y ago

Minimum wage should be enforced by implementing a tax that is relative to employee compensation. If you pay minimum wage, you pay maximum corporate tax (or a new tax), something like 49%. Every dollar/hr on average you raise reduces it by 5% until the min 5%. So, if avg compensation is +$8, tax is 9%. This assumes they will raise prices no matter what, the max tax can be lowered when they charge less. Basically force them to accept low profits or close down locations.

egberts1 3y ago
... And if the CEO is paid $1.00 yearly salary?
- _8j50 3y ago
  That makes no difference, you don't factor in management pay above a certain amount at all. I don't believe in the whole "ceo gets paid X, that's bad" thing, it's never bad for someone else to get paid whatever they can get paid.

theogravity 3y ago

Wonder if that explains McDonald's hash browns going for $3 a piece now in the bay area. They can't be worth more than $1 for that size.

ETH_start 3y ago

There is no alternative to letting the market set prices. Mandatory price floors on labor create unemployment where there would otherwise be none, while creating economic deadweight that reduces per capita productivity and with it per capita income. The only way to increases wages on an economy wide basis is to institute policies to increase per capita productivity, and that can only be done by restricting growth in the size of the population or accelerating growth in total productivity.