Posts Tagged ‘seattle’

The #Unexpectedly Chronicles Cause and Effect Seattle Edition

Posted: July 3, 2017 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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You might have missed these two stories in all the Trump Tweet stuff but you might want to remind yourself what we’re fighting against before you jump off the wagon.

Cause:

Seattle’s minimum-wage law is boosting wages for a range of low-paid workers, but the law is causing those workers as a group to lose hours, and it’s also costing jobs, according to the latest study on the measure passed by the City Council in 2014.

The report, by members of the University of Washington team studying the law’s impacts for the city of Seattle, is being published Monday as a working paper by a nonprofit think tank, the National Bureau of Economic Research.

That law raises Seattle’s minimum wage gradually until it reaches $15 for all by 2021.

Well in the face of that bad news Seattle decided that there could be only one effect

When a University of Washington study came out this week showing Seattle’s minimum wage has cost 5,000 jobs and is hurting low income workers, city leaders attacked the messenger –- a team of respected economists at Washington’s premiere public university.

The researchers, led by Jacob Vigdor, were hired by the city in 2014 to study the effects of Seattle’s $15 wage experiment. The contract called for five years of research. City officials stopped funding the UW team when they didn’t like the results.

“The moment we saw it was based on flawed methodology and was going to be unreliable, the Vigdor study no longer speaks for City Hall,” said Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant. 

So they’ve decided to fund a new study, meet the boss professor Michael Reich:

Reich is currently co-chair of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Before earning his PhD in economics from Harvard, Reich was a founding member of the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE), a group seeking a “human-centered radical alternative to capitalism,” according to its website.

Reich has authored several studies on the effects of raising the minimum wage. They all concluded that increasing the minimum wage only helps low-skilled workers.

And I’m sure that Professor Reich will dutifully produces numbers that the leftists in Seattle will find acceptable but will not actually change the reality on the ground…

…unexpectedly.

Bug vs Feature Seattle Edition

Posted: March 15, 2015 by datechguy in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

Yesterday I wrote about the effect of the $15 minimum wage is having on Restaurants in Seattle (no word on if Mika is taking up the Mikaburger challenge yet)

But it’s worth noting that even if the result of this minimum wage rise is the closure of business and the loss of jobs for hundreds of workers it’s still worthwhile for our friends on the left.

First of all small businessmen tend to trend toward the GOP so anything that hinders them naturally is an advantage to the left but consider the longterm effect.

As a general rule when you have hundreds of workers, all from the same industry suddenly out of work the glut of people with the same skills decreases the odds of finding a job in a similar field.  But if you are a low skill worker in a field that pays minimum wage you are now competing with every college student & high school student and other person who due to skill or circumstance can not hope to do better than minimum wage.

What does that add up to?  It adds up to public assistance, it adds up to food stamps and an increase in the state spending for the type of social programs that Democrats are constantly championing that somehow rarely manage to get said people off the dole.

And what do you get when you have hundreds of people and their families suddenly dependent on the government?  You have a ready supply of reliable votes for the Democrat cause.

And if said people fail to find any kind of work the party can even use them as activists, funding pseudo “groups” designed to get people out of the same dependence that their policies put them in.

All those people suddenly being out of work isn’t a bug for the left, it’s a feature.

The Mika Burger Challenge Seattle Edition

Posted: March 14, 2015 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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Regular readers of this blog know I’m a Morning Joe fan who for many years did his writing with their show in the background.

During that time we constantly saw Mika Brzezinski defend the protesters who insisted the Minimum wage should be raised to $15.  Here is one example:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

At the time I challenged her to open up her Mika Burger franchise and I repeat that challenge today.

Mika you and a group of your progressive friends should simply open up a restaurant, have a starting pay of $15 an hour for all workers and before you can say “franchise fee” Mikaburger franchise will be all over the country resulting not only a living wage for the workers but profit for Mika & her friends that can be used for all kinds of delightful progressive causes.

In fact I’d like to suggest that Seattle be the location for the first Mikaburger franchise, because I hear in that city there is a lot less competition than there used to be:

Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law goes into effect on April 1, 2015. As that date approaches, restaurants across the city are making the financial decision to close shop. The Washington Policy Center writes that “closings have occurred across the city, from Grub in the upscale Queen Anne Hill neighborhood, to Little Uncle in gritty Pioneer Square, to the Boat Street Cafe on Western Avenue near the waterfront.”

Of course, restaurants close for a variety of reasons. But, according to Seattle Magazine, the “impending minimum wage hike to $15 per hour” is playing a “major factor.” That’s not surprising, considering “about 36% of restaurant earnings go to paying labor costs.” Seattle Magazine,

“Washington Restaurant Association’s Anthony Anton puts it this way: “It’s not a political problem; it’s a math problem.”

Now one might think that such news might discourage Mika & people like her but it doesn’t matter if there is snark from Twitchy:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

To Hotair

McDonald’s has been experimenting with point of sale automation for taking orders and Applebee’s rolled out smart tablets at tables in multiple locations last year. The latter solution is the most interesting to me because it seems like the easiest for younger consumers to adapt to. Most of the people going out to eat in such places are already familiar with laptops, tablets and smart phones anyway. Having one waiting at the table which takes the place of not only the menu, but the waitress as well, isn’t going to come as much of a shock to the system.

To Quando.net

Welcome to the land of $17 dollar cheeseburger. And, as you can figure out fairly quickly, everything else will be more expensive too … which, of course, erodes the purchasing power of that $15 wage. More importantly, if you work for one of those establishments that is closing, your wage is $15 times zero hours, isn’t it?

These naysayers and their math are no match for the combined effects of the power of progressive thinking plus the bonus of a restaurant fronted by a liberal celebrity in a liberal city anxious to prove her right.

So Mika the field has been cleared, go boldly forward and prove us wrong!  It should be a cinch.

Shouldn’t it?

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