Truth. The "minimum wage" has always been, and remains, a purely political, excuse the expression, "wank-off", for, well, politicians.

The "average wage" for literally any area, by almost any study, is always significantly above the "minimum wage". It's really not needed...except...

To prevent young, ambitious, motivated workers from entering the labor market at all, or at best delay them. And the truth of that, although somewhat but not completely outdated, but certainly true in the past, is inferior union workers who fear competition from anyone, especially the young and motivated.

Admittedly, that's history.

But now it's simply become a myth, or worse "accepted", that "everyone deserves a minimum wage"...and the people who espouse that vociferously and will literally come to blows over it, if you press the point.

Try to explain to them...wait, hold on, I actually did once:

While working in a factory when I was just starting out, but had read Atlas, other works, especially Mises, I put a question to a particularly strident union employee, who had a thing about the price of, say, the price of milk:

"Joe, if the price of milk went down to half, for whatever reason, and, well, so did the price of everything else you buy, like your car, house, would you accept a small cut in yours wages?"

Joe: "[expletive deleted] Huh, no way man. I deserve exactly what I get, and more so, at least a certain increase every year. I know my rights in the union."

Does anyone here blame me for not attempting to explain "real wages" vs. "monetary wages", to Joe?

The idea of being "entitled" to something simply because you are born is ludicrous. Those clamoring for an increase to the minimum age to make it "livable" are taking UNSKILLED jobs intended to be starter jobs for young people or secondary income for the retired and trying to turn them into career.

I cannot wait until these places automate (Chili's has, Panera bread has) and these bottom feeders lose their sole source of income.

Improve yourself. Improve your condition.

How far this nation has fallen.

A "living wage" whether you define it as subsistence living or something else represents a different amount of money based upon where you are.

A living wage here in New England requires more money than a living wage in Louisiana.

It is relative rather than absolute because of various factors, among them, location, family unit size, housing market, employment market, etc.

That is just the reality of things...Adam Smith not withstanding.

I actually read about this, several weeks ago, in an interview with a Seattle restaurant owner. "Yeah, I have to get rid of some people because I can't afford to keep them, but there are these new machines..."...

I just thought of (well, to me) a good analogy:

Liberals are much like the Dutch Boy and his fingers in the dike. They block up one hole (i.e. a perceived injustice), and another opens up. (The Law of Unintended Consequences).

These machines, as "cool" as they are, should only replace a worker when it makes business/economic sense to do so.

Whoever makes these machines are now saying: "Thank you, Seattle".

Sorry, but with all due respect:

There is nothing "relative" at all about a living wage. (See Adam Smith, et. al.)

It is precisely what an individual needs to, quite literally, earn in terms of money to "live" on. To live: Man's first and highest goal.

To exchange his wages for: Food, shelter and...well, that's about it. Sleep, and get up and "do it again"...(thank you, Mr. Browne.)

And, especially in this particular forum, what else could possibly matter than it IS achievable: "a practical goal...on an individual basis"? There is no other reasonable standard, for that particular, well-defined, goal, than an individual.

But I do know what you're saying: what I described was "subsistence", which thanks to Capitalism, we stopped discussing, except in abstract terms, a long, long, time ago. We are so far past that in any modern country, and in all but the most corrupt "developing" countries, that the fact the "living wage" line is blurred, to some.

What the opponents of Capitalism are using is a "relative", moving, standard, their new definition of "poverty":

It's now (with only slight sarc, I've seen these standards in liberal articles):

Can I support: x number of kids, cell phones, cable TV and the TV to go with it (preferably HD), and at least one car? On what I can make flipping burgers?

That's, grudgingly, a "living wage", to some.

Where I absolutely agree with you is that "Government interference only makes this worse."

Absent that, the, I guess, new standard in subsistence workers, "hamburger flippers", could probably afford, and well afford, the everyday consumer items I mentioned above.

