The fast food chains seem to have a bifurcated response. Some, like McDonalds, seem to have cut crew, while retaining relatively low prices, so service is generally quite poor now. Others, such as Chick-fil-A, raised their prices, and a plain chicken sandwich at my local franchise is now about $7.
Edit: In-N-Out Burger is the only one I can think of with low prices and good staffing. It is also privately owned
ec109685 · 4d ago
Chick-fil-A raised their prices everywhere, so it can’t just be because of this law:
“That's right: A year ago, in January of 2023, Chick-fil-A implemented a 6% price increase on all menu items. The previous year, their signature sandwich increased in price by 15%. That means your favorite chicken sandwich is now significantly pricier than it was just two years ago”
Compare restaurant price increases over the last 20 years to that of the overall economy. Or especially to something like housing.
Restaurants are currently incredibly cheap.
crooked-v · 4d ago
That's a bad comparison because the much more important factor is that housing is incredibly and disproportionately expensive right now, not becuase that's the 'natural' state of the economy, but because almost every major US city has made it expensive to build housing and impossible to build middle-density housing.
Or in other words, your 'cheapness' comparison is only against a self-inflicted artifical high point.
dismalaf · 4d ago
Ok, then compare it to grocery prices. Or other forms of entertainment like tickets to professional sporting events. Or concerts, movies.
Restaurants are cheap.
JumpCrisscross · 4d ago
> compare it to grocery prices
Do you have this comparison?
rascul · 3d ago
For the price of approximately three Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches I can make approximately 8 chicken sandwiches from WalMart with lesser quality ingredients and no labor/tax/insurance overhead. According to my drunken wish-i-had-a-napkin math.
kilroy123 · 4d ago
To be fair, In-N-Out is an outlier. Privately owned, non-franchised, and probably makes a profit on massive volume with likely very small margins.
pants2 · 4d ago
In N Out also has the smallest menu of any fast-food joint and has a very vertically integrated supply chain: They own their own meat production plants, cut their own potatoes into fries, operate their own bakeries etc.
bbarnett · 4d ago
McDonalds? Low pricing?!?!
georgeburdell · 4d ago
I avoid their trademarked items, such as the Big Mac, but even in California they have a robust value menu
dawnerd · 4d ago
Right they’re the most expensive fast food around me. They even got rid of their semi secret deals.
dymk · 4d ago
If you're savvy to the price discrimination. You have to use the app to get the lower prices.
Loughla · 4d ago
That's so ridiculous. The reason we would get McDonald's when we would get it was that it was fast, and cheap.
Now it's neither unless I give them access to my smartphone. No thank you.
pests · 4d ago
The app makes a huge difference. Constant BOGO4$1 McDoubles and mcchickens. 25% off entire order if you spend $10. Buy a drink get a free large fry. 10pc nuggets for 50 cents or just earlier got a large drink and 10 nuggets for $2.99.
Not using the app is getting ripped off.
You also don’t have to have the app. Just go inside and use the self serve kiosk and you get the same prices/deals.
muixoozie · 3d ago
Would be truly living in a dystopian sci-fi universe if this shit gets normalized to being ubiquitous. And that seems to be the direction we're heading. Gamification. Tiered access. Implicit Data harvesting. Loyalty rewards or getting "ripped off" for opting out. Mundane corporate control and manipulation embedded in everyday consumerism. Next up: Daily deal lottery. Unlock new flavor packets.. Predicted craving "flash deals"
fma · 3d ago
Yeah...unlike before where you clip coupons from your mailer or newspaper for tiered access, monopoly pieces for gamification/deal lottery.
dymk · 3d ago
Gets normalized? This has been the norm for a very long time. Almost all the fast food chains have something like this.
bbarnett · 2d ago
Indeed.
Which is why these coupons and deals aren't "McDonalds is actually still cheap!". Their non-coupon pricing has risen to absurd levels, and part of what made them tenable was their speed. They used to be basically instant, I'd drive through, or go in and have food in 2 minutes. (20 years ago)
And thus their coupon pricing is just as high, comparatively.
One should also bear in mind that a soda costs them under a penny, the straw costs more. And a bunch of cut up potatoes are barely pennies.
And now it can take 15 minutes to get food at some McDonalds, which is pure dumb. For their prices, I can get food in a real restaurant, and with their speed, a real burger just as fast now.
They are literally insanely expensive compared to 10/20 years ago, with much slower service, and less customer service.
changoplatanero · 4d ago
Hmm I saw a different analysis recently indicating that there was a large reduction in fast food jobs in California after the raise to $20/hr. Which one is right?
ec109685 · 4d ago
The first studies that came out failed to adjust for seasonality.
