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- Worst hotel view ever.
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- How SeaTac’s $15 minimum wage is doing. Despite the naysayers, I tend to think that where there is large immovable capital investment and a fixed customer whose attention can’t readily be drawn elsewhere, a plan like this can work. But there will be unanticipated adjustments… and it isn’t always the same workers who get paid more, the airport will attract more skilled workers and we’ll see some adjustments to how work gets performed.
- Oh, and, uh, Happy Father’s Day.
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The only problem with the $15 minimum wage in Seattle is the fact that there is really nothing to sell anymore. Layoffs will happen, and worse, less people will use SeaTac. I certainly have. In the past when gas was $1.50/gallon and products (i.e.: physical objects) were being sold and negotiated, I would fly in, drive to Portland, go to Vancouver, Canada (yes, the other way), and connect with three (3) cities.
Today, it’s worthless digital garbage, gas is $4.00 a gallon, the physical objects are not around; and guess what, yours truly doesn’t fly to SeaTac and does not negotiate with the 3 cities in one (1) hop.
Give them $30/Hour, why not $50/Hour. Give ’em free ObamaCare. In the end, the businesses will fold up but the ultra-left Seattle Times won’t report it—-why should they, the Seattle Times are getting $15 an hour now and won’t dare write a story to starve politically correct their kids.
Thanks. ED.
“Despite the naysayers, I tend to think that where there is large immovable capital investment and a fixed customer whose attention can’t readily be drawn elsewhere, a plan like this can work.”
Please stop writing like this. Please. It makes me cringe. You’re expressing a very simple idea. I don’t understand why your sentence construction and word choices try so desperately to be erudite.
I value your thoughts and opinions but I shouldn’t have to wince every time I read your posts.
Gary, please. Write for your readers, not your ego.
I do apologize for my writing, I realize I am not always as clear as I might be. Genuinely, it’s not my intention to come across as tortured!
Since the airport is actually owned and operated by the Port of Seattle, it is not yet covered by the $15 wage. However, businesses around the airport are. Parking lots are now charging a living wage surcharge. Restaurants will change to more self-service. To say this change will have no impact is to ignore the laws of economics.
Seattle can afford it. Their labor supply was tight to begin with, and is likely higher quality than other cities (as measured by education, criminal history, etc.), based only on my brief observation. Now with $15/hr it will attract more labor to Seattle, which will eventually help businesses get quality people.
You may even experience higher service levels, as your typical minimum wage moron will be replaced by a higher quality worker. And it might’ve been a tiny step towards Japanese levels of service if the $15/hr folks still didn’t put out a tip cup. But I guess now I’m just hoping for too much.
“as your typical minimum wage moron will be replaced by a higher quality worker”
Uh-huh, high school dropouts, and teenagers still in school hoping for part time work, will find jobs even more impossible to find. As the fewer available jobs go to downsized professionals who would not work for $7, but will for $15. Even recent high school grads needing to get some job experience to help move up a career ladder will get sandbagged.
When Seattle does this city wide it will indeed have an impact on so called income inequality (sic), as the smaller workforce makes more, and the increased numbers of unemployed sink even deeper, since the cost of everything will be going up to subsidize the new wage scale.
Not to mention there are already machines in the works that can make gourmet burgers for less than the cost of MCD, and brew better drinks than Starbucks, without the touch of human hands. This just speeds up the rollout of these robotic job destroyers.
Forget about “middle class”, the new reality is going to be a smaller “working class” (has a job) and a much larger “non-working class” (lives entirely on government handouts).