WSJ Opinion: Seattle’s Wage Mandate Kills Restaurants

[Ken]

I had understood that this latest minimum wage increase was just coming into effect this year. So I am a bit confused. If you are saying that the minimum wage big increases started a few years back I think that just makes my point in that this latest increase is the one that broke the camel's back for this restaurant. And I explained why high end restaurants will be the first to feel those fast increases as they are more labour intensive.

You say they are being replaced by small ethic and I am guessing Mom and Pop establishments. Establishments that I am willing to bet the owner is barely making minimum wage a lot of the time. And notice the public will choose the cheaper eating places if they have the chance. Often the same people that say they support minimum wage increases. Excuse me for being a bit disillusioned but I see this same type of hypocrisy day in and day out. Everybody wants people to receive a fair wage they say but not if it comes out of their pocket.
As I stated there are much better ways of seeing that people get more money than raising the minimum wage. Ways that hurt way less people. The really crazy thing is that any server working in a good restaurant is already earning way more than minimum wage if they are doing a good job, thanks to tips. The people in the food industry that are earning minimum wage are the fast food servers and they are being replaced by machine big time.

I still maintain that the vast majority of people if they wish too can fast work their way up past minimum wage if they work hard, stick to a job and are willing to advance in their field. Those that cannot have other issues that no amount of social engineering of wage rates will fix. I am empathetic to those issues; very much so. I just think that they need to be dealt with in a very different way.

Seattle's $15 minimum wage law was passed in 2015 and has been phased in on different timetables depending on the class of employer. I'm not sure all the exact dates and details. It has also been extensively studied by economists at the University of Washington which has a large and prestigious school of economics and took advantage of being in the middle of a living laboratory to study minimum wage increases. The quote I produced above in my first post summarizes their findings. Essentially most employers have adapted.

The particular restaurant we are talking about here is this place which many commentators predicted would be a fiasco from the beginning. Essentially Tom Douglas was selling Asian-inspired noodles and bento boxes at 2-3 times the price of actual authentic Asian fare which is ubiquitous in Seattle.

The place had mixed reviews from the beginning and it isn't surprising that it eventually failed given that they were renting an enormous space in one of the most expensive new addresses in all of Seattle.

https://seattle.eater.com/2013/6/14/641 ... embly-hall

[appleman2006]

Obviously I am speaking in generalities and cannot speak to every case. Again this one particular employee seems to have worked for him a long time and was quite happy whatever that means. But I do stand behind my statement that a 73 percent increase over that amount of time is simply to fast and is not sustainable without some real hurt. Not unless there is somewhat of a monopoly involved. ie. public service etc. As I said there are much better ways to deal with low income wage earners that will help them far more.

[appleman2006]

I should add that there are only two ways for businesses to adapt to this sort of thing. One is to become more efficient which often involves getting more mechanised and getting rid of some employees. The second is raising prices.
Some people cite a third which is to make less profit but Ii would argue that if that is an option for you you were charging too much in the first place and obviously you were lucky that no one else had already elbowed you out of business. In our economy that very rarely happens. If you are overcharging for you product someone will figure it our real fast and get you piece of the pie.

[temporal1]

Page 4

I'm questioning why the basis for this has to happen in the first place.

Is skyrocketing population density in the interest of the working class?

Are these forces inevitable, or are they result of policy and of the actions of the global elite?

Fair, and important questions.
Presently, it’s reported, there are jobs in different areas all over the U.S.
Yet, many people are finding their way to the West Coast. i don’t believe these people are all displaced local people.

i believe there are (global elite) policies that are attracting these people, that they would move to these PREMIUM locations (with temperate weather) even to live marginally, rather than move to places with ordinary jobs and pay.

there is more in this than jobs and pay. there are policies that tempt, protect, and sustain homelessness. if not, they would go elsewhere. many are “dug in” and not interested in going anywhere.

[Bootstrap]

For what it's worth, here is a graph of restaurant-related employment in the Seattle area. If there's a big change in restaurant employment, these are the graphs that should show it.



Let's zoom in on the last 10 years:

[Bootstrap]

Seattle's $15 minimum wage law was passed in 2015 and has been phased in on different timetables depending on the class of employer. I'm not sure all the exact dates and details.

