Ah yes the classic "are working class people humans?" Debate.

Yalls standards are fucking LOW. And many if yall have kids. You would think that would light a fire under someone's ass to make the world a good place to exist.

Did you ask your unborn child if they wanted to be exploited cradle to grave before you had that unprotected sex? No, because having kids isn't about the kids at all... it's about you you youuuu.

Dredging up an old article because this argument is also old:

McD's workers in Denmark are paid $22/hr + 6 wks paid vacation.

One argument that is frequently brought up against the raising of the minimum wage to $15 is the suggestion that it will have a knock-on effect and the prices at affordable fast-food restaurants such as McDonald's and Taco Bell will also substantially increase.

In rebuke, many use the price of a Big Mac in Denmark as proof that such claims are unwarranted. On social media, a number of Twitter users state that the cost of a Big Mac is around $5.15, compared to $4:80 in the U.S.—even with the vastly different staff wages.

https://www.newsweek.com/minimum-wage-15-denmark-big-mac-mcdonalds-1573414

Remember, prices arent simple functions of cost. The business owner isn't tabulating costs to produce a product, and then adding a standardized profit markup to determine price. Generally it works in reverse. A business owner introducing a new product into a market is competing with the prices already in the market. If your product is of similar quality, you're not gonna sell your product for much higher than that market price, no matter how much it costs you to make. Instead, you increase your profit margins by reducing costs as much as you can. Like say, fighting against legislation like this to pay your workers less.

Now, there probably will be some price increases from this, same as there was from the pandemic, because people will expect to pay more because they think that's how prices work. But they can only get away with so much increase, anyone that keeps prices low gets an advantage over the competition.

Also, the threats of reduced hours and layoffs is a pretty empty threat. Again, employment isnt a simple function of cost. Business owner isnt budgeting a set amount of earnings to hire with. An employee is there to handle customer demand. If you don't have the employees to handle the demand you're getting, you're losing sales. Especially in fast food where consistency is so important to customer retention. If you're short on fry cooks and have to turn down a bunch of customers hoping to get fries with their meals, they're gonna go elsewhere eventually. But they also dont want more employees than they need to meet that demand, thats eating into the profit margins. This is why fast food workers get so stressed, employers try to meet the most demand with the lowest amount of labor cost. Again, there might be some temporary layoffs and hour reductions as employers try to stretch their labor even thinner, until they realize they were already stretched to the limit and have to hire back.

Business groups claim hard-fought $20 hourly wage victory will cause reduced hours, layoffs

David Card was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for showing that this isn't true.

(The study (PDF warning))

What was special about this research that won the guy the award?

According to Card:

the thing that has really influenced the field is the idea of looking for these pivotal events or things that have happened that could potentially inform our theorizing and understanding of the world.

That is to say, they actually looked at real world examples and compared (meaning they actually included evidence in their reasoning) rather than assuming it must be so based on neoclassical economic assumptions.

Yeah, it’s pretty clear that this increase in wage will bump up the end cost of ordering at these restaurants but like… it’s by such a small margin where anyone complaining about it is a massive dork.

Big Mac is 30 cents more expensive so staff can get paid (closer to) a living wage. That’s a very fair trade off for the American people

Business groups claim hard-fought $20 hourly wage victory will cause reduced hours, layoffs and price hikes

That's not a claim, that's a threat. Whether or not that happens is completely up to them since their real before creative bookkeeping profits are astronomical enough that they can easily pay workers upwards of $25/h without doing any of the things they're threatening.

Regulations and enforcement of same are so lacking, though, that they're able to make good on that threat without being fined to the tune of even a thousandth of the amounts they steal from their workers.

Either way, fuck "business groups" that exist only to further enrich the already rich at the expense of everyone else.

Their critics are not so sure.

Oh my fucking god, FUCK that wording so hard. "Not so sure" is their way of playing down the strength and validity of the counter-arguments. God I hate the news.

Won’t someone please think of the billionaires and their investors?!?!?

Business groups claim hard-fought $20 hourly wage victory will cause reduced hours, layoffs and price hikes – critics say otherwise

If someone says that this will reduce hours, and cause layoffs, you know that they are bullshitting.

Why would they add to minimum wage increase and reduce their profit? Might as well declare bankruptcy.

As for prices, they usually are set not by how much it costs to produce something, but how much a customer will pay. They might increase prices if they are below the cost of production, but again they are dictated by the customer. If they can't the business would go bankrupt.

They didn't mention about going out of business, so it is kind of clear that this is a lot of hot air and they really just comparing about earning less.

There's one thing I didn't mentioned related to employees. It is automation that could replace them. The thing with that is that whenever they can, those companies would do that anyway.

"Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”

― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Business groups claim they suckin deez nutz