Thursday, November 5, 2015

ECONOMIST Pizza Joints Are Doomed If New York Passes A $15 Minimum Wage



Conrad Wolf reports for Daily Caller:
Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Edmund J. McMahon warned Monday that a $15 minimum wage could kill pizza restaurants in New York state.

McMahon spoke at a panel discussion hosted by the Center for New York City Affairs. He argued the minimum wage debate is too focused on large corporations. While big companies are much more likely to absorb the higher wages, small businesses will struggle, which include a hallmark institution in New York state: pizzerias.


“Let me point out, most of the people employed in New York are employed by small firms,” McMahon said. “If this policy goes through, in five years the only place in upstate New York where you’ll be able to buy pizza is Domino’s, unless its Pizza Hut, because they have the marketing might, the capital to absorb it.”

3 comments:

  1. When I was a young 'un I was able to easily get work experience at a number of different jobs. Due to the increasing minimum wage, those opportunities are simply not available to today's yoots.

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    1. It's not just the minimum wage that affects youth unemployment. When I got my first "arms length" summer job in my early teens (I had done work for a family business by then) I had to get gov't issued "working papers", which involved numerous parental certifications and involved a physical exam by a doctor. On the job, there were many rules and restrictions on my employer about my hours worked, break times even the types of jobs I could do (no operaing food service slicers, ringing up transactions with alcohol, etc.). Even 30 years ago it was way easier for employers to bypass this BS by hiring foreign nationals on special work visas and illegals instead of local youths.

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    2. Now that you mention it, at the more menial jobs I had, many of my coworkers were Mexican. And this is going back quite a few decades. There was a minimum wage even back then, but it was routinely ignored. Today I own a small tech company with under ten people. I plan to never again hire an American worker again. Just too risky for a small business that is able to avoid it.

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