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Did California's fast food minimum wage reduce employment?

196 points by lxm 1y ago

roenxi 1y ago
As always, the world is quite messy and one study doesn't really tell us very much. Maybe the Californian fast food sector is just having a tough time for unrelated and coincidental reasons. However, the theory always said that a minimum wage rise reduces the number of jobs so it is a strong chance that around 20,000 people were put out of work by this policy.
- ath3nd 1y ago
  > However, the theory always said that a minimum wage rise reduces the number of jobs so it is a strong chance that around 20,000 people were put out of work by this policy. 20,000 people were put out of jobs by employers who didn't want to pay them what they are worth and instead wanted to exploit them. If you can't afford to pay livable wages to your workers, your business shouldn't exist.
  - unnamed76ri 1y ago
    Aside from really terrible home experiences for a tiny minority, a part time job for a 15 year old doesn’t need a “livable wage” We don’t need kids working in coal mines but we also don’t need to make it near impossible for them to get work experience at a part time job because their skill level doesn’t align with $20/hr.
    - dvrj101 1y ago
      solution : youth wage, below the standard minimum for the first year of work but that's not good enough for people who decided to close business because they cannot exploit anymore.
      - unnamed76ri 1y ago
        California is home to the largest number of illegal immigrants being exploited for cheap farm labor. If CA really cared about exploited people, they would have done something about that. And by done something, I don’t mean encouraging and protecting its continuation.
        lotsofpulp 1y ago
        Border controls and dealing with illegal immigration is under federal jurisdiction. What do you expect California to do about it?
        miley_cyrus 1y ago
        How about not encourage and exacerbate illegal immigration? https://mayor.lacity.gov/news/mayor-bass-issues-executive-directive-support-immigrant-communities https://mayor.lacity.gov/news/mayor-bass-issues-executive-di...
        dvrj101 1y ago
        where's the raid on drug sellers, distributors or human trafficking. Avg people trying to make living getting arrested right at court's doorstep is not crackdown on crime by illegals. some guy working 8-12 hours shift, has family and participate in community programs is suddenly getting deported to nowhere is making America safe again ? This looks more like making lowest white people better than everyone else
        dvrj101 1y ago
        typical bootlickers response to deflect from uplifting lower class people. Either move it to crying illegal immigrants or they already have enough with social welfare lol. It's amazing how you'll defend top 1% getting tax cut's when we need a small part of it actually help avg. person's anxiety of not living paycheck to paycheck. Decades of tax cut's for top financial class did not workout of everyone else, the extra money did not trickle down but was used to buy politicians to get more tax payer money Raising minimum wage will close down businesses depending on exploitation and help businesses who are ethical enough to give working class their fair share.
      - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
        This creates an incentive to hire lots of young people and not hire unskilled older people. In the UK which has a youth wage, has had negative productivity growth, and has had a series of extremely unpopular governments who needed to use minimum wage growth to support their growth, you have seen large employers mix towards younger staff (where that is possible, in other cases you have seen employers use government programs to import below minimum wage migrants) and let go older staff en masse (employers in the UK also have auto-enroll into pensions, but only over 22). It simply isn't possible, particularly in economies that have structural problems, for productivity growth to just appear magically when politicians request it. This is a classic problem with economic intervention: you intervene, change incentives, agents do something unexpected, and the result is more intervention, more distortion, on and on. Politically, this is gold because politicians look like they are doing something. No-one asks whether that thing needs to be done at all.
    - ath3nd 1y ago
      > Aside from really terrible home experiences for a tiny minority, a part time job for a 15 year old doesn’t need a “livable wage” Said who? The same people who don't pay internships. > but we also don’t need to make it near impossible for them to get work experience at a part time job because their skill level doesn’t align with $20/hr. When minimum wage goes up, other more skilled labor also goes up, and adults will go somewhere better paid. Then the business will have no choice but hire the kids at the $20/hr and they will get that work experience you so want to bestow upon them. It's funny you are trying to twist it like it's gonna be a problem to find work experience for the poor poor kids, while all we know the business care about is how to exploit people at the lowest possible pay. It's always "think of the children" with a specific crowd, an unhealthy obsession with children, I'd say. Think of the children and ban XYZ books cause poor children can't comprehend what they are reading (allows us to ban books we don't like) Think of the children and introduce chat control so we can track everybody and monetize their data (allows us to exploit everybody) Think of the children and don't raise the minimum wage cause poor children can't find internships and part time jobs (allows us to exploit everybody) There is a pattern here, not sure if you are ready to acknowledge it.
      - unnamed76ri 1y ago
        Your utopian worldview has come up against the reality of 18k people being out of work. “We are going to increase minimum wage so you can have a livable wage!” “Yay!…wait now I have no wages. Why didn’t this work like you said?”
        ath3nd 1y ago
        > “Yay!…wait now I have no wages. Why didn’t this work like you said?” It did. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum-wage-impact/3686092/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum... "Though in the same month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed California had approximately 750,000 fast food jobs, roughly 11,000 more than when the higher minimum wage law took effect" "The Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at UC Berkeley compared Glassdoor job posts and online food menu prices two weeks before the minimum wage raise and 2 weeks after. It found that wages increased by 18%, employment numbers remained stable and menu prices increased by only 3 to 7%, or 15 cents on a $4 burger." Employment numbers remained stable, which is great, meaning the 18k people now are employed at other places at at least 20-25% wage increase. I will repeat it again: If a business can't afford to pay its workers, the business shouldn't exist.
    - bravesoul2 1y ago
      Seems like if McD needs this sort of labour its a weird business model. It can only deliver by paying people supported by their parents who are doing the work for pocket money or experience. And can only work outside of school hours and will need to quit in a year or two. Now if they pay the teenager half the wage the same adult is doing then someone is getting a raw deal.
    - timbit42 1y ago
      A 15 year old DOES need a living wage. How else are they going to save for post-secondary education? Is keeping them out of post-secondary preferable to you? Maybe your parents paid for yours, but not everyone has that.
  - mc32 1y ago
    Didn’t want to often can mean cannot. Many of those businesses would go bankrupt. Also some people who may have started a business will now forgo that possibility. Now, for many that’s okay. People just have to be okay that that happens. Also, now those people affected have no wages.
    - ath3nd 1y ago
      > Also, now those people affected have no wages. Nah, most of them are most likely already employed somewhere else at a 25% wage increase. Note that the unemployment actually didn't spike up according to a different study: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum-wage-impact/3686092/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum... so that allows us to assume these people got a better wage somewhere else, at only a marginal increase to the consumer.
      - mc32 1y ago
        It's possible. It's probably too early to tell and things will settle in due time. One possible outcome is that if high minimum wages are placed across the board in all states and the feds enforce e-verify that we'll become a bit like Switzerland where everyone nominally earns more compared to other OECD countries but also things (good and services) are relatively more expensive too. It potentially could pull people who've been out of the labor pool (undercut by low wages/cheap labor) back in to it, if the right policies are put in place. It's probably not a bad deal for US workers as we all would have a higher standard of living but also live in a more expensive society --in the end that's probably better for everyone (in the US).
    - timbit42 1y ago
      If a business can't provide a living wage, then whoever is running it is bad at doing so or chose the wrong business model. They should close. Why do you want poor business operators to remain in business?
      - mc32 1y ago
        There are many self-employed people in the third world who do not earn "living wages" what do you propose they do? Never was minimum wage equivalent to a living wage. A living wage is an ill-defined term. Does it mean I can afford the smallest apartment and afford just enough food to survive or are we adding small luxuries to this? None of the Nordic countries have a minimum wage --on the other hand they don't have a large undercurrent of illegal labor undercutting the minimum natives will accept as a minimum wage. That said, I don't have a horse in this fight. I don't think business have a "right" to cheap labor and if they can't survive without it, then so be it. Of course people have to understand their services and goods will go up in price and they should be okay with that. Maybe they stop depending on someone else doing and making things for them and start making their own stuff at home.
  - JustExAWS 1y ago
    Does that apply to all of the VC backed companies that are losing money? How many companies in CA that are paying minimum wage have the ability to be sustained for years by investors?
- relaxing 1y ago
  The theory was raising the minimum wage wasn’t important because it’s mainly just kids who work after school jobs for minimum wage, right? I’d like to see if there’s an increase in GPAs thanks to greater time for studying, or greater fitness from having more time to play a sport and lesser proximity to french fries.
  - georgeburdell 1y ago
    It's been a generation since minimum age workers were mostly high school kids.
    - lanfeust6 1y ago
      And now it's what, temporary immigrant visas?
      - toomuchtodo 1y ago
        https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-people-are-earning-725-hour/ https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-... > White women and Black or African American women have the highest rate of earnings at or below federal minimum wage, at 1.5% and 1.4% of hourly workers, respectively. Among all groups reported, Asian men have the lowest share at 0.5%.
        lanfeust6 1y ago
        >2.3% of hourly workers ages 16 to 24 earn $7.25 an hour or less, 1.2% of hourly workers ages 25 to 34 earn the minimum wage. Less than 1% of hourly workers older than 35 years old earn the minimum wage.
- skippyboxedhero 1y ago
