Is Fox news unironically the best place to learn about your new favorite social dem?
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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Wow 30$ minimum wage seems like a lot, but how is that gonna impact prices in things like restaurants?
Edit: Sorry it seems high to be, it is almost twice as high as the legal minimum wage in NL.
Who cares? Study after study show that stores and corporations can swallow these costs and even when passed on to the consumer the increase is much less then thought.
Besides as long as people can afford groceries I don't think people will care if restaurant and fast food are a bit more expensive
Can you link one of those studies? Truly interested in the subject.
The restaurants I have/had as clients all had only 1 or 2 locations, but one of their main expenses is well wage cost. At least here in NL and with my clients. Increasing the wage there would require a price increase or they would go to the negative. I am just wondering how it would impact in the US.
I just found like 5 minutes looking around on Google this was one of the first results: https://www.epi.org/blog/most-minimum-wage-studies-have-found-little-or-no-job-loss/
I understand that this would eat into your profits and would probably eat into the amount of money that you can make off a business like this But if the business is not viable Paying a living wage where the minimum should be 30 an hour then the environment is not correct for that business and the business isn't viable.
I don't want to sound cruel but for a long time businesses have gotten away with paying people pennies for work that they should have been paying dollars.
NL is different for sure, we are a long way off from a 30€ minimum.
We also have a lot of wages being based on the minimum wage so an increase will increase everything.
My experience is based on NL.
Saying that, the US has a lot more chains than smaller restaurants at least it seems like that from an outside. The bigger the company the more chance there is to have a wate increase without a loss. Did those studies include things like social security, pension? And things that the employees need? (Rethorical)
But if you hage a restaurant with 200k revenue, 50k cost of food, 50k of personal costs (including wages etc) plus 30k of other costs you make like 70k before tax. And in this example the owners need to live from the profit after tax. (Numbers generalised). A 10-20% increase looks duable since there would still be a profit.
Personally I just see an universal basic income be introduced everywhere or compensate both employees and employers in businesses where your company might not be truely viable, but it is good for the general public (theaters are often government subsidies)
Oh I see so we're coming from a very different places. We don't have nearly the type of safety net that you guys do out in the Netherlands. I'm sure you guys definitely have your problems and your fair share of issues but to Americans it feels like the United States is literally collapsing around us.
Like most of us if we lose our job we're probably going to lose the place we live as well. It's not uncommon to have to move back with your parents to couch surf after you lose a job. The minimum wage in America doesn't even cover like a car payment for a decent car. It's not nearly enough to live on it's being basically given change all day and then ask to live on it on top of the fact that you're treated like absolute crap. You have zero say in your work and how it's done and if you have problems with your boss your boss can just fire you because they feel like it. As long as it's not one of the discriminated categories with of which there are only five they can fire you for anything up to and including the color of your shirt at any time without notice. And in many places in the United States if you get fired you may not qualify for unemployment or any of the state assistance.
The absolute only way to make it out here is to get a job that pays enough money so that you can find a place to live and have Private health insurance. If you can get on the Medicaid system it's actually not bad but they'll take it away from from you over getting things like a bonus or maybe a dollar in raise.
We live in a capitalist hell hole where we can't hold anybody to account. We can't hold our politicians to account. We can't hold our police to account. Nor can we hold our justices to account.
The government has determined we all just have to grin and bear it and pray they don't alter the deal any further to take more from us.
That's why you're going to see a lot of business apathy from those in America because we've been screwed most of our lives and are tired of it. It's very blatant and very obvious
We have a housing crisis, we have a job crisis and loads of other issues, but yes we do have an acceptable safety net.
The only thing I feel like you could do is keep going and maybe make a different choice on where you buy something, mom and pop shop instead of Walmart. Those big box stores aren´t doing any good. But that might just be an incorrect take.
What could a foreigner do without going to the US itself to help you people?
I mean that's kind of the Crux of the issue though. The mom and pop shops really want minimum wage to stay low so they can stay competitive with the big box stores.
But those same big box stores also drive out the mom and pop shop by driving prices much lower than the little shops can and then they suffer because people stop going to the shops because they're more expensive.