“Here’s the problem with that figure: It’s derived from a government statistic that is not seasonally adjusted. That’s crucial when tracking jobs in seasonal industries, such as restaurants, because their business and consequently employment fluctuate in predictable patterns through the year. For this reason, economists vastly prefer seasonally adjusted figures when plotting out employment trend lines in those industries.”
Those tables seem a bit... odd? Are we led to believe that between January and February, no fast food restaurants closed? Not a single one? And same for July and August?
Also, a gold star for prominently featuring the totals cumulatively, oooo scary number go up! I did the needful:
Unimportant detail: The prices in the image in the article are 48% lower than the prices at my local California In-n-Out.
digianarchist · 4d ago
That image is 11 years old
knowitnone · 4d ago
it is manipulative to show a picture that is not contexual. Would it be too hard to get a recent picture with recent prices?
vondur · 4d ago
I wouldn't call it a "small cost." Most fast food meals are at least $15 now. McDonald's just opened a new location here — no dine-in or counter service at all. It's partly because of crime, but also because they don’t need to hire as many people to maintain a dining area. On the bright side, I guess I’m eating out a lot less now.
toomuchtodo · 4d ago
Price went up ~1.5%. That is objectively a small cost.
> While menu prices did increase, costs rose by an average of just 1.5% –equivalent to about 6 cents on a $4 hamburger, down from the 15-cent increase reported in the September study.
McDonald's gross profit for the twelve months ending December 31, 2024 was $14.710B.
Not I'm my area.I've seen combos that used to be $8 are now $10 or more. I was pleasantly surprised that Del Taco released a new box combo that's only $5.99.
robomartin · 4d ago
This article is a complete fabrication. Jobs have been lost. Businesses have seen a reduction in sales due to having to raise prices. People don't tip at all now or tip very little. Full time jobs are shifted to be part time. Etc.
As is always the case with these policies, the people who were promised better outcomes are the ones who suffer. Everything is more expensive. On top of that, CA has a fetish with taxation, which means your $20 per hour likely has the buying power you had when you were earning $10, if not less. We pay nearly $5 per gallon for gasoline when, in other parts of the nation the prices are around $2.50. It's all taxes and over-regulation. Insurance (car and home) is crazy expensive. Everything is expensive.
I am not sure how far we are from what I've been calling a "Javier Milei" moment in CA. The moment when the population finally suffered enough to understand reality and put people in office who will actually do what they are supposed to do.
New one: They are pushing for a mileage tax on vehicles. The excuse is that revenues have come down due to electrics. This is a lie. Only about 5% of the vehicles in CA are EV's. Furthermore, the road maintenance taxes we pay on fuel have AUTOMATIC annual increases built in. And yet, I have been to third world countries who's road are better maintained than in CA. It's truly embarrassing and criminal. The money is being diverted to things other than road maintenance.
In short, this article is completely disconnected to reality on the ground.
casey2 · 3d ago
Why do you go on the internet at lie? Anybody can look up fast food employement rates in california and see that you are just bullshiting. California has more fast food jobs now than at any point in it's history. Mcdonalds has already recovered from it's fool's day blip.
I just don't understand why Americans want a race to the bottom on their food/food service quality. Apparently at the expense of growth.
robomartin · 3d ago
> Why do you go on the internet at lie? Anybody can look up fast food employement rates in california and see that you are just bullshiting.
Why do you post such a reply without making any effort whatsoever to check the references I provided and engaging in a modicum of critical thinking.
I purposely provided left-leaning references just to be sure there was no room for anyone to claim the source might be biased. The SEIU and BLS are two such organization, and I provided reports from both of them.
I apologize my being aggressive. I am just sick and tired of the ignorant, stupid culture we seem to have developed.
Anyone --ANYONE-- who has run a non-trivial business fully understands how FORCING a massive increase in business inputs has consequences, which rarely are good. This is one such cases.
Politicians sell a higher minimum wage to the ignorant masses as a solution to their problems. The ignorant masses vote for them. Minimum wage is artificially forced upwards. They loose their jobs, earn less money, costs of goods go up, they are replaced with automation, outsourced or replaced by illegal immigrants paid cash under the table (less than minimum wage, of course).
We are in desperate need of education in this country. Our voters have become useful idiots.
I often find it interesting to see what gets flagged and downvoted or characterized as rude on various platforms, including here on HN.