  These studies are completely pointless because they only measure one side of the problem. Minimum wage is minimum productivity. If a business is able to increase productivity, they will pay more and fire staff. If they won't then they shut down. And the side-effect, which cannot be measured by economists so doesn't exist, is that some will evade the limit. The theory isn't that minimum wage reduces jobs, it depends in every case...but the best that can be said is that it has no impact. Card and Kruger, for example, was/is presented as some kind of massive revolution. It is completely useless. Studies concentrate on fast food because it is one of the only sectors that has managed to increase productivity, the wider consequences are ignored. The only reason this industry for DiD minimum-wage papers exist is to give policymakers a button to push when their popularity is collapsing. The idea of the government dictating minimum labour productivity makes no sense (in the US, the policy mix also makes no sense because you have uncontrolled labour supply but the government sets minimum labour productivity...why? It is heaviest incentive for breaking the laws that you set, minimum productivity is set with the knowledge that it won't apply to many people).
  - delusional 1y ago
    > but the best that can be said is that it has no impact. You're doing what you disavow here. If it doesn't affect the number of jobs, then it increases the value of that job. If you can sell a carrot for a dollar more, and still sell out of carrots, you have a increased the economic activity without increasing production. The same is true for hours. This is not about increasing productivity. It's about increasing the share of that productivity that's paid out to workers.
    - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
      I didn't say it doesn't have no impact on number of jobs. I said that the best that can be said is that it has no impact (I didn't say jobs here at all). The government deciding the value of X is Y doesn't actually increase the actual value of anything, because that is decided by things the government does not control. Your point about carrots assumes, for some reason that you don't explain, that a firm chooses to sell for a price that is less than market-clearing (this happens all the time with people who make this argument: claims that businesses are both greedy and non-profit maximising). And this model is generally not true of labour either: minimum wage is minimum productivity, that is it, no need to talk about carrots. Right, and you should be totally clear with people reading your comment: no economic theory supports what you are saying. Wages are productivity, the money to pay wages comes from customers, who choose to pay for something that the worker is producing. Minimum wages do not, and cannot, increase the share of productivity that is paid to workers anymore than the government can demand that shareholders accept lower returns. This is just total economic nonsense.
frikskit 1y ago
Small decrease in employment in exchange for ~25% higher wages for those employed? Did I get that right? Obviously every single row in the dataset is a unique human, but overall sounds like a big success?
- po1nt 1y ago
  It's 100% lower wages for those who lost jobs.
  - frikskit 1y ago
    Why not set very low maximum wage ceilings and have 100% employment? /s
    - roenxi 1y ago
      Because that happens naturally without a law. People lower the wage they ask for until they get a job.
      - actionfromafar 1y ago
        I think they were sarcastic.
        frikskit 1y ago
        Thanks, yes, I was trying to show how the alternative is absurd
    - themafia 1y ago
      Are you going to reduce lottery payouts and maximum stock investments as well? Will I still be allowed to hunt for food? Society is something better encouraged than gamified.
      - Ray20 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
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croes 1y ago
Are they only looking at the fast food jobs? Would that be incomplete? Higher minimum wage could cause higher employment in other sectors or raise their revenue and wages.
- ethan_smith 1y ago
  This is a critical point - economists call these "spillover effects" and they're often underexamined in minimum wage studies, as cross-elasticity between sectors can lead to employment shifts rather than net losses.
lerp-io 1y ago
unemployed but at least they will live longer lol
khalic 1y ago
The study is sound, pretty small impact considering the increase in living conditions. What surprises me is people arguing that somehow a business is more important than livable wages. Americans and slavery really is a love story
- thrance 1y ago
  That's what you get after decades of relentless propaganda. Anything remotely socialist is completely taboo there.
  - slibhb 1y ago
    "Decades of relentless propaganda" also known as the "the 20th century"
    - thrance 1y ago
      Really clever. Bet you'd love it being a coal miner in the Gilded Age. "Hum, no, livable wages are literally communism, you wouldn't want to kill millions, would you? I'm really smart." You're exactly what I was talking about. Indoctrinated into being absolutely opposed to anything in favor of workers, spontaneously regurgitating those same few tired "arguments".
      - milesrout 1y ago
        [dead]
      - lanfeust6 1y ago
        The poorest people are not the ones working minimum wage full-time. However, the poorest do want to purchase take-out. Increasing the minimum for fast food realistically helps a pretty minute demographic of workers, but the carry-over cost to consumers means that poor people can afford less fast food. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, but if it's meant to help the poor (who either earn nothing or earn much less consistently) it's pretty ineffectual at it, particularly when accounting for differences in cost-of-living, and the types who typically work minimum wage fast food in particular. Walk into a McDonalds and you'll mostly see students and immigrants, that's not "the poor". "Livable" needn't arbitrarily mean a spacious 1-bedroom apartment either, which is why migrants paid below-market wages don't worry about rent. Cash transfers and other schemes are better. We already do that to a small extent and could just expand it. Edit: should clarify, it's a balancing act because a higher main wage on net can be beneficial, but after a certain level will lead to undesirable effects
nomilk 1y ago
Some things often overlooked in minimum wage discussions: - Wages often go over or close to the minimum anyway, due to market forces, and do so without costly bureaucracy/enforcement/taxation/distortion - Minimum wages make everyone whose marginal value is less than the minimum wage unemployable (since you would choose not to hire someone for $20/hour if their marginal value is $15). This is disastrous for someone who'd love to work at $x/hour, but who lives in a state which legislates a minimum wage > $x/hour, since they go from being employed at a low wage to unemployed.
- gibsonf1 1y ago
  The 18,000 people who lost their jobs may disagree.
  - ath3nd 1y ago
    These 18,000 are most likely employed somewhere else at 20-25% wage increase. Note that a different study didn't see a rise in unemployment: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum-wage-impact/3686092/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum... which means that these people affected actually got a better living standard.
    - miley_cyrus 1y ago
      This group is well known for bias, over and over through the years. Nothing they report should be taken at face value. "A considerable amount of financial support for the Center comes from labor unions: According to federal reports, over the last 15 years it has received nearly $1.2 million in labor funding." "The IRLE’s highest-profile researcher is Michael Reich, who co-chairs its Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. Reich made a name for himself at a young age co-founding the Union for Radical Political Economics, with the stated goal of supporting “public ownership of production and a government-planned economy.”" https://us.fundsforngos.org/news/nonprofit-accuses-uc-berkeley-of-biased-research-on-minimum-wage/ https://us.fundsforngos.org/news/nonprofit-accuses-uc-berkel... https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-team-not-credible-on-minimum-wage/ https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-te... https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-team-not-credible-on-minimum-wage/ https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-te...
RobKohr 1y ago
So, this cut out the least fit for work. One group heavily cut out would be those without work experience such as kids and other first entering the marketplace. Fast food is a stepping stone job, and if employeers have to pay more for labor then they will be pickier about it. Let's think about the reverse. If we cut minimum wage, the sector would be much more loose about hiring first time workers, convicts, or people just not fit for other jobs. The people could grow their skills and contribute more to society, a society where low end business constantly complain about how hard it is to find skilled workers. High minimum wage contributes to more people on social safety nets living on low fixed incomes because the gulf between that and paid employment becomes too great and there is no low wage on ramp for them.
- delusional 1y ago
  > Fast food is a stepping stone job, and if employeers have to pay more for labor then they will be pickier about it. Why? It would seem to me that there's plenty of room in the balance sheets to just pay people more.
  - ETH_start 1y ago
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- twobitshifter 1y ago
  This is a good attempt at a thought experiment but it doesn’t bear out at all in the evidence. You need a fixed number of people to run a restaurant, there’s only so many positions to be filled. You aren’t hiring on extra people and spending a certain amount on labor, they’ll just pocket any excess. You can invest in automation but today that’s at a cost higher than paying a living wage and with lower service quality.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > You need a fixed number of people to run a restaurant What? Just varying restaurant hours changes labour requirements. Menu complexity adds another dimension. Quality of service another. Restaurants are highly variable-cost businesses.
twobitshifter 1y ago
Any charts on numbers of gig employees? I see help wanted signs at fast food places all the time, but it may be that these workers are shifting to gig work.
tsoukase 1y ago
In Europe the discussion about minimum wage vs unemployment is going on since the 90s. The results show that there is a small correlation. If the former happens in small steps the latter remains stable. Some greedy employers will lose an extra butter, a few will fire someone and all employees win.
- parineum 1y ago
  > a few will fire someone > all employees win
vondur 1y ago
It's still a net loss of jobs. I'm certain the future will involve increasing automation to further reduce headcount. A McDonald's recently opened near me with no seating, and orders can only be placed through the app or at the drive thru. I spoke with the owner who mentioned two main reasons for this setup: first, ongoing issues with the local homeless population and second, a desire to minimize staffing. Fewer employees are needed when there's no dining area to clean or counter to staff. I’m pretty sure this is the direction things are headed in California.
- Squeeeez 1y ago
  Where do people eat then? Coming from someone completely foreign to such a culture.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
    At home in front of the television while scrolling their phone
    - inglor_cz 1y ago
