The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages

Re:The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages by pydry on Monday December 06, 2021 @10:27AM (#29460869)

If you assume that minimum waged employees would spend 100% of their raise on rent then landlords would swallow the surplus but more likely the workers would spread it around. They do have other costs.

I havent seen a study that connects the two. A quick google suggests a fair number of business-centric publications spreading FUD about it though.

This article suggests it was connected to lower business rents: https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/a-15-minimum-wage-may-have-...

(The mechanism being that restaurants pass on the cost of their higher wages to their landlords)

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Re:The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages by ethanbond on Monday December 06, 2021 @10:38AM (#29461032)

> the researchers present evidence that minimum wage changes led area restaurants to raise prices, change menu items, obtain lower rents in the high wage areas and, in some cases, caused eateries to shut down.

I wonder if the units made empty by closures may have reduced price pressure on the ones that survived.

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Re:The Effects of Major Retailers Raising Their Minimum Wages by pydry on Monday December 06, 2021 @10:59AM (#29461316)

Yes, maybe. There's a definite tension between:

* Restaurants being unwilling to raise prices (diners are notoriously intolerant, it can kill restaurants).

* Landlords being unwilling to lower rents.

* Restaurants being unwilling to tolerate < 6% profit margins.

* Landlords being unwilling to lose a good, paying tenant if there isnt another around the corner.

The pain has to be distributed somehow though.

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