When a state considers an increase to the minimum hourly wage, it’s typically opposed by companies that pay minimum wage. The same largely goes for the current increase — from $7.25 to $10 — proposed for Maryland.
But that opposition isn’t monolithic. Though the Restaurant Association of Maryland has come out against the hike, individual restaurateurs may come down on either side. An article in Baltimore Business Journal cites the vehement opposition of Greene Turtle CEO Bob Barry (who worries that the increase could force the chain to raise its prices to the point that it loses customers) and the oh-well-who-cares view of Busboys & Poets owner Andy Shallal (who thinks that the doomsday projections of others amount to “a lot of fear and falsehoods”).
It’s a reminder that political opinion among businesspeople is more various that we might expect, and that even two successful restaurateurs can disagree about what’s good or bad for the restaurant business. Which is just to say — my post about the city liquor stores notwithstanding — that despite what we’re fed from either side, there is a degree of uncertainty in every new condition we impose legislatively on business — and that uncertainty can’t be eliminated. Sometimes we have to act anyway.
This is strictly a feel good piece of legislation. It forces all wages to increase and in turn all costs to consumers. Several months down the road you are right back to where you started. All the bureaucrats know that. Let the market run on its own. Minimum wage was never meant to be enough to support a family on. The goal should be to grow the economy so people have better jobs to move up to – not artificially create a higher paying job that the economy cannot support.