{"id":30044,"date":"2018-01-23T07:09:29","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T12:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30044"},"modified":"2018-01-23T07:09:29","modified_gmt":"2018-01-23T12:09:29","slug":"minimum-wage-fallout-is-caused-by-government-not-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30044","title":{"rendered":"Minimum Wage Fallout Is Caused by Government, Not Businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Minimum Wage Fallout Is Caused by Government, Not Businesses<\/a><\/h3>\n
Employees don’t magically become more productive because businesses have to pay them more, so they need to make up the losses elsewhere.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Both in Canada and in the U.S., many jurisdictions have \u201clistened\u201d to the people and enacted feel-good legislation like increasing the minimum wage, sometimes up to $15 an hour. Now that the consequences of such actions are being felt, people naturally blame\u2026 private corporations.<\/p>\n

In Ontario, famous doughnut chain Tim Hortons sent a\u00a0letter<\/a> to all their employees saying that many of their benefits, such as paid breaks and dental benefits, will be scaled down or canceled altogether. Meanwhile, the Great Canadian Bagel chain has announced a price\u00a0increase<\/a> to pay for the newly imposed wages.<\/p>\n

Unhappy with these changes, an Ottawa-based labor council set up a \u201cbully hotline<\/a>\u201d so that employees can anonymously denounce employers who \u201cviolate the spirit of the new law.\u201d Many \u201cTimmies\u201d regulars are even calling on a\u00a0boycott<\/a> of the chain to show their discontent.<\/p>\n

In the U.S., a recent picture from a\u00a0Subway<\/a> restaurant in Seattle, Washington, shows the franchise owner stating that, because of all the costs incurred (including high minimum wage), he cannot accept one-dollar coupons for the footlong of the day.<\/p>\n

It is almost a miracle that the chain hasn\u2019t cut back on employees altogether. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Market Forces Affect Everything<\/strong>Who is to blame for those changes on both sides of the border? Unfettered-capitalist-neoliberal-puppy-eating-Koch-brother greed? Heartless managers who just want to exploit their workers?<\/p>\n

No, the cutting back of hours, benefits, and discounts is a working of the markets, i.e. of every customer\u2019s decisions. Since franchises like McDonald\u2019s have, on average, a\u00a0profit margin<\/a> of 2.4 percent, the slightest sudden increase in costs will eat that margin away. It\u2019s a highly competitive and difficult world; as much as 30 percent of\u00a0Quiznos franchises<\/a> default on their government-backed loans.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Minimum Wage Fallout Is Caused by Government, Not Businesses Employees don’t magically become more productive because businesses have to pay them more, so they need to make up the losses elsewhere. Both in Canada and in the U.S., many jurisdictions have \u201clistened\u201d to the people and enacted feel-good legislation like increasing the minimum wage, sometimes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[103,18089,14991,4584,18090,10739,1427,824,3067],"class_list":["post-30044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-canada","tag-employment-eugenics","tag-foundation-for-economic-education","tag-minimum-wage","tag-pierre-guy-veer","tag-policy","tag-supply-and-demand","tag-unemployment","tag-unintended-consequences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30045,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30044\/revisions\/30045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}