So I just read about NY being set to pay fast food workers $15 an hour.
Now, I'm all for the advancement of people's quality of life (and as a teen, I worked at McD's myself), but I wonder if people who push for this realize that wages and prices are always a circular equation. If you raise people's pay to $15 an hour, you are going to have to raise prices and find another way to cut labor in order to stay in business.
The last time I bought a "Value Meal" it was around $8. What's going to happen if that same meal jumps up to, let's say, $10 or more?
I wonder how many fast food franchises this is going to put out of business. As it is, many lose money during the slow seasons and rely on the busy seasons to turn enough profit to carry them all throughout the rest of the year.
Or, maybe it's just me (after all, I did get a "B" in microeconomics)... but I'll be curious to see.
Low wages suck. I understand that. But what happens if low wages jumping to decent wages means a lot of people will be out of jobs instead? I wonder why no one seems to realize that $15 an hour doesn't help much when they cut you down to 6 hours a week. (Kind of like Obamacare... employers simply cut hours enough so that barely anyone had enough hours to qualify... at least in the places I've seen.)