Saying somethings is "ignorant" or "stupid" is deemed a negative, when, on the other side, what is being said is in a range between lies and outright dumb and uninformed. This is particularly egregious when it is accompanied by no obvious effort to investigate and understand before making a comment.
It is fine to challenge anything anyone says, of course. The way you do it is, to, for example, ask a question: "I don't think I agree, what evidence can you provide?" or "Can you clarify your position?", etc.
The Biden situation is a perfect example of this. Half the country was screaming about his mental decline and beyond obvious incapacity. How did that half of the country get treated? They were insulted and attacked from every angle. What was the truth? The president was senile and incapacitated, likely since almost his first days in office. So, what is more obscene and rude? To tell someone who is uninformed, ignorant and who refuses to look at reality that they are, in fact, uninformed and ignorant, or for that person to continue to support lies and attack anyone who tries to highlight the truth?
Another way to put it is the intellectually lazy and uninformed actually do damage to society. They are led by the nose for the benefit of political and other forces. And that's why they are sometimes referred to as "useful idiots". At some point calling them out for what they are cannot be considered to be more obscene than the damage they cause society.
kragen · 11h ago
Your [dead] comment begins, "Downvoters: You are ignorant and lazy. Do some research and use your brains!"
While arguably courtesy does demand that commenters use their brains and make an effort to investigate and understand (because the alternative is polluting the discussion with bullshit), being ignorant, dumb, or uninformed is not rude, since only voluntary actions can be rude. Accusing people of being ignorant and lazy and not using their brains, however, is rude. I'll be surprised if you can find any social circle where that's false; at most, respected members of a group are permitted to criticize lower-status people in such a way, but not vice versa.
It's rude for five different reasons:
1. It replaces a critique of a particular claim with a criticism of the person making the claim, which not only directly harms the clarity of the discussion (because it's not clear which claim you're disagreeing with) but also tends to provoke ego-defense responses from the person being criticized. In fact, such criticisms are far more common as a means to intentionally offend the person being criticized than as a disinterested evaluation of their competence.
2. It's implicitly boasting, because in order to judge how informed or intelligent someone else is, you need to be very well informed indeed about the area they're commenting on. Even if you are in fact very well informed (which you have not always been when you've made such comments in the past; for example, in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43431287 commenting on solar hot water heating, in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42519616 commenting on atmospheric carbon capture, and in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42424685 commenting on solar panel lifetimes) it is considered rude in most cultures to talk about how great you are. For example, you may notice at this very moment that you are getting annoyed at me for doing that myself.
3. It tends to foster Twitter-style partisan debate rather than curious open-minded inquiry, because now that you've put your status on the line as well as your interlocutor's, anyone else commenting on the factual aspects of the issue will be read as attacking at least one of you and possibly both. Not only does it make it harder for them to admit they were wrong; it also makes it harder for you to admit that you were wrong. I note that in none of the three threads I linked in my last point where I corrected you on fairly cut-and-dried factual issues did you ever publicly admit you were wrong, and in one case you went on to repost the same misinformation in another thread later, and I had to correct you again, so you hadn't even admitted it to yourself. (I note with approval, however, that you apparently haven't reposted it in months.)
4. Sometimes your judgment of your interlocutor is mistaken, so it just adds more misinformation to a discussion already swimming in misinformation. For example, sometimes your interlocutor is well-informed but has different information than you have, or they're very intelligent but made a rare misjudgment in the discussion in question, or is actually correct.
5. Like your digressions about Biden, both the boasting and the criticism of the person are irrelevant to the discussion—even ignorant, lazy, dumb people often say true things, even if only by chance, and even very well informed, industrious, brilliant people sometimes say false ones. In many contexts, though not all, bringing up irrelevant points is considered rude.
It's unfortunate that you phrased your comment on the minimum wage in this way, because you presented extremely informative evidence demonstrating the falsity of a widespread point of view. That's useless to people who already agree with you, but the people to whom it could be of most service—those who are mistaken—will have a harder time receiving it when it starts by attacking their egos. By "calling them out for what they are", you are not reducing the damage they do to society; you are increasing it.
I'd like to urge you to attempt to comment more civilly and less arrogantly in the future.
s1artibartfast · 3d ago
>Why do you go on the internet at lie? Anybody can look up fast food employement rates in california and see that you are just bullshiting.
genuinely looking for a Source?
On BLS I see see California employment numbers are down.
At $20, you'd earn a roughly $40k salary if you were to work full-time. That won't buy you a house, but it will let you rent a room in a house within commuting distance from your place of work, maybe drive an old beater Camry, cook your own food, and have some money saved up for school.