      This unfortunately sounds like where the trend has been going at least since Covid. People started treating "meeting other people in person" as a tiresome chore, and the world is adapting to that change.
      - Animats 1y ago
        Very true. Pre-COVID, I used to go to a small kabob restaurant in Silicon Valley. During COVID, I'd order from them via Doordash. The food wasn't as good cold, though, even if re-heated. After COVID, I started going back in person. Often, I'd be the only in-person customer, despite a steady stream of deliver drivers going in and out. Now, they're out of business.
        nobody9999 1y ago
        >Pre-COVID, I used to go to a small kabob restaurant in Silicon Valley. During COVID, I'd order from them via Doordash. The food wasn't as good cold, though, even if re-heated. After COVID, I started going back in person. Often, I'd be the only in-person customer, despite a steady stream of deliver drivers going in and out. Now, they're out of business. Because DoorDash/GrubHub/UberEats/etc. charge the restaurants more than their gross margins. In such an anvironment, unless a restaurant raises prices 25-30%, they're eventually going out of business. I'd say that these companies are most certainly not providing 25-30% value add. Rather, it's just leeching off restaurants and their customers. It's disgusting and has killed many, many restaurants where I live (NYC), even though we already had a culture of delivery before these parasites came along. And more's the pity.
CommenterPerson 1y ago
"Relative to employment in the fast food sector elsewhere in the United States" .. could drive a truck through that "elsewhere". In 1992, New Jersey made just such an increase in minimum wage at fast food restaurants. Card & Kreuger ("Myth and Measurement") analyzed data in adjacent areas in NJ & PA. They found that employment in the NJ area actually increased. Take a look at the first chapter of "Economics in America" by Angus Deaton (Nobel 2015). Comparing CA to elsewhere in the US (where? everywhere?) looks a bit shady. Given the government agencies are being led by political hacks these days, I don't trust it one bit.
- antonymoose 1y ago
  Circa 1992 would the area be increasing in population and so employees to service that volume?
standardUser 1y ago
I would hope so, since if it didn't everything we know about economics would be wrong. But this question only makes sense if you value all employment equally. If the state lost a tiny amount of jobs, and most of those were among the lowest paying, then I'd want to know A) what's been the impact on cost of living and B) what's been the impact on government welfare spending, before I could begin to assess if it was a positive overall for the state economy.
zmmmmm 1y ago
if employment reduced, did the industry contract? Or did it maintain its size and make do with less employees? It's not good for the individuals, but in broader economic terms, an industry that delivered the same value with less people is effectively increasing productivity which is economically generally a good thing. Of course one industry is not a closed system, whether those unemployed people go and contribute somewhere else in the economy or sink into unemployment is a critical question. If the industry contracted then it's harder to argue it's a good thing.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  > It's not good for the individuals, but in broader economic terms, an industry that delivered the same value with less people is effectively increasing productivity which is economically generally a good thing Not if all (or the vast majority) of the extra value produced is captured by a vanishingly small portion of the population That is the trend we are following and it is exceptionally bad
contingencies 1y ago
As restaurants are replaced with robotics there will be severe job losses to this sector. Temporary measures cannot alter the greater transition.
- ETH_start 1y ago
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- deleted 1y ago
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Animats 1y ago
FRED (the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), has useful data. First, all food/beverage hospitality workers in California.[1] Huge COVID transient, followed by recovery to almost the pre-COVID level. But no further increases. Full-service restaurants had a similar transient, but never came back to pre-COVID levels. Employment peaked in mid-2023, and has declined since. Full-service restaurants didn't get the $20 fast food minimum wage. But workers there may have tip income. California does not have a lower "tipped minimum wage", and all tips go to workers. What FRED calls "limited service restaurants and other eating places" shows about the same curve as full-service restaurants.[3] This includes both the fast food chains and the fast-casual restaurants. If you have to order at a counter, it's "limited service", even if they bring out the food later. So, the part of the restaurant industry that wasn't affected by the increase shows about the same trend as the part that was. Basically, post-COVID, onsite eating never fully came back. Food delivery became a much bigger part of the industry.) Those stats are regardless of business size. California's minimum wage law for "fast food" applies only to businesses with at least 60 locations. But it also includes such things as 7-11 stores that sell hot dogs and pizzas heated up on site. So, not an exact match to the FRED categories. Overall, the COVID transient and its aftermath is bigger than all other visible effects. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072200001SA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072200001SA [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072251101A https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072251101A [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072259001SA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072259001SA
- socalgal2 1y ago
  Why did it only affect California and not other states?
  - vineyardmike 1y ago
    …the California minimum wage?
    - sieabahlpark 1y ago
      [dead]
wonderwonder 1y ago
As frustrating as it is as an employee to lose hours, customers are also frustrated by this as quality and speed are reduced. You have fewer employees being forced to perform the same quantity of work. Everything goes downhill and then people eat less fast food, causing the business to lose income and then reducing staffing and the cycle continues. I avoid all fast food now except for Chick Filet not due to the food itself, which isn't great but just due to the terrible customer service I get everywhere else. My kid asked me for McDonalds the other day and for once I said yes, we pulled in at 10:20am and ordered 3 chicken biscuits before breakfast ended at 10:30am. They of course asked us to park and after 15 minutes I went inside and asked what was going on. they apologized and said they were out of chicken as they got a rush when I ordered and it takes 7 minutes to cook. There were a grand total of 4 employees in the store sitting at a busy intersection with a double drive through line and an indoor eating area. Just utter lack of management and employees and customers pay the price. its 10 minutes before breakfast ends, I'm pretty confident the same rush happens every day at that time. Just such a terrible experience. Definitely saying no next time my kids ask for McDonalds, its not worth 30 minutes of my life to drive through and order a chicken sandwich.
deleted 1y ago
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milesvp 1y ago
I’ve seen some interesting research suggesting that higher minimum wages lead to lower turnover, which can lead to some very real cost savings. I had an interesting epiphany while watching a business lecture about calculating costs associated with hiring, that there are very real points in the minimum wage curve (which should be laffer shaped) where raising the minimum wage has the potential to both increase labor participation and decrease total labor costs. I now like to joke that minimum wage laws are subsidies for businesses too dumb to factor in hiring and turnover costs.
- bena 1y ago
  Welfare is also kind of a subsidy for low paying employers. If Walmart doesn’t pay enough for its employees to afford to live, then the government steps in with ebt and housing vouchers, etc. to make up the difference. That’s money Walmart isn’t paying. In fact, they get to kind of double dip. As those employees will likely shop there. So the ebt gets spent there. The government essentially pays Walmart to feed its employees. The employees are being double hit. Because their income is still taxed, then they essentially get scrip that they’ll likely have to spend at the place where they work. It’s why you’ll also never see any real movement on the welfare issue. It’s a way to funnel tax money to the rich via poor people.
Aloisius 1y ago
This is in stark contrast to the Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment study that claimed the law had no negative effects on fast-food employment. The Berkeley study has been cited quite heavily by policy makers. https://irle.berkeley.edu/publications/brief/effects-of-the-20-california-fast-food-minimum-wage/ https://irle.berkeley.edu/publications/brief/effects-of-the-...
- miley_cyrus 1y ago
  This group is well known for bias, over and over through the years. Nothing they report should be taken at face value. "A considerable amount of financial support for the Center comes from labor unions: According to federal reports, over the last 15 years it has received nearly $1.2 million in labor funding." "The IRLE’s highest-profile researcher is Michael Reich, who co-chairs its Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. Reich made a name for himself at a young age co-founding the Union for Radical Political Economics, with the stated goal of supporting “public ownership of production and a government-planned economy.”" https://us.fundsforngos.org/news/nonprofit-accuses-uc-berkeley-of-biased-research-on-minimum-wage/ https://us.fundsforngos.org/news/nonprofit-accuses-uc-berkel... https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-team-not-credible-on-minimum-wage/ https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-te... https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-team-not-credible-on-minimum-wage/ https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-te...
  - Spivak 1y ago
    You have made a good case for a close reading of the study. Are they wrong? Is the methodology bad?
    - Auracle 1y ago
      Even their abstract seems biased: "...and price increases of about 1.5 percent— or about 6 cents on a four-dollar hamburger." Ah, yes, the fabled four-dollar hamburger. I know I never need to spend more than 4 dollars nowadays when I get fast food.
throwawaylaptop 1y ago
In my medium size CA town, the Burger King just flat out closed. Other than long johns silver in the 1990s, I've never seen a major franchise just quit and close.
aidenn0 1y ago
If there is a correlation, and the correlation is causal, I'm not sure how this matches with every fast-food restaurant near me having "hiring, start immediately, no experience needed" posters outside.
mattwilsonn888 1y ago
It's not that people shouldn't have a minimum standard of living, it's whether we are going to take easy and ineffective routes to solve the problem that look good on paper and in commercials or whether we can have the adult discussion about the monetary system and how it affects citizens.
didibus 1y ago
I'm unsure you can make any conclusions here. The employment in the fast food industry went down, but we don't even know if it caused more unemployment. Those workers might have all found a better or similar paying job in another sector. Without that information, there's nothing to learn here, exception those still employed in the fast food sector now make more money.