You can find a multi-year chart with these details here:

Seattle's Minimum Wage

[temporal1]

Opinion
“Ben Shapiro:
Homelessness in California, West Coast states is here to stay. Thanks, Supreme Court”
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/homeles ... en-shapiro

In a new ruling, the Supreme Court effectively mandated continued legal tolerance for homelessness across major cities on the West Coast of the United States.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that Americans have a right to sleep on the streets and that it amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment" under the Constitution to levy fines based on such behavior.

That court -- a repository of stupidity and radicalism, the Mos Eisley of our nation's federal bench -- decided that writing a $25 ticket to people "camping" on the sidewalk is precisely the sort of brutality the Founding Fathers sought to prohibit in stopping torture under the Eighth Amendment.

That ruling was so patently insane that even liberal politicians such as Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas joined the appeal attempt. "Letting the current law stand handicaps cities and counties from acting nimbly to aid those perishing on the streets, exacerbating unsafe and unhealthy conditions that negatively affect our most vulnerable residents," he explained.

But the 9th Circuit ruling will stand.
That ruling followed a separate 2006 ruling from the same court, which found that cities could not ban people from sleeping in public places. In this case, Judge Marsha Berzon, in language so twisted it would make yoga pioneer Bikram Choudhury jealous, wrote that "the state may not criminalize the state of being 'homeless in public places'" and thus could not criminalize the "consequence" of being homeless. .. ..

But here's the problem:
Cities that have attempted to provide increased housing for the homeless, despite some early successes, have seen their problems return. Cities like Seattle and Los Angeles have attempted to build new housing. It's been an expensive failure.

It turns out that the carrot of housing must be accompanied by the stick of law enforcement.
If you cannot compel drug addicts to enter treatment, or paranoid schizophrenics to take their medication, or those who refuse to live indoors to do so, homelessness will not abate.

As it is, the Supreme Court has damned America's major cities to the continuation of the festering problem of homelessness.
And that problem won't be solved by judges who attempt to force social policy through deliberately misreading the Constitution, or who believe they are championing "freedom" for tens of thousands of Americans who are seriously mentally ill or addicted to drugs.

Also, there is an 8 min video that goes with this caption:

Left Behind: Homeless Crisis in Los Angeles
In the summer of 2019, Fox News embarked on an ambitious project to chronicle the toll progressive policies has had on the homeless crisis in four west coast cities:
Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.

In each city, we saw a lack of safety, sanitation, and civility.

Residents, the homeless and advocates say they've lost faith in their elected officials' ability to solve the issue.

Most of the cities have thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at the problem only to watch it get worse. This is what we saw in Los Angeles.

Money, alone, will fail. It is failing.

[temporal1]

Isn’t it strange how some can accomplish so much with so little,
but government consistently falls short/fails with millions, if not billions to squander.

Money does not seem to be the authentic problem. Lunacy is the problem.

[Ken]

Opinion
“Ben Shapiro:
Homelessness in California, West Coast states is here to stay. Thanks, Supreme Court”

This is nonsense. Not that there isn't homelessness. But that it is thanks to the Supreme Court.

Essentially what the 10th Circuit Court said (and that the Supreme Court refused to overturn) was that cities cannot enforce outdoor camping prohibitions if there are no alternatives available. So, in this case, the city of Boise cannot fine or jail homeless folks for outdoor camping if there are no shelters available or no public alternative camping sites available. The court gave a clear signal to cities what they had to do to enforce their public camping bans. And that was simply to provide enough alternative space.

The problem in west coast cities like Portland and Seattle and those in California is that the public policy around homelessness is completely dysfunctional. The city can't manage to build any homeless shelters without descending into a morass of bureaucracy. And they can't figure out how to provide public accommodations like camping areas inside the city, or parking areas for people living out of their cars. Which is how we have come to this current morass.

Other cities have managed to provide adequate homeless shelters and aren't affected by this sort of thing. For example, San Antonio. https://www.king5.com/article/news/loca ... -197477103

The answer for cities is clear. You want to roust homeless off the streets and out of the parks? Fine, then give them someplace else to go. I'm not sure why that should be controversial. It might cost money and be politically difficult. But it shouldn't be controversial.

[Josh]

So, do cities have to provide free camping sites to anyone who wants one?