Why not $50, that's a $100k salary - most people would be opposed to it because you'd be able to potentially afford much more than what they perceive a fast food worker should be able to afford.
bigtex · 4d ago
Do we have logic behind why they chose $20 and not $50?
nine_k · 4d ago
You pay $7 for a burger now? Why not $15?
I mean, if the customers won't mind, and agreed to pay much more, the wages could also grow much more.
casey2 · 3d ago
Why are you pulling random numbers out of your ass?
If a worker makes 60 burgers in an hour and they are paid $20/hr then that adds 33 cents to the price of a burger that assembles itself. If they are paid $50/hr then 83 cents.
Math isn't hard and politics poisoned your brain.
upsuper · 3d ago
Except it is hard to imagine there to be enough demand all the time to sustain this for every hour they work, and even in case there is, they would be happy busy making so many burgers for maybe eight hours in a row each day. And let's not ignore that making food is also not the only work for those working in a restaurant.
greenchair · 4d ago
Yeah, no. My restaurant owner friend said during <he who shall not be named> crazy inflation when complaining about skyrocketing food costs: "theres only so much money people are willing to spend for a salad".
Also why is axios' article format so demeaning? The info is presented like it is written for 3rd graders.
>On Tuesday, the industry released its own impact study, conducted by the Berkeley Research Group, a private consulting firm. It found that wage increases have reduced fast food employment, shortened the hours worked, compelled fast food franchises to use more automation and resulted in markedly higher consumer prices.
standardUser · 4d ago
An industry report by a private consulting firm that overwhelmingly supports the position of the industry funding the report is not fascinating to me. It's obligatory propaganda. The absence of it would be fascinating.
hnburnsy · 4d ago
Do you think the "Institute for Research on Labor and Employment" at Berkley is without biases? I would argue that the Berkley study showing positive results is flawed on wage evaluation as it uses data from Glassdoor. IMO, Glassdoor is not reliable.
standardUser · 4d ago
> Do you think the "Institute for Research on Labor and Employment" at Berkley is without biases?
No, did I state or imply that? A private organization was paid by an industry to produce a report, and that report overwhelming supports the industry that paid for the report. How do weigh such data in your own decision-making? I give data from a public university, produced by individuals we could email right now if we wanted, individuals who presumably have reputations and career trajectories, a pretty hefty weight. Not above suspicion and not devoid of bias, but worth parsing. Is an industry report, by the industry for the industry, really worth parsing to you?
free_bip · 4d ago
Any study done by an industry, for said industry, is necessarily rife with large, obvious conflicts of interest. It's barely worth considering.
db48x · 4d ago
If you think the study has flaws, point them out. Otherwise your argument is just ad hominem.
MilnerRoute · 4d ago
The linked-to article actually starts with the case for the wage increase. (The HN comment only quotes the one industry-funded study, which appears much further down.) From the article:
"We find that the policy increased average hourly pay by a remarkable 18 percent, and yet it did not reduce employment,” a study by the UC Berkeley Institute for Research and Labor Employment concluded. “The policy increased prices about 3.7 percent, or about 15 cents on a $4 hamburger (on a one-time basis), contrary to industry claims of larger increases."
This is one of those situations where everyone seems to see what they want to see. (The article notes that "Both pro and con studies used roughly the same employment data generated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency does not collect specific data on the fast food chains affected by the minimum wage legislation, so the rival researchers had to extrapolate what they contend are valid statistical bases... without some reliable data on effects, everyone involved is shooting in the dark. It will be politics, rather than fact, which governs the outcomes.")
Well obviously a study funded by the industry has zero value. They conclude what they are paid to.
The industry does price segmentation now, so it’s hard to measure the prices anyway. If you order two egg McMuffins and two coffees at the counter in my city, it’s $13. With the app… $8.
Im in California a few times a year. The prices if different are very marginally so.
Rebelgecko · 4d ago
The McDonalds I've been to in California don't even have a person to take your order any more (small sample size fwiw). Is that universal now?
ec109685 · 4d ago
Did the study compare automation and hours worked between franchises across states?
E.g. if California restaurants automated, but Texas ones did not, then you can attribute it to policy differences. Otherwise, it’s just guessing why restaurants took these measures.
mindslight · 4d ago
> wage increases have reduced fast food employment, shortened the hours worked, compelled fast food franchises to use more automation
This sounds like all around progress to me. As always, the trick is getting the political will to take care of those displaced by progress rather than stiffing them with hard knocks until their resentment builds into support for more destructive policies like the current Great Leap Backwards.
twoodfin · 4d ago
Historically, it’s more efficient and less of a constraint on growth to take care of those people directly via transfer payments (tax & spend) than by turning over otherwise ordinary business decisions to bureaucracy like the “California Fast Food Council”.
