When you make something more expensive, people can afford less of it. That’s why a $15/hour minimum wage will put people out of work when employers can’t afford it. This is unavoidable. It will happen, and it’s already happening.
Fight For $15, meet Cold Hard Reality. Jed Graham, Investor’s Business Daily:
Wendy’s (WEN) said that self-service ordering kiosks will be made available across its 6,000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year as minimum wage hikes and a tight labor market push up wages.
It will be up to franchisees whether to deploy the labor-saving technology, but Wendy’s President Todd Penegor did note that some franchise locations have been raising prices to offset wage hikes…
In addition to self-order kiosks, the company is also getting ready to move beyond the testing phase with labor-saving mobile ordering and mobile payment available systemwide by the end of the year.
I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but if your job can be done by a machine, you may very well be replaced by one. That’s why we create machines. That’s why you don’t see many town criers anymore. The market for buggy-whip tassels has seen better days. No matter how many generations of your family found employment as lamplighters, you’ll probably need to find some other way to pay your bills.
You do not have the right to a job at Wendy’s, or anywhere else. If your labor isn’t worth what your employer is paying you, he’ll have to make up the difference somehow. The real minimum wage is, and always will be, $0.00.
Hell, someday in the not-too-distant future, somebody will invent an algorithm that comes up with slightly different ways to say “Trump stinks” every day, and I’ll have to go back to male modeling. Economics is a cruel mistress, but people will always crave eye candy.
(Hat tip: Derek Hunter)