Lets assume 15 dollars an hour happens

[Darsithis]

You can train a burger flipper in lass than a day, it takes months to be a good welder and not everyone can be a good welder.

If there where no more burger flippers, the worse that happens is more people eat at home, if there were no more welders that would shut down manufacturing.

It doesn't matter how much more difficult the job is. Everyone deserves to make a wage that allows them to meet their basic needs, and right now we purposely handicap a large portion of our society in the name of capitalism while simultaneously calling them all worthless, lazy, and moochers.

[alexw]

Would rise of minimal wage impact only McDonald's? OR that would impact other who used to earn 15$ before rise and so on up to CEO's? And would this rise of minimal wage impact rental prices?

It will raise wages across the board. The greatest lift will be at the lower end of the wage scale with incrementally smaller rises the higher you go, meaning that if you are making $200 an hour you won't see any lift at all. The cumulative impact will be to reduce overall inequality and reduce the differentials between top and bottom. There will be some inflation but it will far outweighed by the wage rises except, of course, for the very higher earners who won't get any wage rises but will still feel the inflationary effect. For them restaurant meals will cost more, their servants won't be as cheap, and they will have a little less to pump into stock market and housing bubbles. This is of course why the wealthy absolutely hate the idea of raising the minimum wage, fight it tooth and nail, and use every scare tactic they can to stop it. They are not stupid they know it is them who will take the hit. But given they have taken all the real wage gains of the last 40 years I can't say I have any sympathy.

There will also be some beneficial secondary economic effects over the longer term. It should bias the economy to higher paid work, as it will drive out a lot of the low pay low productivity work that is currently being subsidized by the tax payer. The saying that if you want more of something then you subsidize it holds true, and so it should be no surprise that by subsidizing low paid work, the system has become increasingly biased to creating low-paid work. By raising the minimum wage the opposite should happen, when starting up a business employers will no-longer go for the throw as many cheap bodies as they can at it tactic, but instead use automation and try to drive productivity higher from their current employees. It will also over time alter the structure of the economy. There will simply be less restaurants, more people will eat at home (which is good given how unhealthy restaurant food is), and the economy will reorientate to more productive endeavors. Currently capital is going to create lots of low pay low productivity work because that is where the easiest and greatest return on investment is. If it can't do that then it will flow elsewhere.

[MCMLXXXII]

So minimum wage take home is $6.80 an hour after income taxes?

People in America don't pay any taxes if they are under a certain threshold. The USA's Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25 an hour. Even if you worked 40 hours a week you would still be below the threshold to pay income taxes.

To top that off, the highest sales tax is 9.45%.

Tell me again about this great utopia of fair wages in Europe when you actually make less?

We may make less but the cost of living is a lot cheaper. If I lose my job I still get 70% of my wage no matter what my wage was (with a maximum of 2500€ without tax).
We have well maintained roads, we can drink water from the tap.
Even if you are in debt you will still get help to get you out.
I pay 100 € a month for medical insurance. No matter what happens.

[kingj56]

maybe a Mcdonalds owned store can but not a franchise

maybe not but the fact that the stores could but dont. speaks volumes. besides if 15 an hr happens it would only help the economy. middle to poor classes spend most of their income. which goes back into the economy. and by most i mean 85% to 120% of it. true stats there

[wregelmann]

http://www.businessinsider.com/denma...an-hour-2014-9

[Super Kami Dende]

$15 for Maccas is laughable, since people in more stressful/qualified jobs being paid $15 will demand more as well.

[Felya]

All you guys and your silly arguments. Just remember, Money can't replace you...but robots can. The $15 debate is all just wasted air. regardless of wages, more and more people are gong to be replaced with robots. Just like E-mail, bill pay and other techs killed off a junk of the US Postal service.

If you think the crux of mail being replaced by email is the cost involved, you are delusional. McDonnalds will not get replaced by robots that deliver your food almost instantly and permit access to that same food from just about anywhere in the world.

The $15 idea can be viewed as one of two ways. Either it's a early severance package to those who'll get replaced or it can be viewed has an excuse as to why they had to go with robots.

Either way our Robot overlords are coming!

A robot is currently more expansive to maintain than a human?

[Paranoid Android]

McDonalds will be fully automated by robots.

I don't understand why people like to fire back with the robot comments. It is as if you want to say; "Be happy you have a job that does not pay you shit. Just work pleeb".

Yes automation/technology will come and replace jobs. So the factor is having more "unskilled" people collecting entitlements. So again the comment should be; "yeah watch out or a robot will replace you and in turn I will now have to support you with my taxes".

[Super Friendly Kitty Cat]

Than why is it an argument against a minimum wage increase?

It is only happening at a few McDonald's and maybe right now the cost is too high, but given the increase of doubling the cost of labor it happening everywhere.

Secondly, and once again, this wage hike will put many independent stores out of business which will reduce competition and everything will be a corporate owned business.

[Jotaux]

It would be close to the same as now. People working for minimum wage are more likely to buy a hamburger, and if they have more money they will buy more hamburgers.