JumpCrisscross · 4d ago
Do you have a link to the industry study? I don't have a personal Dropbox [1] and don't want to use my work login.
> It found that wage increases have reduced fast food employment, shortened the hours worked, compelled fast food franchises to use more automation
The wage increase is the agent here? More correct to say that owners did these things in response.
qcic · 4d ago
Potato - potato. Doesn’t really matter that it was a response, the chain of events is still the same, so are the results. It the end of the day, just one more example of unintended consequences of legislation.
Spooky23 · 4d ago
Labor is just one part of it. Increasing the wage 15% at worst pulled forward the transition to automation.
Automating the order flow avoids even higher wages for good English speakers and kiosks drive higher margin via up sales. Automation of drink pouring reduces shrink. Eliminating cash reduces cash handling expenses and reduces refunds.
I have a friend who owns a few McDonalds in a high expense state. He bitches about marketing expense share and supply cost.
yellowapple · 4d ago
> the chain of events is still the same
Ignoring the link in that chain wherein corporations chose to take various unnecessary and punative measures as retaliation against having to pay their workers more is intellectually dishonest, at best.
db48x · 4d ago
Laying people off to stay profitable is not punitive. It’s not desirable to be laid off, but the business isn’t punishing them.
yellowapple · 3d ago
Laying people off when you don't need to do so to stay profitable, however, is absolutely punitive. The restaurant industry's margins may be thin, but they ain't that thin - and I can guarantee you there's plenty fat to be trimmed from the managerial and executive pay structures long before needing to sack the minimum-wage employees.
The owner of a restaurant who lays off waiters in order to spend less on salaries is not punishing the waiters. Nobody thinks that the waiters have broken any rules. The definition of “punitive” is that it is a punishment for breaking the rules. The waiters might think it’s unfair or niggardly, of course, but that’s not what “punitive” means. Pick a more appropriate word.
yellowapple · 12h ago
> The owner of a restaurant who lays off waiters in order to spend less on salaries is not punishing the waiters.
It's punishment for demanding better pay. That makes it punitive, whether the mechanism for negotiating that better pay is "we voted for (people who will vote for) a minimum wage increase" or "we formed a union so we can collectively bargain for a wage increase" or what have you.
> Pick a more appropriate word.
Okay, then:
- Retaliatory
- Self-serving
- Douchebaggish
Do those work better for you? Or are you going to find some other excuse to nitpick and distract from the core issue of employers being full of shit when they blame wage increases for "needing" to lay people off?
pbh101 · 4d ago
One is a trigger to an otherwise steady-state dynamic system. I don’t think unreasonable to ask what effect a policy change had, net all the choices each agent has and takes in response to the change.
Justin_K · 4d ago
People said the same when factory automation came about. Wouldn't you agree that it's silly to pay a human to press the buttons you verbalize?
Difwif · 4d ago
It's a completely unsurprising cause and effect. What other outcome would you expect?
This is a business functioning as it should.
yellowapple · 4d ago
In what way is that article "better"?
zeroonetwothree · 4d ago
It reports on the potential bias of studies and mentions there are multiple rival ones?
llmguy · 4d ago
2 things can be true
1) Investors might earn too much return on their investment and wage inequality is high.
2) This study ignores downstream effects that result from the lower returns for ongoing/new investment. Since they’re now paying more for labor and selling less, new investment and upkeep has a lower return. Less store upgrades less new restaurants less expansion and so on. In the short term though, of course wage growth (inflation) feels good.
hayst4ck · 4d ago
I don't accept this at face value. I'm open to this line of reasoning, but can you prove it or provide evidence that there's something to it?
I also think there is a counter point that now fast food laborers have more money to spend on fast food or other businesses that provide goods or services that help grow the economy.
The more I think about it, the more it sounds like you are defending trickle down economics, which is literally a turd of a theory... It's other name is Horse and Sparrow economics. If the horse eats enough oats, then sparrows can survive of its droppings.
llmguy · 4d ago
I think if you're looking for proof you're setting too high a standard. But Seattle's experiment hasn't gone well AFAIK. Higher wages = less hours to go around = less money, less economic output, less investment, and so on.
"Relative to outlying regions of the state identified by the synthetic control method, aggregate employment at wages less than twice the original minimum—measured by total hours worked—declined."
