Minimum Wage Woe

This week, a Chipotle in San Francisco got a taste of what happens when gov. interferes with Capitalism. After the city raised the minimum wage by 14%, the restaurant responded with an equal price hike, a teaching moment for well-intentioned but economically illiterate millennials.

Despite no discernable change in the food industry or the heavily subsidized soy and meat markets, the American Enterprise Institute reports that “San Francisco, however, saw across-the-board price increases averaging over 10%, including 10% increases on chicken, pork, tofu and vegetarian entrees along with a 14% increase on steak and barbacoa.”

While less established businesses struggle to maneuver an economy based on impulse, affording arbitrary wage hikes takes its casualties.

According to San Fran comic book shop owner, Brian Hibbs, “A $15-an-hour minimum wage will require a staggering $80,000 in extra revenue annually” because, though the gov. prints and devalues it daily, corporate money does not magically appear.

Rather than take the typical course of cutting employees, Chipotle passes the extra cost onto its customers, the same way most companies react to higher taxes.

$15 for folding burritos is not generous; it is downright illogical, a decadent culture putting dishwashers on par with doctors, choosing destructive gov. above creative enterprise.

So while hordes of Facebook and Tumblr users spout that “Capitalism has failed because it cannot support an adequate living wage for entry level workers,” they fail to realize three things.

1.) There is NO SUCH THING as minimum wage in a true Capitalist society, because companies and employees determine wages on their own. Supply and demand are what determines employment and profit. If you supply a skill a company demands, wage negotiation is dependent on how much each party is willing to accept and/or lose. Gov. is irrelevant.

2.) Jobs are dubbed “entry level” because you are not supposed to stick with and expect to raise a family on them; you get your foot in the door while building skills through that job or external education. The only variable keeping you in place is time, how much quicker than somebody you can get a patty to the plate or how long until your electronic replacement is enacted.

3.) “Living wage” is a subjective but often ironically bourgeois term. Does “living” mean endorsing the bare minimum [food, water, shelter for yourself and perhaps a child] or occasional luxuries [iPhone contracts, clubbing, Netflix membership or gaming consoles]? Either way, statists see increasing minimum wage as charitable while ignoring the consequences.

But charity does not come from the hand of gov. that has been dipping into its population’s pockets since inception. Charity comes without the threat of jail for not doling out enough of your earnings.

Charity comes from good will and will itself, things bare bones Capitalism offers through start-ups, incentives, possibilities, products and services otherwise not invented.

It is easy if not lazy to dehumanize corporations, paint them as fat cats to prop up the unskilled, but they are part of the same body. Both need money, suffer from stress, started from nothing.

There is not one without the other, but if one appendage goes lame—a discontent worker whose only job is to dish out rice—there are other legs to run on. If that employee was unhappy to begin with, they just earned the opportunity to find fulfillment elsewhere, thus weakening the alleged control that establishment had over them.

As Capitalism teaches, there are no windfalls without correction.