Quote Originally Posted by bae View Post
My words were pretty simple and clear. Only one word even had two syllables, and that one was a "contraction".

Some jobs don't generate $15 of value/utility. Such as punching your order into the order screen at KFC. So if you require $15/hour for that task, the task is quite likely to end up getting performed by some other less-expensive means.

I was travelling the past 3-4 weeks. I stopped at a McDonalds the other day, and the fellow behind the counter at the non-busy restaurant took about 5 minutes to punch in the order for my family of three, and we were each ordering simply "meal #X" off the screen above his head - nothing complex. I could have placed our order in about 5 seconds on a touchscreen or phone app myself. I suspect at a mandated $15/hour, in a few years that's how food will get ordered at such places.

Heck, they'll probably invent burger-flipping robots too. Oh wait, I seem to recall that they have.

I'm curious, why is $15 the magic number? Why not $12? Or $50?
The folks at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, otherwise known as MIT have studied what it costs people in different parts of the country to live. They have defined a living wage for full time workers and then classified the hourly rate in three categories....living wage, poverty wage and current minimum wage. I live in one of the cheapest counties in the nation except for gasoline which is the highest due to our crumbling infrastructure of bridges on highways.

So in my county one person should earn $9.40/ hr for a living wage...$5 / HR for poverty and the current minimum wage is $7.25. Contrast with San Fransisco.....$14.37/ hr for a living wage ....$5 poverty and current is $9. They even have it broken down in expense categories to justify their numbers.

Now that is just one person. Say they have to support one child. California becomes $29.37/ hr for living wage, $7 for poverty and $9 is the current.

My county, $20.14 living, poverty $7 and current is $7.25.

Im no genius but the folks at MIT usually know what they are doing with numbers.

My way of thinking, if you can't pay somebody enou to live decently then you shouldn't be claiming to be a decent businessman. Admit it, your business model sucks.