On the other hand, taxing restaraunts with unhealthy food and forcing that money to go to low income workers maybe isn't so bad. I think NYC taxes soda directly for instance. Imagine if they forced that money to go to workers.
worik · 4d ago
That was my first thought, too. This is being paid for by reduced profit
Edit: In-N-Out Burger is the only one I can think of with low prices and good staffing. It is also privately owned
“That's right: A year ago, in January of 2023, Chick-fil-A implemented a 6% price increase on all menu items. The previous year, their signature sandwich increased in price by 15%. That means your favorite chicken sandwich is now significantly pricier than it was just two years ago”
https://www.shefinds.com/collections/chick-fil-a-inflation/
Restaurants are currently incredibly cheap.
Or in other words, your 'cheapness' comparison is only against a self-inflicted artifical high point.
Restaurants are cheap.
Do you have this comparison?
Now it's neither unless I give them access to my smartphone. No thank you.
Not using the app is getting ripped off.
You also don’t have to have the app. Just go inside and use the self serve kiosk and you get the same prices/deals.
Which is why these coupons and deals aren't "McDonalds is actually still cheap!". Their non-coupon pricing has risen to absurd levels, and part of what made them tenable was their speed. They used to be basically instant, I'd drive through, or go in and have food in 2 minutes. (20 years ago)
And thus their coupon pricing is just as high, comparatively.
One should also bear in mind that a soda costs them under a penny, the straw costs more. And a bunch of cut up potatoes are barely pennies.
And now it can take 15 minutes to get food at some McDonalds, which is pure dumb. For their prices, I can get food in a real restaurant, and with their speed, a real burger just as fast now.
They are literally insanely expensive compared to 10/20 years ago, with much slower service, and less customer service.
“Here’s the problem with that figure: It’s derived from a government statistic that is not seasonally adjusted. That’s crucial when tracking jobs in seasonal industries, such as restaurants, because their business and consequently employment fluctuate in predictable patterns through the year. For this reason, economists vastly prefer seasonally adjusted figures when plotting out employment trend lines in those industries.”
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-06-12/the-fast-f...
Also, a gold star for prominently featuring the totals cumulatively, oooo scary number go up! I did the needful:
https://i.imgur.com/OziGDLg.png
> While menu prices did increase, costs rose by an average of just 1.5% –equivalent to about 6 cents on a $4 hamburger, down from the 15-cent increase reported in the September study.
McDonald's gross profit for the twelve months ending December 31, 2024 was $14.710B.
https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-stories/article/...
As is always the case with these policies, the people who were promised better outcomes are the ones who suffer. Everything is more expensive. On top of that, CA has a fetish with taxation, which means your $20 per hour likely has the buying power you had when you were earning $10, if not less. We pay nearly $5 per gallon for gasoline when, in other parts of the nation the prices are around $2.50. It's all taxes and over-regulation. Insurance (car and home) is crazy expensive. Everything is expensive.
I am not sure how far we are from what I've been calling a "Javier Milei" moment in CA. The moment when the population finally suffered enough to understand reality and put people in office who will actually do what they are supposed to do.
New one: They are pushing for a mileage tax on vehicles. The excuse is that revenues have come down due to electrics. This is a lie. Only about 5% of the vehicles in CA are EV's. Furthermore, the road maintenance taxes we pay on fuel have AUTOMATIC annual increases built in. And yet, I have been to third world countries who's road are better maintained than in CA. It's truly embarrassing and criminal. The money is being diverted to things other than road maintenance.
In short, this article is completely disconnected to reality on the ground.
I just don't understand why Americans want a race to the bottom on their food/food service quality. Apparently at the expense of growth.
Why do you post such a reply without making any effort whatsoever to check the references I provided and engaging in a modicum of critical thinking.
I purposely provided left-leaning references just to be sure there was no room for anyone to claim the source might be biased. The SEIU and BLS are two such organization, and I provided reports from both of them.
I apologize my being aggressive. I am just sick and tired of the ignorant, stupid culture we seem to have developed.
Anyone --ANYONE-- who has run a non-trivial business fully understands how FORCING a massive increase in business inputs has consequences, which rarely are good. This is one such cases.
Politicians sell a higher minimum wage to the ignorant masses as a solution to their problems. The ignorant masses vote for them. Minimum wage is artificially forced upwards. They loose their jobs, earn less money, costs of goods go up, they are replaced with automation, outsourced or replaced by illegal immigrants paid cash under the table (less than minimum wage, of course).
We are in desperate need of education in this country. Our voters have become useful idiots.
