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Posted on 08/12/2013 8:13:26 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
This summer, thousands of fast food workers around the nation walked off the job, demanding to be paid $15 per hour for work that traditionally pays about half that. As Wendy's striker Kaye Smith told NY1 recently, "I have to live with my mom ... because I wouldn't be able to support myself on $7.25, you know?"
We can debate whether her living arrangements are Wendy's responsibility any more than they are that of New York's landlords or grocers. Either way, Smith's is a novel concept of unskilled jobs in America. Fast food wages have never been expected to support households on their own — nor is it reasonable to think that every job in the economy should. According to the Census Bureau, the average family income of a minimum wage-earner is over $53,000, so this appears to be something minimum wage workers already understand.
Still, the temptation among those who have never signed the front side of a paycheck — and that includes nearly all the journalists — is to tackle this story without considering employers' costs. "You make a lot of money, right? Why can't you pay $15 an hour?"
The real question, though, is why fast food isn't already a career track. Among many contributing factors is this one: Our government makes all hiring a bad deal, and unskilled hiring an even worse one.
If an especially generous employer wants to pay $15 per hour (about $30,000 annually) for full-time fast food chefs and cashiers, he's going to pay more than just this above-market wage. He will also pay half his employees' payroll taxes, federal and state unemployment insurance, workers' compensation insurance, training, uniforms (in the case of McDonald's, at least), and on top of that the health insurance or employer penalty that will be required by Obamacare starting in 2015.
Suddenly, each $15-per-hour employee costs at least $19.50 and perhaps as much as $25 per hour (depending on how the employer handles the health insurance issue). On the other side of the ledger, the employee gets to keep about $12 per hour after payroll, federal and D.C. income taxes, not including any contribution or payment he has to make toward health insurance.
So employers lose 40 or 50 percent in government-mandated transaction costs whenever they engage a new worker. This is a rotten deal, and a worse one if the worker's labor is (by the definition of "unskilled") not especially valuable. It is worse still if the market wage is arbitrarily doubled.
A related problem with the doubling of fast-food workers' pay is that McDonalds has more reliable and more efficient options than hiring large numbers of unskilled, entry-level workers and paying such ludicrous transaction costs — and a major wage increase may make those options cheaper as well.
In both Europe and Australia, many McDonald's cashiers have been replaced by touchscreens. Even in D.C., where McDonald's workers still take your order (for now), retailers like CVS, Walmart and Home Depot have automated the checkout process. When the cost of hiring goes up, machines (or in some industries, foreign workers) become cost-competitive.
Four years removed from the big crash of 2008, the American economy is still barely creating enough jobs to keep up with population growth. And the next big blow has yet to land — Obamacare's employer mandate, which adds another major expense to most full-time hires.
Meanwhile, potential fast-food workers are in high supply and short demand. There couldn't be a worse time to demand a free lunch, let alone a Super-Sized one.
At $15 per hour, fast food places will figure out how to get the customer to make their own meals.
fast food jobs are entry level jobs, they were never meant to be jobs to support a family. only managers possibly, but you only need one manager and a couple lower asst managers, hardly anyone there otherwise is earning a family wage, because these jobs, being entry jobs, require little skill, and have high turnover rates.
I hate to throw a net and use a wide brush BUT I truly believe the greater number of people in todays world have absolutely no clue as to what happens when wages are doubled.
Are they told that Corporate just ‘eats’ the difference?
This doesn’t only apply to the ‘young’ either. How many times have you heard people bemoan - I remember when gas was .12 and cigarettes .20 but you bring them ‘back to reality’ when you say ‘Very true, but you must realize that in 1970 10 thou a year was a right good wage.. a laborer etc making 200 a week was putting in very long hours.
Guess unemployment pays about that now.
In a respect you can agree with the FFW, they could make close to the same sitting home and sleeping till noon.
Guess that is why they call it a ‘starter’ job, you need it BEFORE you can apply for unemployment......
Look at places like Sheetz with the touch screen ordering system.
3. Reacquaint America's youth with the work ethic
4. Fill open fast food position with unskilled youth who don't need to earn enough to live off of
Oh, I forgot step 1...
1. Go to sleep and begin dreaming of a world that will never again exist.
Mark
I have 30,000 a year employees. It costs me 37,500.00 to hire them. They take home less than 26,000.00 of the 30,000.00 because of their own taxes. They then look at me like it’s my fault.
Between what they “take home” and what it “costs me” is damn near 12,000 dollars mostly to the Feds and some to the state of Montana.
Some is WC, 3,000 each. Some is unemployment State and Fed and 7.5% plus is matching the SS and then there’s Medicaid. The government is a Den of Thieves.
Liberals won’t be happy until EVERYTHING is run by the government. They want Uncle Sam to give them hamburgers and everything else they want. They’re simply too stupid to understand that if people don’t work, the government has no money.
Just like with healthcare. They believe the government can and should provide it for free. They don’t understand that even the VA isn’t free. People pay taxes to keep it going.
These people you speak of don’t understand that if property taxes go up their rent is going up. They don’t understand profit.
