They Obviously Know How To Better Spend My Money, Except That They Obviously Don't

Susie just experienced a practical demonstration of what happens when you increase the minimum wage.

In order to be able to afford the increased payroll without raising ticket prices (which negatively impacts business), the company has cut hours by instituting only one show on weeknights--theaters which had been playing movies at 5 and 8 are now only showing 7pm sets. So, a concessions clerk who worked from 4:30 to 9 on a weeknight at $5.15 an hour is now working from 6:30 to 8 for $6.85 an hour. Their day's wages have gone from $23 to $10.25. Let's say they still work 4 and a half hours on Saturday and so earn $31 for that day instead of the $23 they previously would have made. They are still making $5.00 less now than they would have without the wage increase.

And because so many of the clueless would blame the company in this case, I'd like to remind folks that the sole purpose of a business is to turn a profit. In America, we even have a special class of companies who are specifically designated non-profit. So when a company reacts to higher costs by cutting expenses, it's not evil or heartless, it's behaving correctly and responsibly, for a business!

Meanwhile, politicians who back raising the minimum wage pat themselves on the back and congratulate each other about what caring people they are, which is the biggest lie of all. Not all of them are stupid, they full well understand what will happen when you artificially increase expenses. They don't care. They don't care about the effects, they don't care about the workers they impact. They do care about being able to point to this as an example of how they're fighting back against rich corporations. Fighting for the common man. As for the people dancing in the streets over this, because they actually believe that this is a victory? Now those people are stupid.

Posted by: Ted at 09:46 AM | category: Links
Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 353 words, total size 2 kb.