Local McDonald’s Is Ready for Minimum Wage Hikes

December 1, 2015 Leave a comment

The Alberta NDP wants to increase the minimum wage to $15, nearly a 50% increase over the old rate.

We know they want to do this not to help unskilled, low-wage workers, but rather to enrich their union friends.

Obviously such laws outlaw certain kinds of employment and create more unemployment than otherwise. They reduce jobs available for the poorest, least skilled workers.

The McDonald’s location by this writer’s office has prepared for the foolishness of the NDP’s economic fiat.

mcdonks kiosk

It’s important to note that McDonald’s currently pays its new regular workers more than the old minimum wage already… but they don’t pay more than forthcoming minimum wage. So they have to get ready.

At a certain price, it makes sense to replace people with machines. Why not? No payroll taxes, fewer regulations, no training, and a lot less hassle overall for the employer.

Now when you need a Big Mac combo, you get to interact with a screen instead of being greeted and served by a smiling teenager.

And since you spend all day working on your computer or fiddling with your smartphone, I’m sure you’re desperate to stare at more screens.

I guess the happy fast food worker is just another wonderful occupation being destroyed by the knavery of politicians.

Do you remember the glorious era when you would roll up to a gas station and a helpful fellow would come out, pump your gas, check your oil, and clean your windshield all while you sat comfortably in your car? The minimum wage destroyed the gas station attendant job.

Fewer jobs for unskilled workers, and less service for consumers.

Minimum wage is compulsory unemployment. But here’s the amazing thing:

Even minimum wage proponents know this.

Otherwise, why would they stop at $15 an hour? Why not $100 per hour? There should be no argument against this if we follow the logic that government can make workers wealthier with a stroke of the pen.

Governments only raise the minimum wage to the point where it hurts the marginal workers.

They would never raise it to the point that it hurts, say, white adult male workers with union seniority. Because the entire point of the NDP raising minimum wages is to help unions.

Let’s not forget Premier Notley is a lifelong union lawyer and her husband is an official with the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Notley’s government office even returns calls made to Arab’s cellphone). We know whose side they’re on.

Hint: It’s not the side of the nice, polite young teenager who wants to work at McDonalds to make a little bit of money but isn’t yet worth $15 an hour.

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Filed under Alberta, CMR, Labor, Regulation, Unions Tagged with , , , , ,

The Most Important Fact About April’s Employment Numbers

May 13, 2013 1 Comment

The unemployment rate for April was unchanged at 7.2%. Enough full-time jobs were added to keep the rate from rising. If you look at the mainstream headlines, most of them focus on the fact that the economy added 12,500 jobs.

Compared to March’s numbers — which were the worst since February 2009 — some might think, “Well, that’s pretty good! It’s nice that the rate didn’t go up.”

Actually, the numbers are quite awful. The new jobs were all in the public sector: 34,000 of them. The private sector lost 20,000 jobs.

The most important fact about April’s employment numbers is this: Fewer people are going into productive tax-paying work than non-productive tax-consuming work. These numbers imply a weakening economy. Government jobs must be paid for with private sector production.

The economy is down for about 13,000 net jobs for 2013 so far. If you look back since April 2012, there is job growth. Yet looking closer, we see that the government has added 94,000 jobs in that period year. Private sector jobs? Only 10,000.

It is important to understand that just “creating jobs” should not be a goal of policy. Any job is not inherently valuable. Instead, what matters is creating wealth.

The buying and not-buying of consumers normally determines what should be produced, but no one “buys” government services. Public sector jobs earn wages and that money gets spent in the economy, but the consumer does not voluntarily pay the government for the goods and services produced by these jobs. Therefore, it cannot be said that government jobs provide any economic value at all.

Practically speaking, this accounts for why all governments are characterized by incompetence, arrogance, inefficiency, carelessness, and poor service. Government jobs are just subsidies for production with no regard to the consumer.

For the past year, the parasite has been growing at the expense of a progressively weaker host. This cannot continue if we want to see a stronger Canadian economy.

— Read more at CBC.ca —

Filed under Bureaucracy, CMR, Economics, Employment Tagged with , , , , , ,

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