Minimum Wage Kills Goodwill
Seattle, Washington U.S.
Seattle has imposed a $15/hour minimum wage.
Of course, this will kill jobs. It is basic economics: you cannot pay someone $15 to produce $10 worth of value. However, this essay is not about that. Nor is it about the impact on prices.
This essay is about the impact on goodwill. I am developing a series about the concept of goodwill. America once had lots of it. It is now being dribbled down the drain, dripping away, one drop at a time. This new minimum wage hike helps.
How?
This picture of a card helps explain. This may be just one angry dude, or it could be a big movement. I see it as another notch taken out of goodwill.
As with the cops and perps I wrote about previously, both sides have a legitimate gripe. Emotions are running high. And no one sees the merit in the other side, only in their own.
It’s the perfect toxic cocktail for killing goodwill all around.
Think on it for a moment. What cultural backdrop is necessary for a whole industry to pay near zero in wages, and workers earn the majority of their compensation from tips given voluntarily by total strangers? It is remarkable how much trust and goodwill must be there. This is not typical in the third world, and it was not typical through most of history.
Will people continue to tip, and tip generously, if they feel workers are overpaid? What if they feel that these workers lobbied the government to mandate their overly rich compensation? And suppose the patron resents that his favorite restaurants have closed, and now in any survivors, he pays a lot more than he used to.
Of course, the workers feel that they are falling farther behind, as real wages are lagging everything else in the economy. They resent their bosses for being too greedy, and they resent politicians for not setting the wage high enough. They are angry and resentful at lots of things, except the root cause: the failing dollar.
What do you get when you cross worker resentment with restaurant patron resentment?
We could be one coercive wage hike away from killing tipping in America.
Keith Weiner is CEO of Monetary Metals, a precious metals fund company in Scottsdale, Arizona. He is a leading authority in the areas of gold, money, and credit and has made important contributions to the development of trading techniques founded upon the analysis of bid-ask spreads. He is founder of DiamondWare, a software company sold to Nortel in 2008, and founder of the Gold Standard Institute USA. Weiner attended university at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and earned his PhD at the (non-accredited) New Austrian School of Economics.
Trending Now on Affluent Christian Investor
Sorry. No data so far.
Right Report
Follow Us
The Affluent Mix
Biden Oblivious To Illegal Immigration Issues... August 2, 2021 | Frank Vernuccio
Rob Arnott On Bubbles, Inflation, And Once-In-A-Generation Investment Opportunit... August 2, 2021 | Jerry Bowyer
The Federal Reserve’s Massive Theft Of Stability... August 2, 2021 | Jim Huntzinger
What To Do About This Difficult Market? August 2, 2021 | David Bahnsen
Letter On The Politicization Of Corporations... July 26, 2021 | Jerry Bowyer
Peak Of The Fake Bull Market July 26, 2021 | Michael Pento
Woodrow Wilson’s Administrative State vs. Gold... July 26, 2021 | Jim Huntzinger
Dividends, Energy, And Crypto July 26, 2021 | David Bahnsen
Whose Side Are You On? July 26, 2021 | Frank Vernuccio
Media, Left Ignore These Dangers July 19, 2021 | Frank Vernuccio
Mark Skousen On FreedomFest And How To Measure The Whole Economy... July 19, 2021 | Jerry Bowyer
Quantifying The Quantitative, Or Making Easy The Easing... July 19, 2021 | David Bahnsen
The Gold Standard Means A Rising Standard Of Living... July 19, 2021 | Jim Huntzinger
Book Review: Brian Domitrovic Reveals The Monetary Genius Of Arthur Laffer... July 19, 2021 | John Tamny
Steve Forbes: Time To Worry About Inflation, Not Hyperinflation... July 12, 2021 | Jerry Bowyer
UFOs Rescue Biden July 12, 2021 | Frank Vernuccio
Read This Classical Economist’s 200 Year Old Warning About Paper Money... July 12, 2021 | Jim Huntzinger
How Central Banks Murdered The Markets July 12, 2021 | Michael Pento
Everything There Is To Know About The Stock Market... July 12, 2021 | David Bahnsen
AT&T CEO: We’re Ill Equipped For Politics, And We’re Spending A Lot Of ... July 6, 2021 | Jerry Bowyer
Internet Bias Distorts National Conversation... July 6, 2021 | Frank Vernuccio
The Halfway Point Of 2021 July 6, 2021 | David Bahnsen
Join the conversation!
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.