- mbrumlow 1y ago
  Yah. I mean, magically they are all CEOs now, kinda crazy, right at the same time minimum wage went up. The lord works in strange ways. Really no. All you have to look at is the number of total jobs and now unfilled jobs. We don’t need to know about the people and them magically becoming CEOs.
tlogan 1y ago
While pitched as “helping people,” California’s fast-food minimum wage law has a different goal: reshaping the state’s tourism appeal. By making dining out feel more distinctive (and by nudging the market toward small restaurants and local chains) it’s a strategic play to make California a cooler place to visit and eat. That’s how I’ve interpreted it - because otherwise, it makes little sense why the wage for the same work would vary based on the size of the company.
- wyager 1y ago
  You're giving way too much credit to the emergent intelligence of the CA legislature
darksaints 1y ago
As someone who kinda followed this debate for a while, I will point out that there is actually a large split down the middle of the on whether minimum wage increases decrease employment. And that split isn't actually due to ideological bias (which is the usual accusation), but rather methodology: almost all of the studies which confirm employment reductions use one methodology, and almost all of the studies which do not confirm employment loss use another methodology, and there is a large debate in econometrics as to how reasonable the assumptions are for each of the two methodologies. One thing that always seems to be at a disconnect between the economic literature and policy makers is the economic context of the raise in wages. Even those economists that have bought in fully that minimum wage increases don't typically decrease employment will have several caveats to that statement, usually worded in the form of "small increases in the minimum wage". That is to say that there are often small inefficiencies in our current markets which allow employers to reduce wages in cartel-like fashion, and small increases in the minimum wage can claw some of that back in favor of the employees at the expense of employers' economic rents, but not at the expense of economic output. But large increases in the minimum wage absolutely can jump the shark, decreasing economic output by effectively making low margin sectors untenable entirely. If that weren't the case, we would be able to raise it infinitely without any negative effects, which is absolutely absurd (and unfortunately that is the takeaway that ideologues often get from reading abstracts). A more useful economic model would go a step further than just saying "you can raise the minimum wage without harm to the economy", by incorporating econometric analysis which can accurately predict when and how much you can raise it without incurring economic harm.
derelicta 1y ago
Really, one can only truly understand the term "labour aristocracy" after reading this comment section. People show 0 solidarity towards people of their own class. The west is doomed.
ETH_start 1y ago
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banginghead 1y ago
Why is the entire discussion between: "people should be able to pay rent and buy groceries and maybe save a little money on minimum wage" versus "those greedy poors"? I mean 10% of the US population are millionaires, we're all paying billionaires' taxes so they only have to pay a pittance, and soon we'll have a trillionaire. But no, screw the minimum wage workers, they should work extra jobs ... we'll never tax the rich what they owe, they are worshipped like gods.
navi0 1y ago
Real question: If government-mandated wages are good policy, why not set the minimum wage to $50/hr? Why not $100/hr?
- comex 1y ago
  Because if the minimum wage is too high, employers can't afford to pay it, so it will just result in reduced employment rather than wages going up, aka economic "deadweight loss". That much is obvious. What is in question is the effects of more realistic minimum wages like this one. Some claim that _any_ minimum wage will only result in deadweight loss, which is true in simplified models, but the effect in the real world is not so clear, hence the need for this type of research.
  - navi0 1y ago
    Yes, I agree: this research shows that governments do a poor job when they attempt to set minimum wages, and they would do better to focus on accomplishing income redistribution policies through the tax code. When government tries to set minimum wages, they often result in job losses (or foregone jobs that were never created) which, as you wrote, is known in economic circles as "deadweight loss."
Glyptodon 1y ago
I find it weird how people care so much about employment overall rather than sufficient employment. Like if a job doesn't pay enough for people to comfortably have a family and leasure time, to me it's somewhere in spectrum of slavery, indentured servitude, and poverty trap, and not compatible with a society of equals and representative government. Which is to say it's a job that shouldn't exist. While I don't think minimum wage is really the ideal mechanism of determining this, it's obvious that paying somebody federal minimum wage is an immoral exploitative joke... But also it'd likely be even worse without it. But more to the point, why do these people obsessed with work and jobs always think anything that creates any kind of job is "good" no matter how bad, dangerous, or poorly compensated? Jobs that amount to licking poison for nickels in a country where you we could probably quarters the lowest currency denomination without issue somehow being "good" for the lockers is ludicrous. Low wages have massive negative externalities for society.
- Philorandroid 1y ago
  Having lost a job suddenly, any employment is better than none. A perfect job that provides everything you need is pretty far detached from "this is sufficient", or even "this will slow my fall while I work something else out", and this kind of bitter resentment towards anything less than a job that pays out an idyllic American existence is what causes them to be priced out by legislative fiat like the minimum wage. More to the point, not every skill level or job is _worth_ that kind of compensation (as uncomfortable as it might be to entertain), and attempts to circumvent market forces by making lower wages illegal at some arbitrary point have substantially more damaging externalities than 'low wages' -- which are as much a system of slavery as gravity or magnetism, and just as resilient to ideation.
  - tossandthrow 1y ago
    > More to the point, not every skill level or job is _worth_ that kind of compensation ... This is a fair stance to take, but you need to accept the consequences of the stance when people get desperate. > attempts to circumvent market forces by making lower wages illegal at some arbitrary point have substantially more damaging externalities than 'low wages' A population of people who can not feed themselves are going to kill you on the street for the canned tuna you might have in your bag. > Having lost a job suddenly, any employment is better than none. While this is true for you it is not true for the society as a whole. This entire comment seems be written with a complete disrespect for macro dynamics and taken right out of a hunter gather society. It completely ignores everything modern governance - and it is quite frightening.
croes 1y ago
Isn’t it fascinating if you raise the minimum wage some people say it destroys jobs but when people get fired because of things like robots and AI the same people claim it’s no problem because it those things that killed the jobs create just other jobs. More money to spend also creates jobs
bborud 1y ago
Could it be that with a higher minimum wage, more people work these jobs full time, thus reducing the number of people employed part time? If the same number of hours are produced with a lower number of workers that should be a plausible explanation, yes?
jleyank 1y ago
Ontario fast food minimum wage, $17.20. California’s $20. And the cost of living there is higher. Our fast food places, and whatever you call the next tier is doing just fine - the damn things are everywhere. Hard to find something that’s not some kind of chain. Probably a whole lot of takeaway or delivery, but things seem to meet society’s needs without decimating budgets. Maybe it’s a balance of having real workers and moderating profits for the longer term?
- bena 1y ago
  You see this in other countries as well. They pay decent wages to fast food employees and don’t play the tipping game either. Prices aren’t out of control and service is decent.
- refurb 1y ago
  The vast majority of fast food workers in Ontario are foreigners working on visas. And plenty of them are exploited and forced to kickback a part of their wages to the owner. The government does nothing and the owner gets below minimum wage workers. It’s shockingly common in Canada.
spicyusername 1y ago
If a business can't provide a living wage, it shouldn't exist. It's really that simple. Imagine doing this analysis on the effects of requiring a business to pay it's slaves, and coming to the conclusion that some slave-based businesses would have to close, since their business model was so skewed, it could only function with slave labor... Who cares! We don't want a world with companies that can only work with those kinds of business models! Slave labor shouldn't subsidize artificially low priced products and artificially inflated executive salaries... the end.
- greenchair 1y ago
  Interesting perspective. I need a paragraphs worth of text translated once a week by a native speaker. Should my biz not exist or am I allowed to use "slave labor" fiverr?
- itsme0000 1y ago
  Except that the study found California economy grew faster than states with low minimum wages. The law is actually necessary for growth. Conservative economists just lied, nobody thought this was actually going to cause unemployment.
  - tossandthrow 1y ago
    This is the message. One of the reasons why equality is so freaking important for a market economy is because it lets more people participate in it - equality is prerequisite for a market economy (and a democracy, but that is another discussion)
- CommenterPerson 1y ago
  Thank you for stating this so simply and clearly. It's absurd to see so many commenters, who are probably mostly wage earners, mindlessly repeat the right wing propaganda. Civilization needs some minimum decency.
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  This is a crazy take. It’s not the company’s responsibility to provide a safety net. It’s the government’s and the government should collect taxes to do so. We already have a system for this in theory - the Earned Income Tax Credit. The program use to be widely supported by both Democrats and Republican administrations. What’s a “living wage” anyway? It’s not the same for a single mother of 3 as it was for my then teenage son. And I find it rich for people on HN to say that companies that can’t afford to pay its workers are commenting on a site run by a VC fund where almost none of its companies could afford to pay anything if they weren’t being propped up by investors and most of the companies will never make a profit
wtcactus 1y ago
This is a side question, but, are people in California now not expected to pay the extortionary tips American businesses expect? Whenever I pointed how backwards were the tipping expectations in the USA for anyone from Europe, the excuse was always that those tips would compensate the low wages paid in the food industry. Well, now that they have a standard minimum wage, are they doing away with the tipping practice?
mwkaufma 1y ago
Betteridge's law of headlines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
kirito1337 1y ago
I'm a tax evader haha
CommenterPerson 1y ago
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196 points by lxm 1y ago

