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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> Given that on an 8 hour shift the extra cost is just over $60

Don’t other labor costs (e.g. payroll taxes) scale with pay? So the daily savings are more than $60.

And $60/day conserves $1,800 a month, which is a decent amount of cash for a restaurant. If it’s a lunch-rush shop with marginal dinner business, $2,000/month could be the break point for that shift and those jobs.

Absent zoning reform, however, these wages are more likely to flow into higher rents versus consumption or savings.

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Correct - the fully baked cost of these employees is much higher than the extra $/hr increase. The bigger kicker is this location is fixed, they HAVE to pay their employees this amount. The consumer is NOT fixed and given an increase in prices, has the ability to conduct commerce in an area near Emeryville that was not impacted by the higher wages. So all things being equal, the same sandwich made a few miles away may be a few $ cheaper and for people on a limited budget, the consumer may make that choice. It is similar to when a city/county raise taxes within their limits on certain items, lets say cigarettes, then are surprised when instead of raising revenue, the amount of revenue overall collected falls after this increase. Consumers have the ability to purchase outside of the city's taxing authority when the marginal increase is more than the perceived cost to the consumer to travel to purchase them. This is basic econ 101, maybe 201. While these attempts are great, they fail to factor that in and should be coordinated at the state level to have any impact. Even with that, states deal with this all the time when people go across state lines to purchase booze, or leave high sales tax states when making large ticket purchases. It is no coincidence that just across the border from Illinois in Wisc/Indiana there are best buys / appliance stores that do huge volumes of business.

Makes sense that some taxes go higher, I should remembered about this. What are the dollar amounts, I'm not familiar with payroll taxes in the US.

Also, my original calculation assumed 8 hour shifts for all employees per day, which is likely wrong (could be more or less)

Granted that $1800 is a decent amount of money for a small restaurant but staffing levels are at 40% of what they were, is the service/quality not going to suffer a bit (a lot?)?

I wish I could be making an extra $1,800 a month. Alternatively, I'd be pretty honked off too if a government regulation cut my pay by that amount.

Payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, benefits like 401k matching.

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