I’m on the board of a restaurant in San Francisco. The restaurant has been astoundingly successful. I was a key founder many decades ago.
San Francisco has a minimum wage with no exception for tip based jobs. An average server in my restaurant can earn over $70,000 a year, two-thirds are from tips.
As the wage component has gone from $11 per hour to the current $13, the labor costs for the restaurant have risen $350,000. This wiped out the entire net earnings of the restaurant. The prices on the menu can’t be raised much. Not enough to compensate for the rise of the minimum wage.
The minimum by law goes to $14 next June and $15 the following year. My restaurant won’t survive. 55 people will be laid off, soon. A major park that depends on the restaurant rent will be in trouble.
Just because the San Francisco Board of Supervisors are all Democrats, union driven, none of whom have ever been in business.
The rest of my restaurant board are all Democrats. Nice people with no willingness to admit what a stupid idea they have accepted. Ideological hysteria. I warned them a year ago the consequences of the minimum wage. They have done nothing and are doing nothing now. I have to resign. I could save the restaurant with radical changes but that won’t happen.
Sad. But this same Democrat theology has destroyed many nations and could have destroyed America if Trump hadn’t come along and led the few Americans who could see the Democrat disaster on the horizon.
It is possible that the new Republican government could pass a law making the national minimum wage the only one. I see no movement in that direction.