Saying somethings is "ignorant" or "stupid" is deemed a negative, when, on the other side, what is being said is in a range between lies and outright dumb and uninformed. This is particularly egregious when it is accompanied by no obvious effort to investigate and understand before making a comment.
It is fine to challenge anything anyone says, of course. The way you do it is, to, for example, ask a question: "I don't think I agree, what evidence can you provide?" or "Can you clarify your position?", etc.
The Biden situation is a perfect example of this. Half the country was screaming about his mental decline and beyond obvious incapacity. How did that half of the country get treated? They were insulted and attacked from every angle. What was the truth? The president was senile and incapacitated, likely since almost his first days in office. So, what is more obscene and rude? To tell someone who is uninformed, ignorant and who refuses to look at reality that they are, in fact, uninformed and ignorant, or for that person to continue to support lies and attack anyone who tries to highlight the truth?
Another way to put it is the intellectually lazy and uninformed actually do damage to society. They are led by the nose for the benefit of political and other forces. And that's why they are sometimes referred to as "useful idiots". At some point calling them out for what they are cannot be considered to be more obscene than the damage they cause society.
While arguably courtesy does demand that commenters use their brains and make an effort to investigate and understand (because the alternative is polluting the discussion with bullshit), being ignorant, dumb, or uninformed is not rude, since only voluntary actions can be rude. Accusing people of being ignorant and lazy and not using their brains, however, is rude. I'll be surprised if you can find any social circle where that's false; at most, respected members of a group are permitted to criticize lower-status people in such a way, but not vice versa.
It's rude for five different reasons:
1. It replaces a critique of a particular claim with a criticism of the person making the claim, which not only directly harms the clarity of the discussion (because it's not clear which claim you're disagreeing with) but also tends to provoke ego-defense responses from the person being criticized. In fact, such criticisms are far more common as a means to intentionally offend the person being criticized than as a disinterested evaluation of their competence.
2. It's implicitly boasting, because in order to judge how informed or intelligent someone else is, you need to be very well informed indeed about the area they're commenting on. Even if you are in fact very well informed (which you have not always been when you've made such comments in the past; for example, in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43431287 commenting on solar hot water heating, in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42519616 commenting on atmospheric carbon capture, and in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42424685 commenting on solar panel lifetimes) it is considered rude in most cultures to talk about how great you are. For example, you may notice at this very moment that you are getting annoyed at me for doing that myself.
3. It tends to foster Twitter-style partisan debate rather than curious open-minded inquiry, because now that you've put your status on the line as well as your interlocutor's, anyone else commenting on the factual aspects of the issue will be read as attacking at least one of you and possibly both. Not only does it make it harder for them to admit they were wrong; it also makes it harder for you to admit that you were wrong. I note that in none of the three threads I linked in my last point where I corrected you on fairly cut-and-dried factual issues did you ever publicly admit you were wrong, and in one case you went on to repost the same misinformation in another thread later, and I had to correct you again, so you hadn't even admitted it to yourself. (I note with approval, however, that you apparently haven't reposted it in months.)
4. Sometimes your judgment of your interlocutor is mistaken, so it just adds more misinformation to a discussion already swimming in misinformation. For example, sometimes your interlocutor is well-informed but has different information than you have, or they're very intelligent but made a rare misjudgment in the discussion in question, or is actually correct.
5. Like your digressions about Biden, both the boasting and the criticism of the person are irrelevant to the discussion—even ignorant, lazy, dumb people often say true things, even if only by chance, and even very well informed, industrious, brilliant people sometimes say false ones. In many contexts, though not all, bringing up irrelevant points is considered rude.
It's unfortunate that you phrased your comment on the minimum wage in this way, because you presented extremely informative evidence demonstrating the falsity of a widespread point of view. That's useless to people who already agree with you, but the people to whom it could be of most service—those who are mistaken—will have a harder time receiving it when it starts by attacking their egos. By "calling them out for what they are", you are not reducing the damage they do to society; you are increasing it.
I'd like to urge you to attempt to comment more civilly and less arrogantly in the future.
genuinely looking for a Source?
On BLS I see see California employment numbers are down.
https://data.bls.gov/cew/apps/table_maker/v4/table_maker.htm...
Why not $50, that's a $100k salary - most people would be opposed to it because you'd be able to potentially afford much more than what they perceive a fast food worker should be able to afford.
I mean, if the customers won't mind, and agreed to pay much more, the wages could also grow much more.
Math isn't hard and politics poisoned your brain.
Also why is axios' article format so demeaning? The info is presented like it is written for 3rd graders.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/02/fast-food-minimum-...
