How restaurant workers help pay for lobbying to keep their wages low
The framing here annoys me on a lot of levels:<p>1) There is a frame that wages are decided by the government. There is a lot of evidence that this isn&#x27;t how wages work - that isn&#x27;t how the price of most other things a business expenses is decided.<p>2) There is a frame that a &quot;living wage&quot; is some magic number. I remember &quot;fight for $15&quot; being a slogan somewhere. Which, given how long the fight takes, has probably become a Fight for $10 after inflation by now.<p>The best thing that cooks, waiters and bartenders could have happen is some political leadership that stops picking stupid battles and takes a bit of time to articulate what the actual problems are and put some effort towards fixing them.<p>Greater government control over wages and prices is not going to help low status workers people. There is a very real chance that the more of those battles they win, the worse the outcome will be. Market inefficiencies usually make life worse for people with no money.