Get Ready To See New Orleans Fast Food Workers Striking For Wages That Will Leave Them Jobless

The minimum wage is an issue Democrats believe they can run and win on, making the empathetic, sensitive case that individuals need to earn more money in order to live.

So it comes as no surprise that New Orleans fast food workers, and workers around the country, are set to go on strike and protest on April 15, tax day. These strikes and protests, of course, are organized by unions and community organizing groups who have stake in the issue.

What exactly are the wages these fast food workers are demanding? A salary of $15 per hour, practically doubling the current minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour.

Issues like raising the minimum wage always read well on a headline and they look great written on paper. But, there’s a problem.

The federal minimum wage does not allow private businesses to create more jobs, it simply mandates that no business can create a job that pays less than their set salary.

The minimum wage, by nature, does nothing but hurt the young, unskilled worker because it does not base pay on merit or challenge of the job. Instead, it sets a minimum, which inevitably keeps the hourly wage low.

For liberals, raising wages is something that the state must do, not private businesses.

Hence, the mandate like Washington state’s, which has set the minimum wage at $15 an hour. This plan was praised by just about everyone except like-minded libertarians and conservatives.

The numbers coming out of Seattle, however, are proving that when the state sets a wage, especially as high as $15 an hour, private business will not be able to sustain the mandate.

Think about it, when McDonalds is mandated to pay a cashier $15 an hour, they will just begin a new system of ordering food, where customers punch their food order into a computer themselves.

No need for $15 an hour unskilled labor when the business can reinvent the wheel for a savings.

Young people, naturally, are taking the hardest hit. Because when the cost of unskilled labor increases, (the mandated price tag of the worker), young people get the shaft and are the first to be let go or not hired from a job they would have otherwise gotten had the state not intervened.

In Seattle, restaurants are now spending the majority of their earnings on the cost of unskilled labor, which is simply not sustainable for small businesses. And when the cost of labor goes up, so do the prices of all the food on the menu and the quality of food goes down.

It is a lose-lose for the individual, especially young individuals.

Not to mention, unskilled labor affected by the minimum wage is not designed to be an end-all, be-all job.

These are jobs that young people need to get experience under their belt, pay for college books and fees and get a feel for the workforce. Unskilled labor jobs are meant to be a stepping stone for individuals to begin and then eventually move into a professional job or a skilled labor job.

Liberals, though, would much prefer to have millions making a lifetime career out of being a cashier at McDonalds because those individuals will need social services in order to pay for expenses like a house and a car.

While the Times Picayune glamorizes the $15 an hour wage, the individuals parading the streets for an increased minimum wage, rather than arguing to get rid of the minimum wage altogether, will be the same individuals who will be jobless and priced out of the market in a couple of years.

Win for liberals, lose for the individual.

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