Letters: Minimum wage in the real world

Re “Patt Morrison Asks: Ron Unz,” Opinion, Feb. 26

Ron Unz thinks a minimum wage of $12 per hour would solve many social ills at no cost to taxpayers.

I have been a restaurant owner in California for 30 years, during which the minimum wage has increased by more than 200% — and profit margins have decreased substantially.

Simply put, the market has never been able to bear the price increases necessary for maintaining restaurant profits in the face of multiple wage increases.

In restaurants like mine, minimum-wage workers make up about a third of the payroll. Yet the coming state increase to $10 in 2016 will require price increases of up to 25% to maintain profit. Does Unz think the market will bear increases of that magnitude? Or is profit a passe concept?

Even worse, in our restaurants, minimum-wage employees are actually tipped workers whose gratuity wages alone amount to $15 to $30 an hour. Downtrodden? Hardly.

Kevin Boss

Santa Barbara

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