I bet the billionaire CEO didn't think to take a pay cut.

The cost of a fast food burger keeps going up, and fast food restaurants around the country are retracting across the board. Wendy's just closed a bunch of locations that had nothing to do with a minimum wage hike. Pizza Hut closed 4% of its locations. Popeye's is eyeing bankruptcy in the southeast US, and they aren't even affected by the rising costs of beef.

Food service even in regular restaurants have always had slim margins. Wait/bar staff work for tips in the US because restaurant owners are allowed to pay the bare minimum. Fast food staff don't get tips, so for years were paid the lowest possible wage while the corp reaped profits and expanded to every country with a highway exit.

$20/hr adds up to about $41K if full time which is a fair livable wage for a food prep job who gets yelled at all day. I'm not sure why we assume fast food workers should languish in poverty. The problem isn't the livable wage, it's that the model doesn't work - every day costs have increased since Dave opened Wendy's 60 years ago while wages haven't.

I'm reminded of the old factory worker adage, the people making your product should be able to afford it. 

@porkchopbob:  You make some good points, but in the end, we'll have to agree to disagree.  Wouldn't $15.00 an hour be an acceptable minimum wage, even in California?  One reason I say $15.00 is that the minimum wage here in Texas is $7.25/hour, so $15.00 is just over double that.  $7.25/hour is ridiculously low and legislators here in Texas need to do something about it.  But $20?  It's hard for me to justify that for flipping burgers and slipping potatoes into a fryer.  Do you even need a high school diploma to qualify?  And as the article proves, many have lost their jobs entirely because of the new wage requirement.  And since when did working at a fast food restaurant become a way to make a living wage, anyway?  Wasn't that always considered a second tier job mostly for students or those starting out in the workforce while they worked towards something else?  And applying $20/hour to the fast food industry and not any other "entry" position is flat out discriminatory.  I'm sure there are still many working at entry jobs in nursing homes as aides who are directly involved in patient care who are making around $16 or $18/hour.  Why doesn't the minimum wage apply to them?  I could go on and on about hundreds of low level jobs which pay far less than $20.  Why is a cashier at a gas station or 7-11 not included?

I'm not an economist so I don't know what the number should be - $20 or $15 seems arbitrary. People have lost those jobs because the company has determined it not profitable (and not just CA) - have they adjust their corporate wages? How about lowering those from a few hundred thousand to a few less hundred thousand? They do the work! They make the sausage, that's the value.

I'll just always side with workers over the CEOs who become billionaires on the backs of labor because I'm a worker as well. As someone who has student loans, I believe people should be able to get a job that pays their rent without having an expensive college degree. I hate the attitude of "they have that and I don't so they shouldn't have that" so I agree, a night cashier should make more money too.

Since the 1970s cost have risen, wages haven't at the same rate, but CEOs continue to make more money. The market hasn't corrected for that. California still has the most billionaires of any state in the US, credit to the government for trying to tip the scales.

Regarding nursing home aides, I've had family members pay a small fortune (thousands and thousands of dollars per month) for those in-home end of life services. But the money goes to a private equity company or insurance, not the actual aide. That's a whole other conversation about how we treat our elders that I'd be more than happy to have. Those nurses should be getting the money as well. But again, the answer isn't to take away from some other worker, the answer is to take away from some corporate schlub. Murder isn't the answer, but Luigi Mangione's wrath wasn't unfounded.

@robslob you can answer your question about livable wage by plugging those numbers into wage and cost of living calculators. 

At  $15/hour, nobody will take take jobs where I live in California, and that costs fast food companies money. 

And now that immigrants are in hiding, noooooobody is looking for crapwage jobs

@waitinforrain:  According to the article, there are now 18,000 LESS fast food jobs to be had in California because of this law.  And maybe you can explain why others are still running a cash register at 7-11 for $15/hour.

@robslob 

Well the article says that the higher wage caused job loss (it is claiming cause and effect because that's clickbait), but the correlation might be messier to tease out.

There are lots of reasons right now why people are not buying fast food, and there could be plenty of job loss caused by ice deporting people without any kind of due process. There's a whole lot of dollars these people were pumping into the economy that's now not there. 

They certainly aren't busing people from the Midwest to come work the jobs we have. Agriculture is taking a massive hit. But I digress.

 Where I live the minimum wage is $16.90.

And if you tell me your nearest Big City I'll be happy to compare! 

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