Where do you get off eating at Mcdonalds? Honestly, do you swallow that garbage? I bet you're going out to fancy restaurants as well...3, 4 maybe 6 nights per week. Wasting money, filling up on bread and fancy desserts.
Christ, how about trying to cook something edible at home!
As for Gov Newsom, he deserves a fricken medal. It's about somebody took the bull by the horns and shut down the fast food and restaurant industries!
Social Justice for California Fast-Food Workers? Where’s the Beef?
Sacramento lawmakers consider a bill that would price teenage burger flippers out of their jobs.
Jason L. Riley, WSJ
Aug. 30, 2022 6:15 pm ET
Your columnist has a confession to make. Many summers ago, I worked at a Wendy’s. I was young, and I needed the money. I was not proud of myself and carefully chose a location well outside of town to ensure that no one I knew would ever see me working there. I was living a double life. Not even my closest friends knew that a burger flipper was among them.
The Wendy’s job was one of any number I held, often simultaneously, in my teens. I was also a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant and a stock boy at a supermarket. While in college, I drove a delivery truck for Frito-Lay and worked the overnight shift at a gas-station minimart. Collectively, these early jobs taught me the importance of being punctual, helped me develop respect for supervision, and gave me the pride and self-respect that come with being financially independent. What these jobs also had in common is that the starting pay was at, or just above, minimum wage.
On Monday, state lawmakers in California, where the minimum wage is already $15 an hour, passed legislation that raises it to as much as $22 for fast-food workers. The bill would create a state commission with the authority to determine not only wages but also hours and working conditions at fast-food franchises. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t said whether he’ll sign it into law and has until Sept. 30 to decide. But labor leaders and progressive activists, who know that what starts in California often doesn’t stay there, are hoping that the bill will serve as a model for workplace regulation nationwide. Heaven help us.
Proponents of a higher wage floor always say it’s needed to help lift the poor, and they play down or ignore significant trade-offs. Most poor people already make more than the minimum wage, and the people who do earn the minimum are much more likely to be teenagers or young adults working part-time (as I was) than they are to be the family’s sole breadwinner. Poor people need jobs more than they need a minimum-wage hike, and raising the minimum results in fewer employment opportunities than would otherwise be available. California’s new commission would be able to mandate how much Burger King pays you, but it can’t force Burger King to hire you in the first place.
In a survey of economists published this month by the Employment Policies Institute, 83% of respondents expressed opposition to the California legislation. “Economists think the law will hinder the future growth of individual restaurant chains,” according to EPI. “Other negative impacts will likely be fewer restaurant chains willing to operate in California and other states with similar laws (84%), raising prices for consumers as business owners pass on higher costs created by council mandates (84%) and leading to store closures in California (73%).”
EPI is an organization that has received support from restaurants, but other economic research has long supported the conclusion that minimum-wage increases put downward pressure on employment and overall pay. In 2015 Seattle became the first large city to enact an ordinance that lifted its minimum wage incrementally to $15 over a multiyear period. The next year, the University of Washington published a report on how low-income earners were affected. “Increased wages,” it concluded, “were offset by modest reductions in employment and hours, thereby limiting the extent to which higher wages directly translated into higher average earnings.”
Last year, the economists David Neumark and Peter Shirley released an assessment of academic research on minimum-wage hikes that had been published over the previous three decades. The authors found that close to 80% of the papers they surveyed showed negative employment effects in the form of fewer jobs or hours, and that the negative impact was strongest for teenagers, young adults and people with less education. Because blacks and Hispanics are overrepresented among such workers, minimum-wage increases can also widen racial disparities.
Empirical evidence matters little to social-justice do-gooders, who maintain that government mandates are the best way to address inequality. But people in California and the rest of the country ought to know the cold facts and disappointing history of such schemes. You don’t help people by destroying low-paying jobs or by making it too expensive for employers to hire them. Rather, you help people by making them more productive. And that first job, however menial or low-paying, can be the first step in developing productive attitudes and skills that will serve someone well for a lifetime.
Incidentally, my stint at Wendy’s didn’t work out entirely as I planned it. One day a customer who knew me did show up. It was Mom. She just smiled when she saw me and promised not to tell anyone.