I have not had a chance to try the new Popeye’s sandwich yet, even though one of the few in the Raleigh area is just around the corner, about 6 minutes away. I actually prefer going there over Bojangles, which may seem to be heresy here in the South. I like everything more than Bojangles, except for the dirty rice and tea. Can’t beat those. Plus, they do not have breakfast all day. Or at all. Regardless, John Sexton notices something
Perhaps you’ve heard by now that Popeyes’ new chicken sandwich is all the rage and is creating long lines around the country. This week, socialist magazine Jacobin published a piece arguing that as good as the new chicken sandwich is, it would be even better under socialism.
Vice says that Popeyes’ new chef-d’oeuvre “ascends into a new level of gastronomic achievement that is both a culinary and scientific feat.†The Los Angeles Times claims the fast food delicacy now serves as an “economic indicator†of the country’s fiscal health. The New Yorker suggests the sandwich could “save America.â€â€¦
Yet in the face of all this excitement stands a brutal reality: the profiteers of the Popeyes chicken sandwich craze are the bosses, while the workers bear the brunt. With orders exploding at locations nationwide, Popeyes’ employees are working harder under more grueling conditions and few benefits while corporate shareholders bask Scrooge McDuck–style in their riches…
One immediate way to curb this racket would be to increase the minimum wage to $20 an hour. With a full 20 percent of frontline fast food workers living below the poverty line, and many relying on food stamps and other benefits just to survive, raising the wage floor would deliver desperately needed relief to countless workers. While the company’s CEO Cheryl Bachelder recently defended its low wages on Fox Business by claiming the priority is to “grow top-line sales†and that an increase in employee pay would “raise prices for guests and lower hours for employees,†we know Popeyes won’t simply pass on the profit surge to its workers — the company will simply hoard that new wealth for executives like Bachelder.
This sandwich may have been created under capitalism — but under socialism, who knows where the frontiers of snack creation may lie?
The $20 an hour minimum wage is the updated version of the $15 an hour minimum wage which many progressives have championed. There are several problems with this plan of course, starting with the fact that CEO Bachelder is right about what raising wages to that level would do to prices.
Not quite sure what is grueling about working in the stores. My local one looks pretty darn clean, and it is always a pleasant experience. Under socialism, we don’t get the sandwich, because it would be too expensive, and only the hoi-palloi will be able to afford it. Plus, it wouldn’t have been developed, since why have something that most people can’t afford to purchase as such? And, under the Modern Socialist plans, the number of chickens available to become delicious sandwiches would be drastically reduced under their ‘climate change’ plans.
And, notice that we’re now up to $20 an hour for the minimum wage. As Sexton points out “Suddenly, instead of sharing the chicken sandwich wealth, managers are thinking about who they can lay off.” That might be generous. Managers would be thinking more of being able to find a new job, because the store would be soon closing permanently, since no one would be willing to pay $7 or more for the sandwich, which, let’s be honest, wouldn’t have been developed in the first place. What, exactly, other than misery, has been developed under Socialism?
@PopeyesChicken rules pic.twitter.com/6ALsbZKRIz
— William Teach2 ??????? #refuseresist (@WTeach2) August 28, 2019
NYC has a minimum wage of $15 and unemployment of 4%
Craigslist jobs general labor has 100s of job openings
Anyone can check that for themselves instead of reading what one restaurant owner
has to say about the $15 minimum wage
Cities with the $15 do not have higher unemployment rates
Is this like Zippy’s “boom” where, if you’re unemployed for more than 6 months, you fall of the stats?
In any case, it makes it more costly to do business. Why do you think Amazon forsook Gotham for that other financial mecca, Akron OH?
Last year, “full-service restaurants recorded a 1.6 percent job loss, which is the first recorded annual loss in two decades,†said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the trade group.
The survey also said about a third of respondents will eliminate jobs and most will raise prices this year because of the new $15-an-hour law backed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other state officials, which took effect on Dec. 31, 2018.
A total of 76.5 percent of full-service restaurant respondents reduced employee hours, and 36 percent eliminated jobs in 2018, the survey said.
Also, 75 percent of limited-service restaurant respondents reported that they will reduce employee hours, and 53 percent will eliminate jobs in 2019 as a result of the wage increases, according to the survey.
[….]
The Hospitality Alliance said, “The results of this survey, and other industry trends, signal that a once-growing industry responsible for hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic impact has become stagnant.â€
https://nypost.com/2019/03/30/the-new-minimum-wage-is-killing-nycs-once-thriving-restaurant-scene/
Hiking the U.S. minimum wage to $15 per hour would give millions of Americans a raise but put a smaller share of people out of work, according to projections released Monday.
Raising the pay floor to $15 per hour by 2025 would boost wages for 17 million workers, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated. At the same time, 1.3 million people would lose jobs, according to the CBO projections.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/08/cbo-estimates-effects-of-house-democrats-15-minimum-wage-plan.html?__source=sharebar|twitter&par=sharebar
First of all if the Congressional Budget Office is still “nonpartisan” it’s the only part of the federal government that is.
Secondly, That $15 per hour MAY well “give millions of Americans a raise” but they would most likely end up taking less pay home because their hours would need to be cut to control payroll costs. Overtime would also all but disappear. Plus as mentioned it’s good(?) for some but what about the people who are let go because they aren’t worth $15?
But my question is the proponents of $15 minimum say they want people to get a “living wage” which on its face is pure bullshite since $15 per hour is NOT a livable wage in most big cities why not go for $30 per hour. That converts to about $1,200 a week for a 40 hour week and that is an actual “living wage”.