>On Tuesday, the industry released its own impact study, conducted by the Berkeley Research Group, a private consulting firm. It found that wage increases have reduced fast food employment, shortened the hours worked, compelled fast food franchises to use more automation and resulted in markedly higher consumer prices.
No, did I state or imply that? A private organization was paid by an industry to produce a report, and that report overwhelming supports the industry that paid for the report. How do weigh such data in your own decision-making? I give data from a public university, produced by individuals we could email right now if we wanted, individuals who presumably have reputations and career trajectories, a pretty hefty weight. Not above suspicion and not devoid of bias, but worth parsing. Is an industry report, by the industry for the industry, really worth parsing to you?
"We find that the policy increased average hourly pay by a remarkable 18 percent, and yet it did not reduce employment,” a study by the UC Berkeley Institute for Research and Labor Employment concluded. “The policy increased prices about 3.7 percent, or about 15 cents on a $4 hamburger (on a one-time basis), contrary to industry claims of larger increases."
This is one of those situations where everyone seems to see what they want to see. (The article notes that "Both pro and con studies used roughly the same employment data generated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency does not collect specific data on the fast food chains affected by the minimum wage legislation, so the rival researchers had to extrapolate what they contend are valid statistical bases... without some reliable data on effects, everyone involved is shooting in the dark. It will be politics, rather than fact, which governs the outcomes.")
The industry does price segmentation now, so it’s hard to measure the prices anyway. If you order two egg McMuffins and two coffees at the counter in my city, it’s $13. With the app… $8.
Im in California a few times a year. The prices if different are very marginally so.
E.g. if California restaurants automated, but Texas ones did not, then you can attribute it to policy differences. Otherwise, it’s just guessing why restaurants took these measures.
This sounds like all around progress to me. As always, the trick is getting the political will to take care of those displaced by progress rather than stiffing them with hard knocks until their resentment builds into support for more destructive policies like the current Great Leap Backwards.
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qwllx1iv8q1ecudz6z59v/BRG_Imp...
https://epionline.org/release/new-data-staggering-16000-jobs...
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/08/20/icymi-after-raising-minimu...
The wage increase is the agent here? More correct to say that owners did these things in response.
Automating the order flow avoids even higher wages for good English speakers and kiosks drive higher margin via up sales. Automation of drink pouring reduces shrink. Eliminating cash reduces cash handling expenses and reduces refunds.
I have a friend who owns a few McDonalds in a high expense state. He bitches about marketing expense share and supply cost.
Ignoring the link in that chain wherein corporations chose to take various unnecessary and punative measures as retaliation against having to pay their workers more is intellectually dishonest, at best.
The owner of a restaurant who lays off waiters in order to spend less on salaries is not punishing the waiters. Nobody thinks that the waiters have broken any rules. The definition of “punitive” is that it is a punishment for breaking the rules. The waiters might think it’s unfair or niggardly, of course, but that’s not what “punitive” means. Pick a more appropriate word.
It's punishment for demanding better pay. That makes it punitive, whether the mechanism for negotiating that better pay is "we voted for (people who will vote for) a minimum wage increase" or "we formed a union so we can collectively bargain for a wage increase" or what have you.
> Pick a more appropriate word.
Okay, then:
- Retaliatory
- Self-serving
- Douchebaggish
Do those work better for you? Or are you going to find some other excuse to nitpick and distract from the core issue of employers being full of shit when they blame wage increases for "needing" to lay people off?
This is a business functioning as it should.
1) Investors might earn too much return on their investment and wage inequality is high.
2) This study ignores downstream effects that result from the lower returns for ongoing/new investment. Since they’re now paying more for labor and selling less, new investment and upkeep has a lower return. Less store upgrades less new restaurants less expansion and so on. In the short term though, of course wage growth (inflation) feels good.
I also think there is a counter point that now fast food laborers have more money to spend on fast food or other businesses that provide goods or services that help grow the economy.
The more I think about it, the more it sounds like you are defending trickle down economics, which is literally a turd of a theory... It's other name is Horse and Sparrow economics. If the horse eats enough oats, then sparrows can survive of its droppings.
https://evans.uw.edu/faculty-research/the-minimum-wage-study... https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20180578
"Relative to outlying regions of the state identified by the synthetic control method, aggregate employment at wages less than twice the original minimum—measured by total hours worked—declined."
On the other hand, taxing restaraunts with unhealthy food and forcing that money to go to low income workers maybe isn't so bad. I think NYC taxes soda directly for instance. Imagine if they forced that money to go to workers.
Good
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