Reply to Bowser repealing minimum wage increases. What

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]DC voted for a law that increased the cost of doing business for restaurants by a double-digit percentage [/b] and now is shocked that restaurants are closing. The white mediocrities who were behind this are all like, "Hmmm, it's probably greedy landlords" while most restaurants are in the middle of their 10-year leases when they close, with a locked-in price for five more years.

I hope everyone enjoys the future of dining out in DC: Ultra-fancy restaurants or take-out. There will be no in-between because of I-82.[/quote]

This is nonsense disseminated by the restaurant lobby. The law imposes no such costs.[/quote]

Are you really this stupid?

https://x.com/JHWeissmann/status/1918321448533340256[/quote]

The problem is that your whole argument rests on assuming that consumers are stupid and don't factor their expected tip into the cost of a meal when deciding to eat out or not.

The bill is designed to allow restaurants to steadily increase menu prices to absorb the higher wages that they will be required to pay their wait staff (which was maybe not the best approach, but let's put that aside for now).

Before I-82, wages of wait staff were shared between base wages and tips. Menu prices were lower, but customers factor in tips. After I-82 (if it is ever allowed to be fully implemented), wages of wait staff will be fully paid by restaurants but menu prices will increase to compensate. If customers don't tip, restaurants have to make up the difference and there is absolutely no change in the wages they are legally required to pay their wait staff (although business costs for restaurants engaging in wage theft will increase).

So, yes, one can pedantically argue that I-82 increased costs of business (all other things equal) by a double-digit percentage, but it also increased revenue (all other things equal) by a double-digit percentage. Of course the problem is that no one is really smart enough to factor out everything that has changed from before I-82 and so the lobbyists for the restaurant industry mislead everyone into believing that the heady days of 2019 will return if only we do we away with the menace that is I-82.

It's plainly clear though from everywhere else that uniform minimum wages for restaurant workers that restaurants can be profitable by setting menu prices that incorporate the cost of paying their employees wages. And it's plainly clear that such policies are better for consumers and fairer for restaurant workers generally (if not beloved by high-earning wait staff).

Where I-82 went wrong was trying to do this gradually. In retrospect, it would have been better to make the change overnight and let restaurants adapt. Doing it they way that has been has created a halfway house that has left consumers confused as to what they are supposed to pay for and allowed scurrilous restaurant owners to exploit that confusion for personal profit.  [/quote]

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