Years ago when I was a saleman a contractor wanted a price on a transformer. I quoted him a price and he complained that it was too high. I said “You do realize that I buy these damn things for one price and sell them for another, don’t you?” He smiled and bought the transformer.
Many stores here in Maryland have automated checkouts including Home Depot and most grocery stores, but Walmarts here took them out due to theft.
Even when they had them the customers were too dumb to use them . 'Please wait, help is on the way' was the regular blinking sign as each one screwed it up and then those losers would stand and wait till their death for help that was never coming.
Walmarts cant trust their own employees and they bring in some of the worst customers, you cant have automation in a situation where your own employees cannot be trusted and wont keep an eye out for theft.
I quoted him a price and he complained that it was too high.
= = = = = = = = = = =
At least he bought it from you.
I have had them tell me I am too high and go with a higher quote because they didn’t want to ‘face’ me again..
My fault though cause when ‘they’ would claim I was too expensive I would break it down etc and they really didn’t want to hear my ‘shiite’ again.
I just have that ‘Told you so dumbie’ look. <: <: <:
I love the old “Well Smiths has it cheaper”.
“Fine, go to Smiths and buy it there”.
At $15/hour, a better class of employees [college-educated, etc.] will displace the low-wage employees that work fast food now.
If employers have to pay a higher wage, they are going to use the higher class of worker ...
The current low-wage employees would lose in this game of Chicken ...
Until the middle of the 20th Century, there was plenty of work to be done and not enough goods to keep everyone happy. Then, it made sense to tax work and not tax the production of goods.
In the 21st Century, there is a surplus of stuff and a shortage of work, so it make sense to tax stuff and not tax work. This is my argument for a ZERO income tax rate, with all government income derived from a sales tax on products (but not services).
This has the effect of allowing money to circulate freely in the services economy, without it all being quickly siphoned off to the government.
In-n-Out pays well and has clean cut, high morality, English speakers. Even if some of them are from elsewhere (Locally, a Moldovan and a Russian come to mind)
“With the exception of “Chic-Fil-A,” not a single fast food restaurant in my area has people who speak English as the workers.”
These places don’t want Americans (even at the same hourly wage as imports); they have a docile workforce that is desperate for even these jobs. Now that same effect is trickling upwards in the economy with Asian replacements in white collar jobs; in the meantime many Americans are finding out what an Asian standard of living means.
I’ve noticed over the years that a #1 something at a fast food place costs about 1 hour of min. wage.
Ex: a #1 at Micky’s ~7.50-8.00 w/tax.
So if they raise the min. wage to $15 what do you think a #1 is going to cost.
“fast food jobs are entry level jobs, they were never meant to be jobs to support a family. only managers possibly, but you only need one manager and a couple lower asst managers, hardly anyone there otherwise is earning a family wage, because these jobs, being entry jobs, require little skill, and have high turnover rates.”
That’s all fine & good until they’re the only jobs left for desperate people. If people had options I doubt they’d be clamoring for high wages for these positions. In my area these jobs have low turnover; the foreigners that hold them have been there for years.
Close, Citizen.
Today it makes sense to tax income, property, sales, disposal, manufacturing, importation, exportation, services, heath, sickness, savings, investments, charity...
“Walmarts cant trust their own employees and they bring in some of the worst customers, you cant have automation in a situation where your own employees cannot be trusted and wont keep an eye out for theft.”
In this economy just about every business is in this position as people try to claw back to a standard of living from 10 years ago that will never return. This is all very grim to watch...
I doubt “thousands” walked off their jobs. Most of the picketers did not work at those places. Most of those who did, were off duty.
You should itemize it for your employees
When everything is run by the government, that is when people will learn what real poverty is, what its like to have no luxury goods at all. I mean basic goods will be hard to find luxuries.
Yeah. Having a policy of "stop a shoplifter/lose your job" really works well for them, eh?
In many cases the employees are in on the theft; they rationalize it because the class warfare of the left has told them they are entitled to it (as “stolen wages”). It never ceases to amaze & disgust my wife when programs like “Bait Car” or “Caught Red-Handed” show how casually so many people can steal something that doesn’t belong to them...
A Walmart employee knows that Walmart itself has so little regard for its inventory that they force employees to stand idly by when someone walks out with unpaid merchandise.
If the company, by their actions, tells them it's OK to steal from Walmart, how much easier is it for an employee to justify "stolen wages" in his or her own mind?
I share her disgust, just not her amazement. When we were in high school a friend worked at K Mart; when a certain code came over the PA all the stock boys were to head to the front to deal with a shoplifter. That was 25 years ago; how things have changed...
talk to managers of restaurants, the wait staff and kitchen staff often are 30-40% turnover annually, historically. not saying every place is like this but fast food places typically have been because there’s hardly any skill required to make their frozen pre packged, everything just needs combining and cooking/warming up.
The story is a man when into a lumber yard and asked how much were the 2X4s. The crusty old owner told them they were $1 each. The customer said “Your competitor down the street has them for 89 cents.
The old man said “Then I’d go buy a bunch from.”
The customer explained “He’s out of ‘em.”
To which the old man replied “Hell, I can give ‘em away when I’m out of ‘em.”
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