As always, the world is quite messy and one study doesn't really tell us very much. Maybe the Californian fast food sector is just having a tough time for unrelated and coincidental reasons. However, the theory always said that a minimum wage rise reduces the number of jobs so it is a strong chance that around 20,000 people were put out of work by this policy.

ath3nd 1y ago
> However, the theory always said that a minimum wage rise reduces the number of jobs so it is a strong chance that around 20,000 people were put out of work by this policy. 20,000 people were put out of jobs by employers who didn't want to pay them what they are worth and instead wanted to exploit them. If you can't afford to pay livable wages to your workers, your business shouldn't exist.
- unnamed76ri 1y ago
  Aside from really terrible home experiences for a tiny minority, a part time job for a 15 year old doesn’t need a “livable wage” We don’t need kids working in coal mines but we also don’t need to make it near impossible for them to get work experience at a part time job because their skill level doesn’t align with $20/hr.
  - dvrj101 1y ago
    solution : youth wage, below the standard minimum for the first year of work but that's not good enough for people who decided to close business because they cannot exploit anymore.
    - unnamed76ri 1y ago
      California is home to the largest number of illegal immigrants being exploited for cheap farm labor. If CA really cared about exploited people, they would have done something about that. And by done something, I don’t mean encouraging and protecting its continuation.
      - lotsofpulp 1y ago
        Border controls and dealing with illegal immigration is under federal jurisdiction. What do you expect California to do about it?
        miley_cyrus 1y ago
        How about not encourage and exacerbate illegal immigration? https://mayor.lacity.gov/news/mayor-bass-issues-executive-directive-support-immigrant-communities https://mayor.lacity.gov/news/mayor-bass-issues-executive-di...
        dvrj101 1y ago
        where's the raid on drug sellers, distributors or human trafficking. Avg people trying to make living getting arrested right at court's doorstep is not crackdown on crime by illegals. some guy working 8-12 hours shift, has family and participate in community programs is suddenly getting deported to nowhere is making America safe again ? This looks more like making lowest white people better than everyone else
      - dvrj101 1y ago
        typical bootlickers response to deflect from uplifting lower class people. Either move it to crying illegal immigrants or they already have enough with social welfare lol. It's amazing how you'll defend top 1% getting tax cut's when we need a small part of it actually help avg. person's anxiety of not living paycheck to paycheck. Decades of tax cut's for top financial class did not workout of everyone else, the extra money did not trickle down but was used to buy politicians to get more tax payer money Raising minimum wage will close down businesses depending on exploitation and help businesses who are ethical enough to give working class their fair share.
    - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
      This creates an incentive to hire lots of young people and not hire unskilled older people. In the UK which has a youth wage, has had negative productivity growth, and has had a series of extremely unpopular governments who needed to use minimum wage growth to support their growth, you have seen large employers mix towards younger staff (where that is possible, in other cases you have seen employers use government programs to import below minimum wage migrants) and let go older staff en masse (employers in the UK also have auto-enroll into pensions, but only over 22). It simply isn't possible, particularly in economies that have structural problems, for productivity growth to just appear magically when politicians request it. This is a classic problem with economic intervention: you intervene, change incentives, agents do something unexpected, and the result is more intervention, more distortion, on and on. Politically, this is gold because politicians look like they are doing something. No-one asks whether that thing needs to be done at all.
  - ath3nd 1y ago
    > Aside from really terrible home experiences for a tiny minority, a part time job for a 15 year old doesn’t need a “livable wage” Said who? The same people who don't pay internships. > but we also don’t need to make it near impossible for them to get work experience at a part time job because their skill level doesn’t align with $20/hr. When minimum wage goes up, other more skilled labor also goes up, and adults will go somewhere better paid. Then the business will have no choice but hire the kids at the $20/hr and they will get that work experience you so want to bestow upon them. It's funny you are trying to twist it like it's gonna be a problem to find work experience for the poor poor kids, while all we know the business care about is how to exploit people at the lowest possible pay. It's always "think of the children" with a specific crowd, an unhealthy obsession with children, I'd say. Think of the children and ban XYZ books cause poor children can't comprehend what they are reading (allows us to ban books we don't like) Think of the children and introduce chat control so we can track everybody and monetize their data (allows us to exploit everybody) Think of the children and don't raise the minimum wage cause poor children can't find internships and part time jobs (allows us to exploit everybody) There is a pattern here, not sure if you are ready to acknowledge it.
    - unnamed76ri 1y ago
      Your utopian worldview has come up against the reality of 18k people being out of work. “We are going to increase minimum wage so you can have a livable wage!” “Yay!…wait now I have no wages. Why didn’t this work like you said?”
      - ath3nd 1y ago
        > “Yay!…wait now I have no wages. Why didn’t this work like you said?” It did. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum-wage-impact/3686092/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum... "Though in the same month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed California had approximately 750,000 fast food jobs, roughly 11,000 more than when the higher minimum wage law took effect" "The Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at UC Berkeley compared Glassdoor job posts and online food menu prices two weeks before the minimum wage raise and 2 weeks after. It found that wages increased by 18%, employment numbers remained stable and menu prices increased by only 3 to 7%, or 15 cents on a $4 burger." Employment numbers remained stable, which is great, meaning the 18k people now are employed at other places at at least 20-25% wage increase. I will repeat it again: If a business can't afford to pay its workers, the business shouldn't exist.
  - bravesoul2 1y ago
    Seems like if McD needs this sort of labour its a weird business model. It can only deliver by paying people supported by their parents who are doing the work for pocket money or experience. And can only work outside of school hours and will need to quit in a year or two. Now if they pay the teenager half the wage the same adult is doing then someone is getting a raw deal.
  - timbit42 1y ago
    A 15 year old DOES need a living wage. How else are they going to save for post-secondary education? Is keeping them out of post-secondary preferable to you? Maybe your parents paid for yours, but not everyone has that.
- mc32 1y ago
  Didn’t want to often can mean cannot. Many of those businesses would go bankrupt. Also some people who may have started a business will now forgo that possibility. Now, for many that’s okay. People just have to be okay that that happens. Also, now those people affected have no wages.
  - ath3nd 1y ago
    > Also, now those people affected have no wages. Nah, most of them are most likely already employed somewhere else at a 25% wage increase. Note that the unemployment actually didn't spike up according to a different study: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum-wage-impact/3686092/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum... so that allows us to assume these people got a better wage somewhere else, at only a marginal increase to the consumer.
    - mc32 1y ago
      It's possible. It's probably too early to tell and things will settle in due time. One possible outcome is that if high minimum wages are placed across the board in all states and the feds enforce e-verify that we'll become a bit like Switzerland where everyone nominally earns more compared to other OECD countries but also things (good and services) are relatively more expensive too. It potentially could pull people who've been out of the labor pool (undercut by low wages/cheap labor) back in to it, if the right policies are put in place. It's probably not a bad deal for US workers as we all would have a higher standard of living but also live in a more expensive society --in the end that's probably better for everyone (in the US).
  - timbit42 1y ago
    If a business can't provide a living wage, then whoever is running it is bad at doing so or chose the wrong business model. They should close. Why do you want poor business operators to remain in business?
    - mc32 1y ago
      There are many self-employed people in the third world who do not earn "living wages" what do you propose they do? Never was minimum wage equivalent to a living wage. A living wage is an ill-defined term. Does it mean I can afford the smallest apartment and afford just enough food to survive or are we adding small luxuries to this? None of the Nordic countries have a minimum wage --on the other hand they don't have a large undercurrent of illegal labor undercutting the minimum natives will accept as a minimum wage. That said, I don't have a horse in this fight. I don't think business have a "right" to cheap labor and if they can't survive without it, then so be it. Of course people have to understand their services and goods will go up in price and they should be okay with that. Maybe they stop depending on someone else doing and making things for them and start making their own stuff at home.
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  Does that apply to all of the VC backed companies that are losing money? How many companies in CA that are paying minimum wage have the ability to be sustained for years by investors?
relaxing 1y ago
The theory was raising the minimum wage wasn’t important because it’s mainly just kids who work after school jobs for minimum wage, right? I’d like to see if there’s an increase in GPAs thanks to greater time for studying, or greater fitness from having more time to play a sport and lesser proximity to french fries.
- georgeburdell 1y ago
  It's been a generation since minimum age workers were mostly high school kids.
  - lanfeust6 1y ago
    And now it's what, temporary immigrant visas?
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-people-are-earning-725-hour/ https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-... > White women and Black or African American women have the highest rate of earnings at or below federal minimum wage, at 1.5% and 1.4% of hourly workers, respectively. Among all groups reported, Asian men have the lowest share at 0.5%.
      - lanfeust6 1y ago
        >2.3% of hourly workers ages 16 to 24 earn $7.25 an hour or less, 1.2% of hourly workers ages 25 to 34 earn the minimum wage. Less than 1% of hourly workers older than 35 years old earn the minimum wage.
skippyboxedhero 1y ago
These studies are completely pointless because they only measure one side of the problem. Minimum wage is minimum productivity. If a business is able to increase productivity, they will pay more and fire staff. If they won't then they shut down. And the side-effect, which cannot be measured by economists so doesn't exist, is that some will evade the limit. The theory isn't that minimum wage reduces jobs, it depends in every case...but the best that can be said is that it has no impact. Card and Kruger, for example, was/is presented as some kind of massive revolution. It is completely useless. Studies concentrate on fast food because it is one of the only sectors that has managed to increase productivity, the wider consequences are ignored. The only reason this industry for DiD minimum-wage papers exist is to give policymakers a button to push when their popularity is collapsing. The idea of the government dictating minimum labour productivity makes no sense (in the US, the policy mix also makes no sense because you have uncontrolled labour supply but the government sets minimum labour productivity...why? It is heaviest incentive for breaking the laws that you set, minimum productivity is set with the knowledge that it won't apply to many people).
- delusional 1y ago
  > but the best that can be said is that it has no impact. You're doing what you disavow here. If it doesn't affect the number of jobs, then it increases the value of that job. If you can sell a carrot for a dollar more, and still sell out of carrots, you have a increased the economic activity without increasing production. The same is true for hours. This is not about increasing productivity. It's about increasing the share of that productivity that's paid out to workers.
  - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
    I didn't say it doesn't have no impact on number of jobs. I said that the best that can be said is that it has no impact (I didn't say jobs here at all). The government deciding the value of X is Y doesn't actually increase the actual value of anything, because that is decided by things the government does not control. Your point about carrots assumes, for some reason that you don't explain, that a firm chooses to sell for a price that is less than market-clearing (this happens all the time with people who make this argument: claims that businesses are both greedy and non-profit maximising). And this model is generally not true of labour either: minimum wage is minimum productivity, that is it, no need to talk about carrots. Right, and you should be totally clear with people reading your comment: no economic theory supports what you are saying. Wages are productivity, the money to pay wages comes from customers, who choose to pay for something that the worker is producing. Minimum wages do not, and cannot, increase the share of productivity that is paid to workers anymore than the government can demand that shareholders accept lower returns. This is just total economic nonsense.

