Florida Minimum Wage Increase Had "Minimal Effect" On Job Lay Offs

http://www.tampatrib.com/MGBXOR0P8GE.html

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Cut: RESTAURANTS AND RETAIL: Heather Bumpass, above, trains a new waiter at Bella's Italian Cafe in Tampa, which has raised its prices about 3 percent since the minimum wage was increased from $5.15 to $6.15. The restaurant's owner says the price increase has not affected business, though. Below, Harry Morales and Jesus Hernandez III load up boxes at Highland Park Furniture, whose owner says jobs were not hurt by the wage increase.

TAMPA -- Before last year's elections, a political action committee backed by the likes of Publix Super Markets and Outback Steakhouse had some hair-raising predictions about the effect of bumping up the minimum wage.

Thousands of jobs would be lost if voters increased the state's rock-bottom wage to $6.15 from $5.15, said one e-mail sent out by the Coalition to Save Florida Jobs......
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a price increase in 10% will not affect whether a tourist spends their money at a restaurant or not.

This is why municipalities like the hotel tax - vacationers and business travelers alike are generally price insensitive to this extent (a doubling of air fare of course Will have an impact, a modest increase in hotel rates or restaurant meals won't)

whenever the wage floor is raised. What generally happens is that any financial loss they face through the wage increase is quickly reversed through an increase in business. When the people at the bottom have more money, they spend it, and that spending travels all the way through the economy.

Lavish wealth on the rich and they hoard it. Lavish it on the corporate and they move jobs offshore. Give it to the people at the bottom and they create demand for goods and services.

That's how it works, folks, from the bottom up, not the top down.

No, umemployment plummeted.

Any establishment that goes under or sheds a lot of jobs because of a one dollar increase in the minimum wage probably is not a very well run business anyway.

I think you'd only lose jobs if:

- The resulting prices increases significantly affected consumers overall spending on other goods (think what high gas prices do - you gotta drive to work, but it costs more so you spend less on other things)

- There is a substitute product not subject to the wage increase.

I don't think a minimum wage increase significantly affects the price of a product so that consumers really feel a pinch and reduce their spending on other stuff.

When we are talking hotels, restaurant meals, etc, there really is no competition. What are we going to do, outsource food preparation to China?

This is what happens when you lose your manufacturing base - you are left with jobs where wage increases do not result in a competitive disadvantage