But what happens when they raise their wages and don't see an increase in profit to justify it, even though none of it should have to be justified and, innately, everyone needs to be paid a fair wage to live in these countries in this century.
Is the answer just that they close down? Because they stopped engaging in the same worker exploitation that keeps everyone else alive? How do we overcome this on its fundamental level? How do towns without the same level of business as larger cities pay the same wages?
I need to stress again that I am not trying to argue against fair wages for all employees. I want to understand this on a technical level that I can cleanly argue how things can improve, rather than just that they should.
I guess maybe a more pertinent question would be: business owners like this, are they lying to me? Is this something they could easily survive, even if it were just them increasing their wages?
They are mostly lying to you and have profit motive more than anything. For example, restaurants have improved in business since increasing minimum wage in NYC from 2018. They can eat the price increases to products because consumers, especially when on higher minimum wage, can afford them.
"How do towns without the same level of business as larger cities pay the same wages?"
After five years of minimum wage increases, New York City's restaurant industry continues to thrive, outpacing national growth in employment, annual wages, and number of establishments.
www.nelp.org
Restaurants in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island have seen particularly strong job and wage growth, despite lacking some of the advantages that Manhattan enjoys—such as high spending by tourists and generally higher-income patrons. For example, the number of full-service restaurants in the boroughs outside Manhattan rose more than three times as fast as the number of Manhattan eateries from 2013 to 2018.
By every measure charted in this report (jobs, number of restaurants, and average wages) the other boroughs have exceeded national performance over the past five years for both full- and limited-service restaurants. For limited-service restaurants, Manhattan well-exceeded national performance in jobs, number of outlets, and wage growth for such establishments, and full-service restaurants in Manhattan fared roughly as well as the national averages for jobs, number of restaurants, and wage growth in this category of establishments over this period.
Compared to 12 large cities around the country that did not have any minimum wage increases from 2013-18, New York City's restaurants generally have seen stronger job growth. New York City's experience is consistent with the latest research focusing on the food services industry in large cities where there have been large minimum wage increases—no negative employment effects and sizable average wage gains for restaurant workers.
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The healthy overall state of the industry as indicated by its impressive growth in recent years shows that most restaurants have found effective ways to adapt to the rise in the minimum wage. In part, this has been accomplished by slight restaurant price increases, averaging less than three percent a year since the minimum wage started to rise. The clear uptick in restaurant prices compared to the five years before 2014 shows that many restaurateurs have been modestly marking up menu prices.
This report shows that the strength of the restaurant industry's sustained growth provides support for New York to eliminate its subminimum wage for tipped workers. Under current law, restaurant owners are permitted to pay tipped workers a lower cash wage than the overall State minimum wage, provided that tips received by such tipped workers bring the total earnings for each worker to the statutory minimum wage level.
Seven states, among them California, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington, require restaurants and other employers of tipped workers to pay their workers the State minimum wage. Restaurants in these states have been thriving and there is no evidence that the absence of a lower tipped-credit wage harms the industry overall or lessens tips for affected workers.