frikskit 1y ago

Small decrease in employment in exchange for ~25% higher wages for those employed? Did I get that right? Obviously every single row in the dataset is a unique human, but overall sounds like a big success?

po1nt 1y ago
It's 100% lower wages for those who lost jobs.
- frikskit 1y ago
  Why not set very low maximum wage ceilings and have 100% employment? /s
  - roenxi 1y ago
    Because that happens naturally without a law. People lower the wage they ask for until they get a job.
    - actionfromafar 1y ago
      I think they were sarcastic.
      - frikskit 1y ago
        Thanks, yes, I was trying to show how the alternative is absurd
  - themafia 1y ago
    Are you going to reduce lottery payouts and maximum stock investments as well? Will I still be allowed to hunt for food? Society is something better encouraged than gamified.
    - Ray20 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

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croes 1y ago

Are they only looking at the fast food jobs? Would that be incomplete? Higher minimum wage could cause higher employment in other sectors or raise their revenue and wages.

ethan_smith 1y ago
This is a critical point - economists call these "spillover effects" and they're often underexamined in minimum wage studies, as cross-elasticity between sectors can lead to employment shifts rather than net losses.

lerp-io 1y ago

unemployed but at least they will live longer lol

khalic 1y ago

The study is sound, pretty small impact considering the increase in living conditions. What surprises me is people arguing that somehow a business is more important than livable wages. Americans and slavery really is a love story

thrance 1y ago
That's what you get after decades of relentless propaganda. Anything remotely socialist is completely taboo there.
- slibhb 1y ago
  "Decades of relentless propaganda" also known as the "the 20th century"
  - thrance 1y ago
    Really clever. Bet you'd love it being a coal miner in the Gilded Age. "Hum, no, livable wages are literally communism, you wouldn't want to kill millions, would you? I'm really smart." You're exactly what I was talking about. Indoctrinated into being absolutely opposed to anything in favor of workers, spontaneously regurgitating those same few tired "arguments".
    - milesrout 1y ago
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    - lanfeust6 1y ago
      The poorest people are not the ones working minimum wage full-time. However, the poorest do want to purchase take-out. Increasing the minimum for fast food realistically helps a pretty minute demographic of workers, but the carry-over cost to consumers means that poor people can afford less fast food. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, but if it's meant to help the poor (who either earn nothing or earn much less consistently) it's pretty ineffectual at it, particularly when accounting for differences in cost-of-living, and the types who typically work minimum wage fast food in particular. Walk into a McDonalds and you'll mostly see students and immigrants, that's not "the poor". "Livable" needn't arbitrarily mean a spacious 1-bedroom apartment either, which is why migrants paid below-market wages don't worry about rent. Cash transfers and other schemes are better. We already do that to a small extent and could just expand it. Edit: should clarify, it's a balancing act because a higher main wage on net can be beneficial, but after a certain level will lead to undesirable effects

nomilk 1y ago

Some things often overlooked in minimum wage discussions: - Wages often go over or close to the minimum anyway, due to market forces, and do so without costly bureaucracy/enforcement/taxation/distortion - Minimum wages make everyone whose marginal value is less than the minimum wage unemployable (since you would choose not to hire someone for $20/hour if their marginal value is $15). This is disastrous for someone who'd love to work at $x/hour, but who lives in a state which legislates a minimum wage > $x/hour, since they go from being employed at a low wage to unemployed.

gibsonf1 1y ago
The 18,000 people who lost their jobs may disagree.
- ath3nd 1y ago
  These 18,000 are most likely employed somewhere else at 20-25% wage increase. Note that a different study didn't see a rise in unemployment: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum-wage-impact/3686092/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum... which means that these people affected actually got a better living standard.
  - miley_cyrus 1y ago
    This group is well known for bias, over and over through the years. Nothing they report should be taken at face value. "A considerable amount of financial support for the Center comes from labor unions: According to federal reports, over the last 15 years it has received nearly $1.2 million in labor funding." "The IRLE’s highest-profile researcher is Michael Reich, who co-chairs its Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. Reich made a name for himself at a young age co-founding the Union for Radical Political Economics, with the stated goal of supporting “public ownership of production and a government-planned economy.”" https://us.fundsforngos.org/news/nonprofit-accuses-uc-berkeley-of-biased-research-on-minimum-wage/ https://us.fundsforngos.org/news/nonprofit-accuses-uc-berkel... https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-team-not-credible-on-minimum-wage/ https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-te... https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-team-not-credible-on-minimum-wage/ https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-te...

RobKohr 1y ago

So, this cut out the least fit for work. One group heavily cut out would be those without work experience such as kids and other first entering the marketplace. Fast food is a stepping stone job, and if employeers have to pay more for labor then they will be pickier about it. Let's think about the reverse. If we cut minimum wage, the sector would be much more loose about hiring first time workers, convicts, or people just not fit for other jobs. The people could grow their skills and contribute more to society, a society where low end business constantly complain about how hard it is to find skilled workers. High minimum wage contributes to more people on social safety nets living on low fixed incomes because the gulf between that and paid employment becomes too great and there is no low wage on ramp for them.

delusional 1y ago
> Fast food is a stepping stone job, and if employeers have to pay more for labor then they will be pickier about it. Why? It would seem to me that there's plenty of room in the balance sheets to just pay people more.
- ETH_start 1y ago
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twobitshifter 1y ago
This is a good attempt at a thought experiment but it doesn’t bear out at all in the evidence. You need a fixed number of people to run a restaurant, there’s only so many positions to be filled. You aren’t hiring on extra people and spending a certain amount on labor, they’ll just pocket any excess. You can invest in automation but today that’s at a cost higher than paying a living wage and with lower service quality.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > You need a fixed number of people to run a restaurant What? Just varying restaurant hours changes labour requirements. Menu complexity adds another dimension. Quality of service another. Restaurants are highly variable-cost businesses.

twobitshifter 1y ago

Any charts on numbers of gig employees? I see help wanted signs at fast food places all the time, but it may be that these workers are shifting to gig work.

tsoukase 1y ago

In Europe the discussion about minimum wage vs unemployment is going on since the 90s. The results show that there is a small correlation. If the former happens in small steps the latter remains stable. Some greedy employers will lose an extra butter, a few will fire someone and all employees win.

parineum 1y ago
> a few will fire someone > all employees win

vondur 1y ago

It's still a net loss of jobs. I'm certain the future will involve increasing automation to further reduce headcount. A McDonald's recently opened near me with no seating, and orders can only be placed through the app or at the drive thru. I spoke with the owner who mentioned two main reasons for this setup: first, ongoing issues with the local homeless population and second, a desire to minimize staffing. Fewer employees are needed when there's no dining area to clean or counter to staff. I’m pretty sure this is the direction things are headed in California.

