starbucks

On certain issues, leftist harping is especially odious. One is the minimum wage.

Anyone who has met a payroll knows that, when higher wages are simply dictated from on high, then employees (or hours or salaries) must be cut back elsewhere – assuming the business can survive at all. It’s math. We’ve seen it before,

with Starbucks. Or,
with the rise of automated ordering at fast-food restaurants. Or,
with that San Francisco bookstore that was destroyed by a minimum wage increase it had supported.

Leftists like to deny math and other facts of business and economics. What makes it odious is, they’re also smug about it. It isn’t just their ignorance; it’s their aggressive pride in staying ignorant.

Via HotAir, now a study confirms that San Francisco’s minimum wage does indeed injure the businesses and workers of that city.

San Francisco’s higher minimum wage is causing an increasing number of restaurants to go out of business even before it is fully phased in, a new study by the Harvard Business School found.
The closings were concentrated among struggling, lower-rated restaurants. The higher minimum also caused fewer new restaurants to open, it found.
“We provide suggestive evidence that higher minimum wage increases overall exit rates among restaurants, where a $1 increase in the minimum wage leads to approximately a 4 to 10 percent increase in the likelihood of exit,” report Dara Lee and Michael Luca, authors of “Survival of the Fittest: The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Firm Exit.” The study used as a case study San Francisco, which has an estimated 6,000 restaurants in the Bay Area and is ratcheting up its minimum wage.

So, Nancy Pelosi and her fellow limousine-socialists are looking at fewer restaurant selections for themselves – and more unemployed people. Do they understand that? Or even notice it?

There is only one time when the minimum wage doesn’t hurt employment: When it’s low enough, in real terms, to be ineffectual. For example, if we have a period of inflation – and no minimum wage increases – then its real value will go down, and employers can afford to hire the low-end workers again. But the higher the minimum wage is, in real terms: the more low-end workers can’t get work.

Business 101: When paying an employee, you have to pay in line with their productivity.

If you underpay, you lose the employee.
If you overpay, you run up losses and lose your business.
If you raise the hourly wage, you must get more from each employee hour – and you must cut the hours/employees that won’t or can’t rise to the new, higher bar.

You may have seen the following last week, but I didn’t want to let it pass without comment. After raising wages over the last 18 months, Starbucks and its employees have been learning some lessons the hard way:

An online petition accus[es] Starbucks Corp of “extreme” cutbacks in work hours at its U.S. cafes…
[Starbucks] recently introduced technology that allows customers to order and pay from mobile devices. That service aims to…reduce bottlenecks in stores. [ed: reducing the number of employees needed per shift]
Starbucks has a software system that determines labor needs based on business trends…
Comments on the petition painted a picture of broad discontent at the company…
…many signers say they noticed cutbacks in U.S. staffing hours…
One central California store has seen its labor allotment shrunk by about 10 percent, even though sales are up…
“No matter what we do to save on labor at my store, the system tells us EVERY SINGLE DAY that we are at least 8 hours over in labor for the day and have to cut even more,” wrote [a petition] signer…
Like other restaurants and retail companies, Starbucks is wrestling with the effects of local minimum wage increases…tipping has fallen substantially amid broad customer adoption of the “Starbucks Rewards” program, which allows customers to pay with a loyalty card or mobile phones.

Suppose Starbucks gives in and boosts employee hours (arbitrarily; without a matching, widespread sales & productivity gain). What happens then? Operating budget overruns and closing stores. And/or price increases, declining sales, and closing stores. Perhaps eventually, a closing company. Thanks, Blue State lefties!

UPDATE: This oldie from The Guardian in 2014 may help us to see the problem:

[Read more…]

Serving them right

Newsflash: Higher wages don’t come for free