KH

In response to the title....

Divisive politics putting every group at someone elses' throat appears to have already destroyed goodwill.

Along with manners, respect for others, property rights, and simple pleasures.

Robots are an alternative, but for many small businesses there's a better one -- reorganize as a partnership and have your family be the workers and owners, thus no employees.

Then again, my theory is that this is really all about destroying the fast food industry, or forcing it to unionize.

what about higher skilled workers making $15 an hour now, are they going to get $22 or more? I bet they think they should.

"What do you get when you cross worker resentment with restaurant patron resentment?"
Answer:...No more restaurants, no more eating out.
Maybe a surge in Cooking class students, Hotel rooms with mini kitchens, OR...will we get a new Restaurant/service paradigm...standardized service and only those that set the bar the highest will be patronized.
Either way you look at it, something we all cherished and found valuable will be gone or at least reduced to a rarity.

Seattle has Boeing, Starbucks and Microsoft - along with a lot of natural beauty. So, everybody is expected to be fleeced. I used to live there. Love the place. But, here in California it's the same phenomenon. What the left doesn't realize is how this destroys areas for the lower-middle class working folks.

You won't see a $15 minimum wage in Sioux City or Tulsa (not that those aren't nice places).

Well we are running the same route that the EU is on, just a few decades behind. Tips are no longer given or expected there, its just part of the wage.

My daughter makes about $20 to $22 an hour waiting tables while in high school. She does an excellent job and gets very generous tips.

We have all ready had the discussion around what will happen if she gets a base of $15.00 per hour, the tips will largely go away and the prices on the menu will have to go up accordingly. The end result she will get $15.00 an hour and her co worker that covers about 60% as many tables and still gets complaints log against her and makes about $11.00 an hour will also make $15.00 per hour.

It is yet again another way to average things out between producer and non-producing people.

I think economist Peter Schiff best highlighted how the rising costs that result from raising the minimum wage do kill good will in consumers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLr5o...

The more goods and services cost, the smaller the purchasing power of the consumer, meaning they have a lot less to donate to charities and causes, too. That's a negative no one ever talks about in relation to the economic impact of minimum wage hikes.

The idiots pushing the $15 minimum wage understand nothing about economics and the free market. Oklahoma City has no municipal or state minimum wage, but the minimums being paid are above $10/hr, with some above $15/hr. That's being driven by labor demand, not government edict. I suspect the municipalities that are busy instituting high minimum wage are in for a rude awakening.

They will get more capable with time. Fast food workers -- not so much.

As annoying as voice regognition devices? "I 'm sorry. I didn 't hear that. Could you please choose from the following menu options?"

we gave a waitress a 52 percent tip while on vacation,
last week. . we were the last table of her night, and she had done
a majestic job of personalizing our meal, scrounging more of
our favorite stuff, making us feel like a king and queen -- and she
probably has to pay them to let her work there (very fine restaurant:::
Sea Captain's House in Myrtle Beach).

this intrusion by the govt screws everything up. -- j
.

Just try an experiment. Announce your order to the fast food clerk carefully crafted into one concise sentence and see if they can enter it on their own. They seem not to have much available RAM, cause I keep getting asked to repeat the elements of the order, and then at the end whether I am eating it there or take out. Kind of annoying.

A lot of minimum wage jobs would disappear, Automation would increase. Time to go work for a robot company

I do not deny she's a smart person. we'll agree there

You are right !!

I remember learning the hard way that In Australia, at least with taxi drivers, you are not supposed to tip. They receive some other kind of compensation in lieu of the practice.

But so what, along comes these two yank seppos in Cairns and they engage a taxi service. The driver places me in the front passenger seat and my companion in the back seat. Already, this is weird, in the US you never ride up front with the driver in a taxi - security I suppose.

The driver is incredibly talkative and funny and having a blast with the seppos. But, I ask him how come I can ride up front? He looks at me with a straight face and says "What's the matter, mate, afraid I'll break wind?"

I tipped the guy despite all objections and just said the comedy was worth it alone!

I consider that claim rubbish.

What, I was surprised to see the article was about Seattle. Not really, I’m just pulling your leg, so to speak. Seattle is becoming the most liberal city on earth. Not only the officials’ but also the people they vote into the City Council and other governmental positions. One of their favorites now seems to be Kshama Sawant, a woman born in India. She is an activist who’s bringing her ideas to fruition in Seattle. Since the minimum wage I no longer go to Seattle to eat, we’ve got other good restaurant choices on the Eastside where we can determine the tip ourselves (usually in the 20-25-30% category at the top places). In fact, now I don’t go into Seattle, period, unless I absolutely have to, like when I have an appointment at the Seattle VA Hospital. And that ain’t (I finally added that word to my dictionary) no fun either, I’m sure you’ve read about it.

