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Comment by zer0faith | Hacker News Reader

As a business owner if I am required to pay my workers at minimum 15$ an hour I will need to off set the impact to my bottom line. This can be done by:

Automate whatever can be

https://www.forbes.com/sites/edrensi/2018/07/11/mcdonalds-sa...

Raise the price of goods and services

Outsource to other countries (if cost is cheaper)

For those that aren't aware typical rent in NYC on a corner lot for a restaurant is about 18k per month.

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You may also accept the change to your bottom line or close.

But that should be my choice, not the government’s.

That's what I said about the flaming pond of gasoline in my front yard.

(My point being, it'd be a lot more interesting if you listed some specific reasons you think minimum wage is bad regulation, rather than just protesting it in general terms)

There are a lot of businesses that barely make enough for the owner to make a living. For those, "lower bottom line" isn't an option.

I did not edit my comment to add the "or close" after this comment was made, it was there from the start.

Those sound like failed businesses that should close down if they cant function without exploiting their workers.

> Raise the price of goods and services

Given that your competitors are facing the same cost increase you should be able to take this option without losing business.

A larger competitor may have more ability to opt for automation than a small shop.

> For those that aren't aware typical rent in NYC on a corner lot for a restaurant is about 18k per month

The reason the rent is so high is because market conditions are allowing money that should be going towards labor to go towards rent. If there aren't 1000k small restaurants paying minimum wage, demand for space goes down, rent goes down, possibly to the point that being a landlord is no longer profitable.

If no one can pay 18k a month, then rent will go down right ?

> As a business owner if I am required to pay my workers at minimum 15$ an hour I will need to off set the impact to my bottom line.

Honest question, if you're still profitable (and I read this as implying you are), why do you need to offset it, or offset it aggressively? Sure, if it becomes extremely tight to not-profitable, that isn't good and would need rectified, but again, your comment doesn't come off like that.

Because if it doesn't bring the profit he's used to, or if he can't have the same quality of life, he might as well fire everybody and close rather than putting more hours in a restaurant, which by experience I can tell you is one of the most stressful business. In fact, there are studies that confirm my personal experience anecdote.

Being profitable is not the same as leading a decent business, and decent quality of life.

This happens and some one else who is willing to put in the work will take their place, thats the reality of capitalism.

Why should we protect employers from this reality while their employees are left to struggle?

I was not arguing pro or against the raise, I was explaining why an owner of a business that is still profitable might close.

I'm not a business owner but wouldn't anyone feel that way? If the government put out a web developer tax that took 30% of my salary, yeah it'd still be fairly high but I would move to embedded development or something else that pays more after the tax.

Switching costs aren't free.

As a thought, profitable can have a lot of variance. If my "profit" means I only make minimum wage when all is said and done, why would I bother owning a business? The staffing costs account for a lot of a businesses expense (#1 or #2 depending on rent costs), so an increase in staff costs could changes "make healthy living" to "barely make more than the workers".

I would hope that the business owner is making more than the workers, that is the person taking the risk on the business, and most likely putting in a lot more time/effort to keep it profitable.

Money is the fuel that feeds the evolution of your business it allows your to expand, grow, change, and hire different caliber of workers. As the business grows it allows you to have more capital to pay your employees and hire more people.

If you have costs that you can't offset...

Your workers are your responsibility, they feed their families with the pay check they are provided. (Speaking from a holistic view) If you can't offset costs, that means you possibly can't provide them the same pay check or bonus they've been getting. Essentially, this ends up being one of those good of the many outweighs the good of the few.

Running a business often means longer hours, more financial risk, and other additional burdens compared to being employed by someone. If the returns aren't commensurate, why do it? Better to quit, go to a 9-5 and get some of your life back.

And sometimes it means none of those things, and you just spend other people's (investors) money.

Because even if you have to work longer and have the other burdens, the job is nicer than being the guy who has to wash dishes or make fries. Not everything is about getting more money. It's the same argument in regard to "why get a graduate degree if you don't make that much more money afterwards?"

Are you a business owner?

So who gets to decide how much profit this person is allowed to make? Maybe he wants to save for his kids college or against a recession? He is taking the risks (leases, capital tie up, etc.) he should be allowed to decide his payout. Most restaurants run super lean and have high failure rates. The long term effect of these laws is yet to be seen.

It is also unclear to me why we expect an unskilled worker at McDonald's putting fries into a basket to make a "living wage". These jobs are largely for students, retirees and other temporary workers. A high minimum wage isn't the way to end poverty, no taxes under $60K, needs based UBI and other tax incentives are much better options.

The issue is that business that employ unskilled labor will tend to raise prices but rich people don't shop at WalMart; poor people do. So great, they make more but their buying power may have actually gone down. This is the conundrum. Everyone wants $40/hour unskilled manufacturing jobs making throwaway products that they can buy at the dollar store. You can't have it both ways. People really want buying power, not necessarily higher wages.

> It is also unclear to me why we expect an unskilled worker at McDonald's putting fries into a basket to make a "living wage". These jobs are largely for students, retirees and other temporary workers.

This is utter nonsense and insulting. Go talk to people who actually work those jobs. These people are adults, just like you are, and they deserve to be treated with dignity. If you don't pay them a living wage, then the government will have to make up the gap. Is that your goal?

I'm not insulting anyone. I actually worked these jobs in the past. I know the people personally. And yes, if you read what I posted, I explicitly stated that the government needs to make up the gap. We can tax high wage earners and redistribute the money to them directly without immediately raising the prices at the stores they use. So I'm saying I'll personally pay more taxes to help raise these people out of poverty. I think that is treating people with dignity, apparently you disagree.

You really don't see how saying one's job is "for students, retirees, and other temporary workers" and that their work doesn't deserve a living wage could be insulting to someone who does not fall into one of those categories but has chosen to work that job?

Honestly, no. There are opportunities at all the fast food chains (convenience stores, etc.) to move up into manager or assistant manager. These jobs usually pay $40K+ and benefits. This is a living wage in most areas. But they invested in themselves and are no longer unskilled. All I am saying is that dumping fries into a basket doesn't create enough economic value for it to pay a living wage. Not all jobs are designed to have a career path. We have much better tools to help those in poverty than minimum wage hikes. I think anyone under some X * federal poverty should pay no state or federal taxes. Trivial to implement and their take home would match a hike to $15/hour mw.

I mean, if a "living wage" means that you're not able to provide a net value for your employer, or at least that other options like investing in automation is substantially more profitable for them, it just doesn't work out. Why would you "deserve" for someone to pay you more than what your labor is worth? They just won't hire you then.

I agree that everyone _does_ deserve to live a dignified life and afford all their basic needs, no matter where they work. I'm not sure that the solution is to force employers to pay more than what they get out of you. I don't think I've ever heard of a solution that's entirely convinced me (it seems to me to be a very hard problem), but I'm leaning towards an UBI.

please don't ignore the rest of the post because of that line. But I do agree about that being insulting

> So who gets to decide how much profit this person is allowed to make?

Their customers get to decide that.

That's not quite true. Customers get to decide if they accept the profit margin that the business wants. If the business thinks the risks far outweigh the payoff, they decide by closing the business.

> He is taking the risks

The only kind of risk is a capital risk.

Capitalism as religion

That is the main one but there is also time, stress, energy, potential family obligations reduction, etc. Is your job devoid of capitalism?

The point I was making is that every employee invests their life in their work.

I think time is more valuable than money. The whole point of money is to give me the resources to do better things with my time.

The idea that the person who invests money is the only one making an investment (aka taking a risk) is the owner is Capitalism as religion

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