Seriously. In a true Capitalist economy, driven, as it always has been, on mass production, NOT luxury goods, those seeming "luxury" goods to the liberals, would be mere affordable commodities to those they look down upon as "the common man".

"They are also blind who will not see."
It is so simple a Bonomo could understand it. A business exists to make a profit. The profit appears after all expenses are paid including wages. The business exists in order for it to provide the owner a profit. For that, the owner risks money investment, and in many cases hard work. If the business fails, the owner loses his investment in money, time and energy. If raising wages wipes out profit, the owner must either close the business or raise prices. If raising prices causes the firm to become non-competitive, the sales will drop, the profit disappears and once again the business will close. So the basic question becomes: Do you want higher wages or a job?

This is true. Also the percentage labor cost is not fixed. If labor doubled, it might become economical to use more automation or change their menu to focus on less labor-intensive products. McDonald's already uses automation to pick a cup of the requested size and fill it with the requested type of drink. I think the automation trend will carry on making labor a smaller percentage of fast food regardless of the wage floor.

I think what you will see is a boon for automation. At a $15/hour wage with additional expenses you are looking at almost $80,000 a year for two shifts.

With that kind of budget you can spend quite a bit on automating the process with an early break-even point.

Doubling the minimum wage wouldn't necessarily double the price of the hamburger. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/20...

tl;dr The price of labor is about 1/4 the cost of a Big Mac.

Well, if it's supposed to be an entry-level job, I'm not sure what you expect. Presumably all the more-qualified workers left for better jobs getting paid more.

"Extrapolate to the national economy, and when minimum wage disconnects from value produced, all prices will have to go up, and the $15/hr wage will no longer be enough to keep up with rising costs of living, and the cycle repeats. "

Precisely. It's the snowball to ____ called inflation. Setting a minimum wage just institutionalizes inflation in the industry. What is worthy of note is that none of it would be possible without fiat currency!

And therefore not cheap. I've been in IT for two decades and getting a good UI is neither simple nor cheap. Come to think of it, most of IT is just like that. Want to know why: most users have no idea what they actually want, so you have to go through a zillion iterations of something to arrive at a workable one.

Sometime try to tell the counter person in one CONCISE sentence what you want. I thought it would be more efficient, but finally gave up on it. They dont seem to have enough KB in their memory banks to remember anything except "get me a #1". Something like "a burrito bowl with chopped lettuce for HERE, with chicken and all the veges except more lettuce" just doesnt compute for them. You have to repeat parts of it over and over...

I rented a car in Phoenix at Hertz recently. They had a kiosk with a screen and it was VERY intuitive and easier to deal with than the person behind the counter. Canned AI got a bad name because it was written more FOR programmers than end users to understand. The programmers need to be mated up with customer experience people more so that the end result just feels right to the customer. NOT EASY, though.

Its been a long time coming !! Much more efficient too. Better for the customers too. Keeps prices lower too.

I think they should pick a liberal State or two and overnight just raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Let's see precisely what happens to McDonald's $2 hamburger (I don't know how much they are now, haven't been there in a long time). If they survive ,fine, raise the minimum wage. If the $2 hamburger becomes a $4 hamburger the people that eat there will just have to pay more or eat someplace else. I think we should start this where the State leadership thinks it's a good idea. How about New York? Do It, Try It. Show us how it works. Or maybe California might be a good place to start, since it can just be broken off and we can let it fall into the sea if it doesn't work. That might even solve more than one issue.

Exactly. I have explained this to people who want to work for me: Your work has to produce enough extra income to pay for you. If I have to pay a certain minimum wage that is not connected to the value produced, then I must raise my prices to have enough resources to cover my expenses. If I raise prices, I may lose some sales and thus reduce or at least not increase my gross. It's a case of what the market will bear.

Extrapolate to the national economy, and when minimum wage disconnects from value produced, all prices will have to go up, and the $15/hr wage will no longer be enough to keep up with rising costs of living, and the cycle repeats.