[Endus]

$15 for Maccas is laughable, since people in more stressful/qualified jobs being paid $15 will demand more as well.

Which everyone would expect. Not sure why you think this is an argument.

[Krigaren]

You can't have a "Free Market" and still have the amount of government regulations that are in place.

Maybe go back and read what a "free market" is and you won't appear foolish.

Get a degree in economics like I did, and perhaps you'll not look quite so foolish, yourself.

"A free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are set freely by consent between vendors and consumers, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority."

Simply put, the free market has nothing to do with the government setting the wages of employees, but does have to do with the relationship of supply and demand. The free market determines how much Mom & Pop Burger's price should be for their food, based on their relative supply and the relative demand for that supply.

If a mom and pop burger place can't afford the cost of their factors of production because they aren't able to set prices for their food at an equilibrium point which results in a profit due to a low demand for their product, then the free market dictates that they should no longer be in business. It has nothing to do with the cost of their inputs, but has everything to do with the fact that no one wants to buy from them. The same thing would happen if there was a sudden drop in beef production, causing the cost of hamburger to double worldwide. If they can't absorb that cost into their margins, they close their doors. If they had done their homework, they would make sure they are prepared for economic shifts like that, but if they don't or can't, they're done. It's really that simple.

+1 to economics education.

[zenkai]

People have run the numbers on this stuff. If you bumped the minimum wage in the USA to $15, the price of a burger would increase by less than 5%;
https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/rele...3-percent.html

Wage increases cannot translate to a similar price increase, not in any industry, because wages are not 100% of any price point.

Having been a manager at fastfood I call a .edu study bull shit. If the owner could raise a hamburger price by 5% to entice a crop of better employees they would have done it. You're doing good if you can even get half of them to show up for work or not quit without a notice

[unbound]

Exactly how much would the price of a McDonald's hamburger cost?

Realistically? Little if any at all. Most prices are not set by costs, but by the amount the masses are willing to pay. Initially, the profits may go down slightly, but overall sales will go up with the increase in disposable cash.

Even if all the of the minimum wage is passed on to the customer, the price would only go up by $0.10 or so (probably less).

Seriously, a full analysis was done with raising Walmart's minimum wages to $12/hour, and the math came out that if the costs were fully passed on to consumers, it would result in costing them $0.50 / trip (not per item, per trip to Walmart).

Here is the reality. As I stated earlier, prices are not set by costs. Prices are set based on what the market can bear. It doesn't matter if it costs the business less to produce the good or service, those savings have never been passed to the consumer...those are just profits that get sucked up by the top executives and stock holders (which are also mostly composed of those top executives).

And this is the real reason that corporations are raising holy hell regarding raising the minimum wage. The largest impact is that they won't get as much profit. Basically, they are just being greedy, selfish jerks. Nothing more and nothing less. They are well aware that their businesses will survive just fine, but you can damn well bet that you'll see a lot of twisted statistics and metrics coming out to try to discourage minimum wage increases.

At the end of the day, how do you think we got here (hint: it wasn't by accident)?

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

[Darsithis]

Well, now we have heard from the offended ex burger flipper, or more properly microwaver. I "worked" at Arby's as a meat slicer for a few months between jobs at a time when it seemed nothing was opening up for me. So, yes i do know what it is like to be behind that counter. When I go through the drive through I am nothing if not polite to the people who are serving me. That does not make that job, the franchises that take advantage of that type of people,or the people themselves worth any more. The lack of a living rate should serve as incentive to move on.

Move onto where? You make it sound so easy, that everyone can just rise up to the top rungs of society whenever they please. That the only thing holding anyone back is just being lazy.

[Jotaux]

http://www.businessinsider.com/denma...an-hour-2014-9

Its hard to make a comparison like that because there are factors other than labour involved in the cost of a hamburger. It may be more expensive to make and that could contribute to the 35 cents increase. I'm unsure about Denmark but I know my cousins from Norway always complain about the cost of beef there.

[zenkai]

maybe not but the fact that the stores could but dont. speaks volumes. besides if 15 an hr happens it would only help the economy. middle to poor classes spend most of their income. which goes back into the economy. and by most i mean 85% to 120% of it. true stats there

Raise minimum wage to $50 hr then no one will ever be poor again, because that's how that works

[wregelmann]

$15 for Maccas is laughable, since people in more stressful/qualified jobs being paid $15 will demand more as well.

And that's fine. If everybody in the country got a $5/hr raise, it would still help with income inequality, because basic math. I'll get into specifics if you want, but it should be easy enough to figure out on your own.

[MCMLXXXII]

It is only happening at a few McDonald's and maybe right now the cost is too high, but given the increase of doubling the cost of labor it happening everywhere.

Secondly, and once again, this wage hike will put many independent stores out of business which will reduce competition and everything will be a corporate owned business.

Yeah those customers with no own minds. They all be dragging themselves to those corporate owned bussinesses.
I for one would go to a small local bussiness before i would go to a franchise.

[GennGreymane]

Which everyone would expect. Not sure why you think this is an argument.

Which is confusing. You are telling people who want people to be paid more, that people will be paid more if people are paid more....