Nice job of failing to understand what I'm saying.
I'm saying you're looking at the wrong units--you're looking at profits as $ rather than profits as a %.
Ten billion dollars of profit is ten billion dollars more than the company lost in expenses and overhead. It doesn't matter if that's 2% or 99%, that's how much profit they have to work with in absorbing new expenses. They can either afford the new expenses or they can't.
Raising wages--but fewer worker/hours because of that automation.
McDonalds is not cutting hours OR laying off workers, as per the article I quoted. It seems they've actually learned from their mistakes and have recognized that one of the biggest contributors to their losses in previous years was the horrible service in all of their stores, which is a direct result of their staff being underpaid and overworked. Hiring more workers and paying them better has resulted in better service, which means customers are less likely to say "Let's no go to McDonalds today. Their service sucks and so does their food."
You tried to push the job loss off onto business owners that don't adapt to the new ways.
I'm not "pushing" anything. Business owners that can't adapt to change don't stay in business. Rising wages is one of those changes. The CAUSE of change is irrelevant.
Do you think people who loose their jobs because their boss can't adapt to change should be protected from that job loss? I certainly do. That's why welfare programs and unemployment insurance exists.
The minimum wage, however, is a provision to make labor profitable to people who actually HAVE jobs, not to protect people who cannot obtain one in the first place. If you choose not to participate in the labor market for whatever reason -- you don't have the skills to compete, or you are raising children at home, or you are a full time student, or you are taking an unpaid internship to improve your skills and connections in your field, or you are doing volunteer work for the red cross or missionary work, etc -- there are programs in place to help you and laws in place to protect you.
But the minimum wage is designed to protect the employed. Not the unemployed, not the incompetent, not the conservative, not the unimaginative.
You help the workers with the minimum wage increase, the people who end up unemployed are suffering because of "bad" business owners, not because of your actions. You don't care about the outcome, only of the morality of your position.
Since I am not aware of any moral imperative that favors "prevent the loss of unskilled labor jobs" over all other considerations, I am struggling to make sense of this statement. I happen to believe that in a balance between "loss of jobs for unskilled workers" and "increased profitability for unskilled workers who
do have jobs" the latter is the clear winner. Especially in the case that the social safety net, subsidies and legal protections exist -- and can be strengthened -- for those in the former category.
Put simply: It is better than a few fall into the safety net and have to climb back out of it than have EVERYONE languish in inescapable poverty for another generation. If you think the safety net is inadequate to alleviate their suffering, you have only your "throwing money at it won't solve the problem!" ideology to blame for that.