Or maybe, just maybe, there is a big envy towards what CEOs get, and the notion arises that the CEO should get no more, or only a little more, than his lowest-paid employee, regardless of work performed or responsibility held. And if the rich won't willingly give their surplus to the workers regardless of merit, the government should step in and redistribute by force. One proposal recently floated says that having too much wealth should be declared a crime.

Perhaps the folks on the lowest rung of skill and experience who want immediately to "live comfortably" should go out into the woods and try to make their living from scratch, keeping 100% of what they can produce, if they survive. Or maybe do a little math and feel some gratitude for what others have built as a society with productive opportunities and infrastructure that gives beginning workers the comfort of established enterprises and jobs through which they can learn marketable skills.

And what are their ideas of "living comfortably"? Having cars and cellphones and big-screen TVs and the latest fashions? Check out some third-world countries and see how little people need for comfort. I recall, some decades ago, a conversation with a lady with a high-paying government job who thought she was poor, because she couldn't afford "everything she wanted". I pointed out that poor was when you couldn't afford anything you wanted.

Yeah Matt Walsh. Too bad we didn't hear this on the 6:00 news. I don't share much on Facebook but I am on this one.

You remind me: We stopped at a McD's in Oklahoma. Our order totaled $6.76. I paid with a $5, $1, 5 dimes, one quarter and 1 penny. The order taker started counting the money and when he go to the dimes he pulled 2 of them towards himself and then stopped. He was stuck because there was no nickle. He pushed the coins back and started again, quarter, 2 dimes, but still no nickle. He was totally flummoxed! I stopped him and showed him to count the dimes first to get to 50 cents, then pull the quarter.

Leaving, I just shook my head that someone was paying this kid any wage when he could not even think through such a simple situation. By the way, the cash register had pictures on it rather then numbers, so when I ordered a Big Mac, he pushed a picture of the sandwich rather then keying in the amount. I could have pushed the picture myself and, with a connection to the grill, the 'chef' could have made the sandwich without any help from this kid.

It probably won't take much to mechanize those jobs.

c'mon, haven't you been watching enough tv?
A living wage is exactly what we tell you it is!
Stop thinking; you just make it more complicated!

(yes, sarcasm)

Since a living wage is a relative, not an absolute it is unachievable as a practical goal other than on an individual basis.

Government interference on this only makes it worse.

Somebody mentioned restaurants using tablets for ordering. I ran into one at a Chili's in Albuquerque. But fast food is getting into it also, I was overseas and I ran into one at a Mcdonald's that had a kiosk for ordering instead of the cashier and it took a swipe of your card and Boom, your order was paid for. I have also seen articles on burger machines that do everything. Pretty soon, it will just be the person to bring your food to the counter. The biggest take away from this is, get a degree or training in robotics or machine technology, something like electro-mechanical or electronics or a like technology.

As for wages, I worked at McDonalds for all of 3 months, then I took my skills and moved to another, better paying job. I kept building on my skill set and getting better training to get better jobs. When I got laid off in a recession, I went in the military and got my electronics training courtesy of my dear, old Uncle Sam. I took that and worked my way to my current job. Minimum wage was a stepping stone to something better. If minimum wage is what you consider your career, you are not bettering yourself or your situation. You are not building your skill set or even trying to be a better you. Minimum wage is not meant to be more than that stepping stone to something better.

I wrote software to do that 20 years ago. Now the hardware is cheap enough to implement it everywhere and add voice recognition and smart voice prompting. Not sure I want to deal with a canned AI in a real restaurant (as opposed to fast food) though. Its bad enough doing so on the phone. A human touch from a single expediter would be enough to verify order, take special instructions, and stroke the customers vanity.

I would certainly argue that the President isn't providing any more value than that. lol.

i was told that mcdonalds is experiencing a down turn in sales. under that condition increase the wages of the hamburger flippers. lets give everybody 15 bucks an hour even the bank presidents so we are all equal. i agree to say the least. also give the legislators 15 bucks an hour as well as the president.