About minimum wage

[The Grand Nudger]

I know exactly what it costs to run a truck. Actually scratch that, I know exactly what it costs to run a fleet of trucks. And I know exactly what we charge the customer to run trucks for them and I also have pretty good idea what our customers pay our competition for the same work so I know are prices are in line with current going market rates.

So as all the budding young accountants following along at home are now deducing, I therefore know how much of a profit margin we operate on.  So yeah, that means I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about when I say that if I suddenly have to pay my drivers $10 more per hour in order to keep them from leaving to go flip burgers or whatever, I am going to pass along as much of that extra $10 per hour to my customers as the market will allow. And if I know my competitors as well as I think I do, that means pretty much every bit of that extra $10 per hour goes right to our customers.

Every business operates on a profit margin so every business has the ability to absorb slight fluctuations in costs while keeping prices stable. But from where I'm sitting, I believe we'd be looking at double digit precent of increase in costs. So yeah I'm just not buying that any car company, or any other company is going to watch the cost to produce their product go up by 20% or more and just say well we'll keep prices the same and just be happy with making less profit.

Excellent, so then you understand that paying a driver 10 an hour, as opposed to 8 an hour.......wouldn't put you or anyone else out of fucking business, and wouldn't necessitate a price hike for the service. That would be a 20% increase from the -current- minimum (which I'm guessing is where your internal math went horribly awry, thinking about that 20% as a floating variable instead of applying it to the minimum wage).  In fact, I bet you pay your drivers better than the minimum, yeah?  A guy at subway in s fl makes the minimum wage, while a guy at subway here makes 10 an hour, while a guy at subway in michigan makes 12 an hour....and all of them sell the same 5 dollar footlongs.  That's not absorbing slight fluctuation, it's the franchise model, and the difference between the lowest paid and the highest is -greater- than 20%

No one said that companies would be happy if the minimum were raised, and they payed their labor the minimum.  I bet the franchisees in ann arbor are super jealous of the margin of franchisees in palmetto.  Nevertheless they're all making a margin...and when considering the minimum wage their happiness is an irrelevance. They'd be happy if they could get their labor for free. The truth of the matter, however, is that no ones going to pay 6 dollars for a 5 dollar footlong, regardless of the labor being paid the minimum, or 33% over it. So they can be as unhappy as they like, with being forced to pay the people who do the work that enriches them, I don't care, why should anyone care? OFC they'll eat the higher cost and -still- make a margin while providing the same product for the same price to the end consumer....they already do.