Wendy's

This week, we encounter still another example of the fantasy of a "living wage" colliding with the reality of running a low margin business. Tyler Durden reports:

In yet another awkwardly rational response to government intervention in deciding what's "fair", the blowback from minimum wage demanding fast food workers has struck again. Wendy's plans to install self-ordering kiosks in 1,000 of its stores - 16% of its locations nationwide.

"Last year was tough — 5 percent wage inflation," said Bob Wright, Wendy's chief operating officer, during his presentation to investors and analysts last week. He added that the company expects wages to rise 4 percent in 2017. "But the real question is what are we doing about it?"

Wright noted that over the past two years, Wendy's has figured out how to eliminate 31 hours of labor per week from its restaurants and is now working to use technology, such as kiosks, to increase efficiency.

Wendy's chief information officer, David Trimm, said the kiosks are intended to appeal to younger customers and reduce labor costs.

It's almost as if social justice warriors (SJWs) are trying to provide an impetus for businesses to replace people with automatons. They can't seem to process the simple notion that as labor becomes more expensive in a very competitive business, the owners will try to replace it with a lower cost alternative. That's because the majority of SJWs have never run a business, don't really understand what profit margin means, can't comprehend cost analysis and ROI, and think that government control of a marketplace will somehow result in a good outcome. It never does.

But becoming a "living wage" activist allows SJWs to do what they truly do enjoy most—moral preening. Sure $15.00 per hour for slinging burgers would be nice (in fact, why not $25.00 or $30.00 per hour?), but $0.00 dollars an hour for a Wendy's worker now replaced by an automated Kiosk somehow doesn't quite achieve the economic justice that SJWs so desperately want.

Durden continues:

As Nobelist Milton Friedman correctly quipped, “A minimum wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.”

Despite the piling up mountain of evidence on the harmful "unintended consequences" of artificially high minimum wages, we suspect we already know how this story ends. After all, it's much easier to win elections by promising people more stuff rather than less. And, as an added bonus, when it all goes horribly wrong it's very easy to lame the blame at the feet of the wealthy 1%'ers who are behind all the layoffs. Checkmate.

Based on recent events within the Democratic party, there is a willful disregard for the "mountain of evidence" and an ever increasing emphasis on empty "promises" and class warfare. Odd, though, that didn't seem to work in 2016. Oh wait, the only reason the Dems lost was the Russians, right?