I am willing to bet that a significant chunk of New York State would love to separate from New York City. The progressive toxin is seeping out and percolating into State politics and legislation.
From PJ Media:
N.Y. Business Community Outraged by $15 Minimum Wage for Fast-Food Workers
“$15 was a crazy dream. Now it is reality,” Bill Lipton, the director of the New York Working Families Party, tweeted June 22 shortly after the New York’s Fast Food Wage Board recommended increasing the state’s minimum wage for fast-food workers.
Heather Briccetti, the president and CEO of the Business Council of New York State, and Melissa Fleischut, the executive director the New York State Restaurant Association, said Lipton’s dream is close to being their worst nightmare.
The proposal approved by the wage board would boost the minimum wage paid to fast-food workers in New York City, incrementally, to $15 an hour on Dec. 31, 2018. Fast-food employees in the rest of the state of New York would see $15 an hour on their paychecks by July 1, 2021.
The minimum wage in the state of New York is $8.75 and was scheduled to go up to $9 at the end of 2015.
Fortunately, there are some limits to where the wage hike will be implemented:
The Fast Food Wage Board’s decision would only apply to fast-food restaurant chains with at least 30 outlets. Fast-food service is defined as a restaurant where food and drinks are served at counters, and customers pay before taking the food to a table.
So only large chains. And the Governor is all in:
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) celebrated the minimum wage hike shortly after it was announced. He said it was “one of the really great days of my administration” — and, just as Briccetti warned, he said the wage board’s decision should seen as a harbinger of bigger paychecks for everyone earning the minimum wage.
“This is not the ending; it is just the beginning because we will not stop until we reach true economic justice and we raise the minimum wage for every worker in every job in this state,” said Cuomo.
A harbinger - otherwise known as the camel's nose under the tent.
It is ironic that since this cost increase is only being implemented at large chain restaurants, it is these businesses that have the deep pockets to develop food automation. Ordering kiosks and robotic burgers are here and being sold and installed. In fact, these people are failing to do their research - European nations had implemented high minimum wages over ten years ago and their restaurants are highly automated.
This story from the Daily Caller:
Panera Bread Will Replace Cashiers With Robots By 2016
Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich supports raising the minimum wage — and he has every reason to.
Panera’s 1,800 nationwide locations are at the forefront of modernizing the way customers experience fast food restaurants. As soon as 2016, the bread and pasta joint will have replaced all of their cashiers with kiosks.
Shaich, who donated $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund, told USA Today that the move is part of an effort to “never have a customer wait,” but there is growing evidence that as pressure to raise wages builds, employers will turn to wage-free robots to avoid dramatic payroll hikes.
Fast food establishments in European countries with high minimum wages have already begun to replace some of their workforce with automated employers.
All of McDonald’s locations in France, for example, have installed kiosks to substitute and supplement human employees. The kiosks have allowed McDonald’s to avoid some of the high payroll costs of dealing with France’s minimum wage, which currently sits at $12.22 an hour in U.S. dollars. The European country is also suffering from an unemployment rate of over 10 percent.
So automation is cost effective at $12.22/hour - it will become even more cost effective at $15.00. The accompanying high unemployment rate just goes without saying.
I am wondering if liberalism is a mental illness. John F. Kennedy was a liberal. He also knew how to run our great nation. Liberals these days are just plain stupid - they do not study their history, so many 'progressive' ideas that have already been tried and have failed.