Secondly, That $15 per hour MAY well “give millions of Americans a raise†but they would most likely end up taking less pay home because their hours would need to be cut to control payroll costs. Overtime would also all but disappear. Plus as mentioned it’s good(?) for some but what about the people who are let go because they aren’t worth $15?
Agreed. Look what happened with the people in Bernie Sanders’ campaign. The made more money per hour when going to a $15 minimum wage, but actually lost money as the campaign cut hours.
Other things cited in the article on the CBO’s report:
Here are the estimated effects of hiking the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, according to CBO projections:
17 million U.S. workers who would otherwise make less than $15 would get a raise. Another 10 million Americans "otherwise earning slightly more" than $15 an hour may also see a wage hike, according to the CBO.
The pay increases would take the annual income of 1.3 million people above the poverty level.
It would result in 1.3 million more jobless Americans, according to the CBO. Both Scott and Heidi Shierholz — chief economist at the Labor Department during part of the Obama administration — argued the CBO's methods in assessing job losses were flawed. Shierholz said she believes the CBO "substantially overstates the costs" of hiking the minimum wage.
Hiking the pay floor would "reduce business income and raise prices" as companies pass on higher labor costs to consumers, the CBO said. It would also "reduce the nation's output slightly" a decline in capital such as buildings and machines, the nonpartisan agency said.
The wage increases would cause total real family income — adjusted for inflation — to fall by 0.1%.
The CBO also assessed the potential effects of raising the minimum wage to both $12 and $10 per hour by 2025. Both hikes would have similar, but more muted, effects on wages and employment.</i>
Our esteemed host quoted:
Under socialism, there would be no Popeye’s, because it took capitalist investors, taking capitalistic risks, to begin and grow the food franchise chain.
Under socialism, why would there be any hamburger restaurants other than McDonald’s? It was the first, and thus the creation of Burger King, Burger Queen, Burger Death, &c would be superfluous institutions, which could only harm the McDonald’s chain, thus threatening the jobs of the proletariat who worked there, and the investment of the State in creating McDonald’s? under socialism, Kentucky Fried Chicken, being the first, would be the only allowable chicken restaurant, and Bojangles, Popeye’s and the rest would never exist.
Under socialized medicine in Canada, in 2016, “Canadians could expect to wait 3.7 weeks for a computed tomography (CT) scan, 11.1 weeks for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, and 4.0 weeks for an ultrasound.” In the capitalist United States, there are private companies which advertise, trying to sell people on getting baseline MRIs in case there is a future need.
Socialism leads to shortages, and bureaucratic resistance; capitalism leads to plenty. We have seen the effects of socialism, in Cuba, in North Korea, in Venezuela, and in the now-defunct Soviet Union. And we have seen what happens when nations which tried socialism but realized their error, and reverted to capitalism, in Vietnam and in China, which is now the world’s second-largest economy.
Escalating pay for executives hasn’t hurt executive employment, in fact, just the opposite!
Has there been a study or are you suggesting raising the pay of people making million dollar decisions is the same as raising the pay of thousands of hamburger flippers?
I assume you’re one of those professional communists who knows exactly how much every single person should earn and are willing to pass laws to see to it.
Executives actually do work to earn their pay.
A $15 minimum is featherbedding to make the Lefties feel better.
A $15 minimum wage is a vote buying tactic espoused by people who are not in business and who will not be effected by it in any major way. That’s why when leftists call for $15 we should call for $25, when they call for $25 “living wage” we should make it $50.
BTW, John, if they can’t get employees at $15 in NY then $15 is too low. It is after all, a minimum wage not a maximum. It’s called supply and demand, John. I too ran some of my restaurants in locations and during economic times where I could not get entry level help at minimum wage so I had to pay more. I recall on one occasion where my entry level jobs were twice minimum wage at the time, but I got the help I needed. I also priced my menu accordingly and was quick to terminate anyone who did not toe the line.
But I found a better way of recruiting and retaining dedicated employees in the high turnover/low pay restaurant industry. I offered participating health insurance and hired single mothers/fathers. You’d be surprised at how hard a person works to keep their kids health insurance.
Another ConMan siding with the millionaire elites, not the working classes. Why don’t NuCons value labor?
Snoop Dawg earns his millions since people voluntarily buy tickets and music. There’s no good metric to determine what a CEO should make other than his buddies on the BOD comp committee.
Thank you for agreeing, Fredo. There is no “metric” to determine what a CEO should make so it absolutely IS up to his “buddies” on the board or heaven forbid even the shareholders, but not YOU! Do you think CEO’s are never fired or do you think the “metric” is to keep them and over pay them no matter how bad they are? You communists neither value nor understand the value of labor. If you did you wouldn’t think you have the right to determine how much everyone else should be paid.
Trump 2020 Stop the commies from ruining America.
Yeah, the working stiffs did just swell under Zippy. That’s why they all voted for Trump and will do so again.
There’s no good metric to determine what a CEO should make other than his buddies on the BOD comp committee.
Maybe you ought to tell your boy, Dr Evil, to take a pay cut. Love to see how that goes over.
Ever hear of a balance sheet? Ever hear of growth?
That’s how you figure how much a CEO is worth.
I’m just wondering how the Lefties figure how much a troll is worth. You certainly don’t convince anybody.
Jeff,
Exactly what have you done for the middle clas, or even the poor? I will answer from my research on you, nothing. Have you told everyone here that you own a big corporation and make tons of money?