I have been following this minimum wage debate loosely. There is a talk on NPR right now regarding the restaurant industry. I have to say I have mixed feelings about it. I used to deliver pizza in Boulder, Colorado for Blackjack. I worked for the store on Walnut. That was the best store to work for. Yes, I only got like 2.15/hr but I also got a delivery fee and because it was the only Blackjack store in town at the time we had a wide delivery area and since I worked closing shifts I never made less than $50 in tips and when there was a football game I sometimes came home with $150. For a college student, that was actually a nice windfall that I wouldnt have gotten had that income been made up for in actually wages. There are some for whom the restaurant industry is a temporary place in life. In my case I didnt want a real job because I wanted to focus on other things. Jobs like this allow some income while pursuing other avenues that are not immediately profitable. They can depending on the restaurant or bar provide a full time income on part time hours. A good example is the bar tending. In Austin, getting a bar tending job is difficult because everyone knows that on weekends you can come home with $200-$300 in a night depending on the venue. Some bar and restaurant owners have tried to control these tip windfalls by socializing tips and controlling who gets the shifts where money gets made. People like artists and musicians who work these jobs need these windfalls and it kind of sucks when the manager or the owner tries to curtail who gets them. One of the biggest costs the restauranteur has is real estate. High real estate prices are bad for most businesses as they eat up the majority of profits. On the other hand, why not just relieve the consumer of the burden of having to figure out the tip? Just make everyone pay the true cost of consumption. We often hear environmental groups chanting that we need to pay the true cost of driving. Rarely do we ever talk about the human cost of buying cheap goods or the cost of raw materials to make those goods. When I visited Australia, I went to a pub in Melbourne. I was told that I did not need to tip because the servers were all paid around $16-$18 per hour. Food is also markedly more expensive in Australia. This is in part due to the fact that Australia being the unproductive continent that it is has to import a great deal of goods. Australians are paid much more than Americans are but things also cost more. australians are also taxed more so the extra server pay probably doesnt equal that much more than in the states because it gets eaten up in taxes. Australia, however, from what I gathered gives its citizens much more for their taxes. They have better public transit. they actually have a health care system that works. There is a movement afoot to change this just there is global pressure on places like France and other European nations. This is because the global banking cartels cant operate the way they want to unless everyone is doing the same thing. Basically, communism doesnt work unless everyone is doing it. Capitalism doesnt work unless everyone participates. dont even get me started on the capitalism/socialism debate. In this country we have neither. We have what is called a mixed economy. What that means in terms of the American modus operandi is capitalism for a few and market discipline for everyone else. What is clear to me, is that the most pro business thing you can do is pay people well so they can buy your goods and services. If they cant afford to then you dont have a business. It is that simple. Sure you may be able to train Star Wars battle droids to deliver your pizza to cut cost, but in the end, battle droids dont eat pizza.....
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:57:40 +0000
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