Squeeeez 1y ago
Where do people eat then? Coming from someone completely foreign to such a culture.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
  At home in front of the television while scrolling their phone
  - inglor_cz 1y ago
    This unfortunately sounds like where the trend has been going at least since Covid. People started treating "meeting other people in person" as a tiresome chore, and the world is adapting to that change.
    - Animats 1y ago
      Very true. Pre-COVID, I used to go to a small kabob restaurant in Silicon Valley. During COVID, I'd order from them via Doordash. The food wasn't as good cold, though, even if re-heated. After COVID, I started going back in person. Often, I'd be the only in-person customer, despite a steady stream of deliver drivers going in and out. Now, they're out of business.
      - nobody9999 1y ago
        >Pre-COVID, I used to go to a small kabob restaurant in Silicon Valley. During COVID, I'd order from them via Doordash. The food wasn't as good cold, though, even if re-heated. After COVID, I started going back in person. Often, I'd be the only in-person customer, despite a steady stream of deliver drivers going in and out. Now, they're out of business. Because DoorDash/GrubHub/UberEats/etc. charge the restaurants more than their gross margins. In such an anvironment, unless a restaurant raises prices 25-30%, they're eventually going out of business. I'd say that these companies are most certainly not providing 25-30% value add. Rather, it's just leeching off restaurants and their customers. It's disgusting and has killed many, many restaurants where I live (NYC), even though we already had a culture of delivery before these parasites came along. And more's the pity.

CommenterPerson 1y ago

"Relative to employment in the fast food sector elsewhere in the United States" .. could drive a truck through that "elsewhere". In 1992, New Jersey made just such an increase in minimum wage at fast food restaurants. Card & Kreuger ("Myth and Measurement") analyzed data in adjacent areas in NJ & PA. They found that employment in the NJ area actually increased. Take a look at the first chapter of "Economics in America" by Angus Deaton (Nobel 2015). Comparing CA to elsewhere in the US (where? everywhere?) looks a bit shady. Given the government agencies are being led by political hacks these days, I don't trust it one bit.

antonymoose 1y ago
Circa 1992 would the area be increasing in population and so employees to service that volume?

standardUser 1y ago

I would hope so, since if it didn't everything we know about economics would be wrong. But this question only makes sense if you value all employment equally. If the state lost a tiny amount of jobs, and most of those were among the lowest paying, then I'd want to know A) what's been the impact on cost of living and B) what's been the impact on government welfare spending, before I could begin to assess if it was a positive overall for the state economy.

zmmmmm 1y ago

if employment reduced, did the industry contract? Or did it maintain its size and make do with less employees? It's not good for the individuals, but in broader economic terms, an industry that delivered the same value with less people is effectively increasing productivity which is economically generally a good thing. Of course one industry is not a closed system, whether those unemployed people go and contribute somewhere else in the economy or sink into unemployment is a critical question. If the industry contracted then it's harder to argue it's a good thing.

bluefirebrand 1y ago
> It's not good for the individuals, but in broader economic terms, an industry that delivered the same value with less people is effectively increasing productivity which is economically generally a good thing Not if all (or the vast majority) of the extra value produced is captured by a vanishingly small portion of the population That is the trend we are following and it is exceptionally bad

contingencies 1y ago

As restaurants are replaced with robotics there will be severe job losses to this sector. Temporary measures cannot alter the greater transition.

ETH_start 1y ago
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Animats 1y ago

FRED (the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), has useful data. First, all food/beverage hospitality workers in California.[1] Huge COVID transient, followed by recovery to almost the pre-COVID level. But no further increases. Full-service restaurants had a similar transient, but never came back to pre-COVID levels. Employment peaked in mid-2023, and has declined since. Full-service restaurants didn't get the $20 fast food minimum wage. But workers there may have tip income. California does not have a lower "tipped minimum wage", and all tips go to workers. What FRED calls "limited service restaurants and other eating places" shows about the same curve as full-service restaurants.[3] This includes both the fast food chains and the fast-casual restaurants. If you have to order at a counter, it's "limited service", even if they bring out the food later. So, the part of the restaurant industry that wasn't affected by the increase shows about the same trend as the part that was. Basically, post-COVID, onsite eating never fully came back. Food delivery became a much bigger part of the industry.) Those stats are regardless of business size. California's minimum wage law for "fast food" applies only to businesses with at least 60 locations. But it also includes such things as 7-11 stores that sell hot dogs and pizzas heated up on site. So, not an exact match to the FRED categories. Overall, the COVID transient and its aftermath is bigger than all other visible effects. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072200001SA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072200001SA [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072251101A https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072251101A [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072259001SA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072259001SA

socalgal2 1y ago
Why did it only affect California and not other states?
- vineyardmike 1y ago
  …the California minimum wage?
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wonderwonder 1y ago

As frustrating as it is as an employee to lose hours, customers are also frustrated by this as quality and speed are reduced. You have fewer employees being forced to perform the same quantity of work. Everything goes downhill and then people eat less fast food, causing the business to lose income and then reducing staffing and the cycle continues. I avoid all fast food now except for Chick Filet not due to the food itself, which isn't great but just due to the terrible customer service I get everywhere else. My kid asked me for McDonalds the other day and for once I said yes, we pulled in at 10:20am and ordered 3 chicken biscuits before breakfast ended at 10:30am. They of course asked us to park and after 15 minutes I went inside and asked what was going on. they apologized and said they were out of chicken as they got a rush when I ordered and it takes 7 minutes to cook. There were a grand total of 4 employees in the store sitting at a busy intersection with a double drive through line and an indoor eating area. Just utter lack of management and employees and customers pay the price. its 10 minutes before breakfast ends, I'm pretty confident the same rush happens every day at that time. Just such a terrible experience. Definitely saying no next time my kids ask for McDonalds, its not worth 30 minutes of my life to drive through and order a chicken sandwich.

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milesvp 1y ago

I’ve seen some interesting research suggesting that higher minimum wages lead to lower turnover, which can lead to some very real cost savings. I had an interesting epiphany while watching a business lecture about calculating costs associated with hiring, that there are very real points in the minimum wage curve (which should be laffer shaped) where raising the minimum wage has the potential to both increase labor participation and decrease total labor costs. I now like to joke that minimum wage laws are subsidies for businesses too dumb to factor in hiring and turnover costs.

bena 1y ago
Welfare is also kind of a subsidy for low paying employers. If Walmart doesn’t pay enough for its employees to afford to live, then the government steps in with ebt and housing vouchers, etc. to make up the difference. That’s money Walmart isn’t paying. In fact, they get to kind of double dip. As those employees will likely shop there. So the ebt gets spent there. The government essentially pays Walmart to feed its employees. The employees are being double hit. Because their income is still taxed, then they essentially get scrip that they’ll likely have to spend at the place where they work. It’s why you’ll also never see any real movement on the welfare issue. It’s a way to funnel tax money to the rich via poor people.

Aloisius 1y ago

This is in stark contrast to the Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment study that claimed the law had no negative effects on fast-food employment. The Berkeley study has been cited quite heavily by policy makers. https://irle.berkeley.edu/publications/brief/effects-of-the-20-california-fast-food-minimum-wage/ https://irle.berkeley.edu/publications/brief/effects-of-the-...

miley_cyrus 1y ago
This group is well known for bias, over and over through the years. Nothing they report should be taken at face value. "A considerable amount of financial support for the Center comes from labor unions: According to federal reports, over the last 15 years it has received nearly $1.2 million in labor funding." "The IRLE’s highest-profile researcher is Michael Reich, who co-chairs its Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. Reich made a name for himself at a young age co-founding the Union for Radical Political Economics, with the stated goal of supporting “public ownership of production and a government-planned economy.”" https://us.fundsforngos.org/news/nonprofit-accuses-uc-berkeley-of-biased-research-on-minimum-wage/ https://us.fundsforngos.org/news/nonprofit-accuses-uc-berkel... https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-team-not-credible-on-minimum-wage/ https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-te... https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-team-not-credible-on-minimum-wage/ https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-te...
- Spivak 1y ago
  You have made a good case for a close reading of the study. Are they wrong? Is the methodology bad?
  - Auracle 1y ago
    Even their abstract seems biased: "...and price increases of about 1.5 percent— or about 6 cents on a four-dollar hamburger." Ah, yes, the fabled four-dollar hamburger. I know I never need to spend more than 4 dollars nowadays when I get fast food.

throwawaylaptop 1y ago

In my medium size CA town, the Burger King just flat out closed. Other than long johns silver in the 1990s, I've never seen a major franchise just quit and close.

aidenn0 1y ago

If there is a correlation, and the correlation is causal, I'm not sure how this matches with every fast-food restaurant near me having "hiring, start immediately, no experience needed" posters outside.

mattwilsonn888 1y ago

It's not that people shouldn't have a minimum standard of living, it's whether we are going to take easy and ineffective routes to solve the problem that look good on paper and in commercials or whether we can have the adult discussion about the monetary system and how it affects citizens.

didibus 1y ago

I'm unsure you can make any conclusions here. The employment in the fast food industry went down, but we don't even know if it caused more unemployment. Those workers might have all found a better or similar paying job in another sector. Without that information, there's nothing to learn here, exception those still employed in the fast food sector now make more money.

