Minimum Wage, Again

As predicted, minimum wage workers actually made less money as the minimum wage in Seattle jumped to $13. The obvious reason being that they were given fewer hours to work to offset the increased business expense due to higher wage law. But it will get worse for the "professional minimum wager" when all the orders are taken by kiosks and the burgers are flipped and assembled by drones. Automated floor polishers and toilet scrubbers will replace most of them, and the automation of burger joints will be a metaphor for other industries as well. If cars can drive themselves through complex city traffic and configurations, then automatons can build houses, high rises and burger joint kiosks, just from engineering instructions.

But the minimum wagers will likely continue to protest at burger joints, but no one will be inside except customers and the occasional electronic technician. They will discover that the actual minimum wage is $0. And unemployment payout doesn't last forever.

Minimum Wage, And Those Left Out By The Left

Want to increase income inequality? Raise the minimum wage

"Undeterred, Cuomo turned to an unelected wage board to increase the minimum hourly wage for only fast food workers to $15.00. This increase will be fully phased in by 2018 for New York City and 2021 for the rest of the state.

Despite Cuomo's undemocratic and arbitrary tactics, it is no surprise that increasing the minimum wage is popular with the public. Anyone with a heart wants their fellow Americans to earn more. People also understand that supporting a family on $9.00 an hour is unbelievably difficult.

But supporting a family without a job is even harder. And, thankfully, poor families are not the norm when it comes to minimum wage workers. Over half of the 3 percent of American workers who earn the minimum wage are between 16 and 24 years old. Two-thirds work only part-time.

Minimum wage jobs are not careers. They provide critical work experience that school simply cannot teach for those who haven't worked before. If young people cannot get their first jobs, they cannot get their second or their third jobs.

While some workers will get a raise if the minimum wage is increased, this will come at the expense of cutting off opportunity for the young. Unsurprisingly, because the minimum wage makes it effectively illegal for employers to hire the least-skilled workers, the unemployment rates for teens in high-minimum wage states are higher than those in low-minimum wage states. The real minimum wage is $0 an hour, because employers always have the choice to let employees go, or not hire them at all."

In the age of robotics, employees are not so critical to a business such as fast food. And those chains large enough to automate will kill off lesser competition which has to pay $15 to employees.

And with the real minimum wage being $0, the ratio of inequality is actually $15/$0 = infinity.

When decisions are made based on a flawed narrative rather than (common sense)*(resources), the outcome will predictably be disastrous. Businesses will compensate with unforseen consequences, at least unforseen by the flawed Leftist narrative. Or perhaps they are intended, possibly as part of the ongoing inflation needed by the Left to accommodate their rampant spending, cash for power.