Regardless voting with your wallet is not necessarily a viable choice and I don't generally think works well. United States has been pushing to buy from small business for over 20 years and yet small businesses still keep on failing. The United States only really helps out big business. Small businesses are left to fend for themselves and often don't make it. Honestly even if the public is really small business oriented unless the government is also small business oriented it's kind of like swimming against a tidal wave.
The United States right now has a a social system that's threatened very close to Bare Bones and is often non-existent for the poorest. Even to make it work it's a bureaucratic nightmare that involves multiple departments and could involve months of legal business wrangling.
So I can see for you why maybe this minimum wage doesn't make a lot of sense for the Netherlands but in the material circumstances surrounding the United States I think this minimum wage increase makes a lot of sense especially considering that we haven't had a significant wage increase since 2009. The median minimum federal wage should be $22 and that allows the poorest communities in the poorest parts of the United States to have a living wage. For anybody else that's living in poverty that's still not enough especially in the blue states where most of the social services are located. Even in New York City $30 an hour for minimum wage it's going to be hardly a drop in the bucket.
I'm not sure about the Netherlands housing crisis but what adds insult to injury and a lot of Sting that ours is that ours is self-induced. It's literally being created by companies like Black Rock and other hedge fund in stock portfolio businesses buying up residential houses and keeping them empty until the time is right to rent them out to maximize their profits. Currently there is roughly 2 million or so empty houses in the United States and there's only 600,000 homeless people at Last count.
No I appreciate what you're trying to get at though and the perspective you offer even if the rest of the community did not. I'm not saying it's your job as a foreigner to worry about any of this. United States politics is complicated and honestly it really it shouldn't be up to people outside the country to fix it. Perhaps the Netherlands will show us a way out of the mess that we've dug ourselves into with solutions to the problem that you guys have because we also have those problems. I kind of feel like they're more Universal problems though at this point
Voting with your wallet really only works if you have options. In the EU it is generally easy to just not order from Amazon f.e. but I understand that isn't an option for everybody. And even if people make a choice it only works if a critical mass does it. That critical mass is pretty low for smaller stores.
I always find it weird that the wages for the US are so much higher even though most products are just cheaper over there. Partially because the sales tax is pretty low compared to VAT. The whole "automatic" difference in wages depending on where you live is BS. If I decide to travel 2 hours to work and my college decides to take a 15-minute drive/walk we should still have the same salary ffs. Different rant and I kinda understand why they do it, but wages will normally go up if they can't get anybody in the centre of new-york.
From my personal experience people in the US don't have a lot of different jobs to choose from but we really don't. Unless you have the education and connections for the most part you're relegated to retail. It's hard to even get into management nowadays. Sure there's job growth but for the most part it's for minimum wage retail jobs or salary jobs that are for Dollar General where your work 80 hours to the Bone.
Most of my family Works Blue Collar construction jobs because they pay more consistently and they're easier to get into then the white collar stuff that I work in
Would you mind expanding on how there's a limited job market in the EU? I have the standard American perspective of the EU of being this nigh utopian place of freedom and competition even though I know it's actually not like that. The EU does definitely help with those type of regulations. The United States answers to the people with the most money typically the companies. That's why the iPhones would never be USB C if it was up to Americans.
Did the pice increase impact customer traffic?
Generally yes, but often you see that they still end up with the same or more revenue. So less people came, but they spend more.
or the traffic just stayed the same and more people came. It depends a bit on the size of the restaurant and in what price category they are and what they increased.
Raising consumer prices because of increased minimum wage is a myth. Even fucking Henry Ford of all people knew the benefits of raising wages! More wages means more people buying his cars! More wages means more consumer spending! And it is not like raising minimum wage is what drove prices to increase since the pandemic; even though the minimum wage has been stagnant since the 1970s! Businesses will tell you that they have to increase their price because of "inflation" despite having record profits!
Depends on the company, that's why I am asking. In companies where wages are the main cost (like in many restaurants) raining the wages will raise the total costs. Which can mean they will go into the negative if the prices aren't increasing as well. I have seen a fair amount of administrations/annual reports of restaurants. And it was pretty common to spend at least as much on food as on the personel costs (wages, social security, pension, etc.)
30$ is a lot compared to the minimum wage 14,40€ (16,84$) we have in NL. Which is why I am asking what the impact of it would be in the US of such an increase.
(Yes it will not matter for MacDonalds, Burger King or any other big chains)