mbrumlow 1y ago
Yah. I mean, magically they are all CEOs now, kinda crazy, right at the same time minimum wage went up. The lord works in strange ways. Really no. All you have to look at is the number of total jobs and now unfilled jobs. We don’t need to know about the people and them magically becoming CEOs.

tlogan 1y ago

While pitched as “helping people,” California’s fast-food minimum wage law has a different goal: reshaping the state’s tourism appeal. By making dining out feel more distinctive (and by nudging the market toward small restaurants and local chains) it’s a strategic play to make California a cooler place to visit and eat. That’s how I’ve interpreted it - because otherwise, it makes little sense why the wage for the same work would vary based on the size of the company.

wyager 1y ago
You're giving way too much credit to the emergent intelligence of the CA legislature

darksaints 1y ago

As someone who kinda followed this debate for a while, I will point out that there is actually a large split down the middle of the on whether minimum wage increases decrease employment. And that split isn't actually due to ideological bias (which is the usual accusation), but rather methodology: almost all of the studies which confirm employment reductions use one methodology, and almost all of the studies which do not confirm employment loss use another methodology, and there is a large debate in econometrics as to how reasonable the assumptions are for each of the two methodologies. One thing that always seems to be at a disconnect between the economic literature and policy makers is the economic context of the raise in wages. Even those economists that have bought in fully that minimum wage increases don't typically decrease employment will have several caveats to that statement, usually worded in the form of "small increases in the minimum wage". That is to say that there are often small inefficiencies in our current markets which allow employers to reduce wages in cartel-like fashion, and small increases in the minimum wage can claw some of that back in favor of the employees at the expense of employers' economic rents, but not at the expense of economic output. But large increases in the minimum wage absolutely can jump the shark, decreasing economic output by effectively making low margin sectors untenable entirely. If that weren't the case, we would be able to raise it infinitely without any negative effects, which is absolutely absurd (and unfortunately that is the takeaway that ideologues often get from reading abstracts). A more useful economic model would go a step further than just saying "you can raise the minimum wage without harm to the economy", by incorporating econometric analysis which can accurately predict when and how much you can raise it without incurring economic harm.

derelicta 1y ago

Really, one can only truly understand the term "labour aristocracy" after reading this comment section. People show 0 solidarity towards people of their own class. The west is doomed.

ETH_start 1y ago

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banginghead 1y ago

Why is the entire discussion between: "people should be able to pay rent and buy groceries and maybe save a little money on minimum wage" versus "those greedy poors"? I mean 10% of the US population are millionaires, we're all paying billionaires' taxes so they only have to pay a pittance, and soon we'll have a trillionaire. But no, screw the minimum wage workers, they should work extra jobs ... we'll never tax the rich what they owe, they are worshipped like gods.

navi0 1y ago

Real question: If government-mandated wages are good policy, why not set the minimum wage to $50/hr? Why not $100/hr?

comex 1y ago
Because if the minimum wage is too high, employers can't afford to pay it, so it will just result in reduced employment rather than wages going up, aka economic "deadweight loss". That much is obvious. What is in question is the effects of more realistic minimum wages like this one. Some claim that _any_ minimum wage will only result in deadweight loss, which is true in simplified models, but the effect in the real world is not so clear, hence the need for this type of research.
- navi0 1y ago
  Yes, I agree: this research shows that governments do a poor job when they attempt to set minimum wages, and they would do better to focus on accomplishing income redistribution policies through the tax code. When government tries to set minimum wages, they often result in job losses (or foregone jobs that were never created) which, as you wrote, is known in economic circles as "deadweight loss."

Glyptodon 1y ago

I find it weird how people care so much about employment overall rather than sufficient employment. Like if a job doesn't pay enough for people to comfortably have a family and leasure time, to me it's somewhere in spectrum of slavery, indentured servitude, and poverty trap, and not compatible with a society of equals and representative government. Which is to say it's a job that shouldn't exist. While I don't think minimum wage is really the ideal mechanism of determining this, it's obvious that paying somebody federal minimum wage is an immoral exploitative joke... But also it'd likely be even worse without it. But more to the point, why do these people obsessed with work and jobs always think anything that creates any kind of job is "good" no matter how bad, dangerous, or poorly compensated? Jobs that amount to licking poison for nickels in a country where you we could probably quarters the lowest currency denomination without issue somehow being "good" for the lockers is ludicrous. Low wages have massive negative externalities for society.

Philorandroid 1y ago
Having lost a job suddenly, any employment is better than none. A perfect job that provides everything you need is pretty far detached from "this is sufficient", or even "this will slow my fall while I work something else out", and this kind of bitter resentment towards anything less than a job that pays out an idyllic American existence is what causes them to be priced out by legislative fiat like the minimum wage. More to the point, not every skill level or job is _worth_ that kind of compensation (as uncomfortable as it might be to entertain), and attempts to circumvent market forces by making lower wages illegal at some arbitrary point have substantially more damaging externalities than 'low wages' -- which are as much a system of slavery as gravity or magnetism, and just as resilient to ideation.
- tossandthrow 1y ago
  > More to the point, not every skill level or job is _worth_ that kind of compensation ... This is a fair stance to take, but you need to accept the consequences of the stance when people get desperate. > attempts to circumvent market forces by making lower wages illegal at some arbitrary point have substantially more damaging externalities than 'low wages' A population of people who can not feed themselves are going to kill you on the street for the canned tuna you might have in your bag. > Having lost a job suddenly, any employment is better than none. While this is true for you it is not true for the society as a whole. This entire comment seems be written with a complete disrespect for macro dynamics and taken right out of a hunter gather society. It completely ignores everything modern governance - and it is quite frightening.

croes 1y ago

Isn’t it fascinating if you raise the minimum wage some people say it destroys jobs but when people get fired because of things like robots and AI the same people claim it’s no problem because it those things that killed the jobs create just other jobs. More money to spend also creates jobs

bborud 1y ago

Could it be that with a higher minimum wage, more people work these jobs full time, thus reducing the number of people employed part time? If the same number of hours are produced with a lower number of workers that should be a plausible explanation, yes?

jleyank 1y ago

Ontario fast food minimum wage, $17.20. California’s $20. And the cost of living there is higher. Our fast food places, and whatever you call the next tier is doing just fine - the damn things are everywhere. Hard to find something that’s not some kind of chain. Probably a whole lot of takeaway or delivery, but things seem to meet society’s needs without decimating budgets. Maybe it’s a balance of having real workers and moderating profits for the longer term?

bena 1y ago
You see this in other countries as well. They pay decent wages to fast food employees and don’t play the tipping game either. Prices aren’t out of control and service is decent.
refurb 1y ago
The vast majority of fast food workers in Ontario are foreigners working on visas. And plenty of them are exploited and forced to kickback a part of their wages to the owner. The government does nothing and the owner gets below minimum wage workers. It’s shockingly common in Canada.

spicyusername 1y ago

If a business can't provide a living wage, it shouldn't exist. It's really that simple. Imagine doing this analysis on the effects of requiring a business to pay it's slaves, and coming to the conclusion that some slave-based businesses would have to close, since their business model was so skewed, it could only function with slave labor... Who cares! We don't want a world with companies that can only work with those kinds of business models! Slave labor shouldn't subsidize artificially low priced products and artificially inflated executive salaries... the end.

greenchair 1y ago
Interesting perspective. I need a paragraphs worth of text translated once a week by a native speaker. Should my biz not exist or am I allowed to use "slave labor" fiverr?
itsme0000 1y ago
Except that the study found California economy grew faster than states with low minimum wages. The law is actually necessary for growth. Conservative economists just lied, nobody thought this was actually going to cause unemployment.
- tossandthrow 1y ago
  This is the message. One of the reasons why equality is so freaking important for a market economy is because it lets more people participate in it - equality is prerequisite for a market economy (and a democracy, but that is another discussion)
CommenterPerson 1y ago
Thank you for stating this so simply and clearly. It's absurd to see so many commenters, who are probably mostly wage earners, mindlessly repeat the right wing propaganda. Civilization needs some minimum decency.
JustExAWS 1y ago
This is a crazy take. It’s not the company’s responsibility to provide a safety net. It’s the government’s and the government should collect taxes to do so. We already have a system for this in theory - the Earned Income Tax Credit. The program use to be widely supported by both Democrats and Republican administrations. What’s a “living wage” anyway? It’s not the same for a single mother of 3 as it was for my then teenage son. And I find it rich for people on HN to say that companies that can’t afford to pay its workers are commenting on a site run by a VC fund where almost none of its companies could afford to pay anything if they weren’t being propped up by investors and most of the companies will never make a profit

wtcactus 1y ago

This is a side question, but, are people in California now not expected to pay the extortionary tips American businesses expect? Whenever I pointed how backwards were the tipping expectations in the USA for anyone from Europe, the excuse was always that those tips would compensate the low wages paid in the food industry. Well, now that they have a standard minimum wage, are they doing away with the tipping practice?

mwkaufma 1y ago

Betteridge's law of headlines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

kirito1337 1y ago

I'm a tax evader haha

CommenterPerson 1y ago

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