03/27/2015
There is a movement throughout the country to follow the West Coast (San Francisco and Seattle) lead for a minimum wage increase. Locally, in Massachusetts an incremental minimum wage hike started in 2015, going from $8 to $9, and will increase $1 per year through 2017 at which time it will be $11 per hour. I would not address the merits of such an increase, all Americans willing to work should be able to make a living wage, but more so the method. With inflation rates having dropped over the past few years to the point that 2015 is averaging negative thus far, the rate of increase cannot outpace the economy or everyone will suffer. Owners will be forced to make hard choices in order to survive. They can automate processes which take jobs or hours away from employees, they can increase prices respectively which will likely decrease traffic resulting in less income, or close the doors all together. More likely is a combination of efforts to prevent closure but the benefits of the wage increase would be limited to those employees who manage to survive this storm, many of which unfortunately will not.
A couple of days back I gleefully leapt on the story about restaurant closures in Seattle and the effects of that city's higher minimum wage. There has been a certain pushback from various people to that idea and we might now be able to raise this from a discussion to [...]