“If you thought Seattle activists were passionate in their successful push for the $15 an hour minimum wage, just wait until you see their fervor for rent control. It was on display Thursday night at City Hall when City Councilmembers Nick Licata and Kshama Sawant hosted a town hall meeting that drew an overflow crowd. People seethed about the skyrocketing rents, and vowed to do something about it in spite of the political sway that landlords and real estate developers hold. To this group one speaker, Flora Ybarra, said this: "We are going to show you we are the people with the power." The crowd roared its approval.”

Beside the minimum wage, the Seattle City Council is now pushing the new and improved Rent Control. There being a shortage of apartments in Seattle (and so the prices are going up) so they have convinced the people if they impose rent control there will be more affordable apartments available. That makes a lot of sense to an investor. Just put your money out there to build a bunch of low income apartments that the government will be controlling the rent on. I can’t even calculate just out how many investors will actually jump into this plan to correct the shortages of low income apartments. The council won’t listen to other cities that have actually solved their rental availability problems by building low income units and letting the market determine the rent. More apartments available, lower rent. What a unique concept, huh?

Yes. I feel better about machines preparing the food (or my food-like junk from Taco Bell, which I love) than people.

I'm a tiny bit aspie too, so I prefer to interact with machines. There are two grocery stores next door to one another, and I always go to the one that has automated point-of-sale units b/c it just seems a little quicker and easier to skip the small talk.

Yes. In the wonky language of economists, price floors create "surplus demand", i.e. a gap of people wanting to provide something at a lower price and people wanting to purchase it at a lower price, but they're kept apart by the price floor.

"clinton does not believe that your life is your own, but that it belongs to the collective for the greater good. "
I wonder if this is true. I imagine she's a high-achiever working in the field of politics. She knows you have to be the best at what you do, and that means listening to experts and maintaining a laundry list of problems people want to know she cares about. She no political capital to spare to tell people that most problems have to be solved by the person with the problem, not outside help. I imagine destroying free and productive people is the farthest thing from her mind. She wants to win and climb the rungs of power as you say. She wants to excel and do a "good job". She's a smart person and a good person, so she figures if she wins, it's good for her and good for the people she represents.

That's all pure guessing I my part. I do know that my non-random sample of people I know personally who've worked with her says she's brilliant and seems like a good person.

"you just said somewhere else you support Rand Paul.! Clinton is against Paul on most political issues! gah!"
Ron Paul and now Rand Paul are my favorites. I get the idea they are not just coming up with a mix of things that sounds good to voter but are actually starting from a belief in limited gov't, a belief in not over-interpreting the Constitution.

When I take the isidewith test, which I do not trust but is fun to try, I come up almost tied between Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders. If there's anything to that test (and it may be pure crap), maybe there's not such a huge difference.

In any case, I see all politicians as the cool and personable people who will respond to lobbying to keep their jobs. Much of the apparent disagreement I believe is theatrics. I don't think that as much about Rand Paul. I think he would ideologically resist people lobbying for gov't to take action, which is MUCH better than Clinton who I believe would weigh my lobbying with others' lobbying.

I use tipping widely. Typically I tip very well, and it pays off when I repeat as a customer.

This would readily turn me into a non-tipper, and leave a note. Maybe I should consider the calculation for what it means to the price, and simply deduct it from the tip. (e.g. 20% -> 10%).

It is interesting that the Dutch generally don't tip. Those in the service industry consider that their job that it is an insult to imply they need tips to supplement their income (or that you are superior because you tip). I kind of like this in some ways. It makes life easier than carrying change around for cabs etc. and people take their cab/waiter/etc jobs seriously.

This is unfortunately true, but should not be. Employees should add something to the business (and it is well worth creating jobs for people who do this), something that a robot can not do. What the gov is doing is increasing the burden aspect of an employee, which means that the only employees you can keep are the ones who are superb.

This is interesting to contemplate. One of the things you look for in science is the concept of a 'baseline'. What is the normal situation? (This is what is wrong with many of the climate discussions - they lack an agreed-upon baseline, or any referent to baselines at all.) What we have here is the movement of a 'baseline' to advance the case of 'what a robot can provide'. A robot has a certain initial cost, maintenance cost, replacement interval; a human has wages, work habits, sickness or other time off. A human has personality, a robot has programmed responses, but a robot never goofs off or gets angry.

It is like one of those before-and-after pictures with the slider in the middle. Increased minimum wage moves the slider to the side that shows far more robots than humans.

Jan

In Las Vegas, where I live, servers get the minimum wage (or whatever wage they agree on thats higher) PLUS their tips. Minimum here is $7.25 now. If minimum were raised to $15, their pay would go up by 7.75 per hour !!! Therefore, I would never tip once that was enacted. I vote with my wallet too.