[back7co]

I’ll admit to not reading the entire article, but anecdotally fast food prices are within 10% of some table service restaurants here in Southern California. I don’t know if that’s really for or against the law, but calling the bill a huge success or failure depends on cherry picking stats.

[Elidrake24]

Also true in central Wisconsin where there isn't a law such as this, for what it is worth.

[mjevans]

Rent seeking everywhere is strangling the entire US economy.

[ghaff]

In fairness, a number of places I occasionally get take-out from are the same price whether take-out or eat-in. I may prefer to take-out--and any alcohol is probably cheaper--but I don't really view take-out as categorically cheaper. But then I rarely eat at McDonalds.

[plantwallshoe]

The whole point of the article is that you have to cherry pick stats to show it was a failure, but every sound analysis shows that it was a success.

[toyg]

The problem is the definition of success. Yes, the sector grew and employees made more; but franchisees felt some pain. In fact, I'm sure someone will argue that they had to expand precisely to try and recoup the profit lost to lower margins.

For capital owners, no redistributive policy can ever be a success, by definition.

[gotoeleven]

Their own choice of a time interval to look at (Apr - Oct) looks cherry picked. If you include the next month, it goes from a +1000 job gain to -1200 loss. Overall it looks like the effect on employment at least in the short term is about zero. But it definitely increased cost. So the only winners here are I guess the people whose wages were pushed up by this law, and everyone else is a loser. I wouldn't call this a success, I'd call it a classic california left wing economic shell game.

[Certhas]

You claim to refer to choices in the article, yet the content of the article actually bears no resemblance to your post.

> Simply comparing each month’s job growth with the same month the previous year, which avoids the problem of picking a start date, reveals that California’s fast-food sector gained jobs in all but one month since September 2023.

As for who the losers are, the data is quite clear: Mostly corporate profits. The rational response of a corporation when faced with a law that reduces its profits is to lobby against the law and invest in propaganda that disparages the law.

> That doesn’t mean raising the minimum wage had no negative consequences. Reich and his co-author, Denis Sosinsky, found that the higher minimum wage caused menu prices in California fast-food chains to rise by about 3.7 percent. That number is far lower than the “$20 Big Macs” that critics of the law warned of, but it’s still significant at a time when many consumers are deeply upset over the post-pandemic spike in food prices. Even so, Reich points out that this number pales in comparison with the 18 percent raise that the average fast-food worker received because of the new law. (The authors calculated that about 62 percent of the wage increase was absorbed through higher prices, while the rest was likely absorbed by a mix of reduced turnover and, crucially, lower profits for franchisees—hence the massive industry resistance.)

Finally, why a shell game? There is nothing hidden here, there is no con. No money is secretly moved around. Workers have more money. Owners and consumers less (the latter very slightly so).

[0xB31B1B]

> As for who the losers are, the data is quite clear: Mostly corporate profits.

Amongst the problems I have with the policy are around reducing profits being presented as something purely beneficial or at no cost, and claiming that we have seen enough to "call it good" within 6 months of implementation. Corporate profits drive investment and investment grows the pie. You won't see these impacts over 6 months but you will see them over 1-5 years. Restaurant closures in response to these policies can take 6 months to few years because the medium/large size franchisees will run a franchise operating at 0 profit for a year or two until the franchise requires capital investment (replace the parking lot, buy a new grill etc) or their financing situation changes against them such that they can't maintain working capital. "20 dollar big mac" is and was unrealistic fanfare, the most likely scenario is languishing for a while.

[BriggyDwiggs42]

What we’ve done is change who makes the decision for how to spend a certain amount of money from wealthy investors to fast food workers, right? The thing is, we know that fast food workers are generally not doing too well financially. A surprisingly large portion even need to draw on government assistance like food stamps to get by. Like most poor Americans, we can also expect them to be in a degree of debt. If you give these people a bit more money, you reduce strain on taxpayer-funded assistance, you pay off debts, and you get the added bonus of increasing the quality of life for some people. What I need you to do is explain to me what you expect to gain by having wealthy people invest the money used to achieve these ends. Call me a cynic, but I don’t personally expect the same good to come of it.

[gotoeleven]

From the article: "choosing a start date of either September 2023 (when the law was signed) or April 2024 (when it took effect) would have shown that the number of jobs had risen."

This statement is literally false if you include november.

The whole bit about comparing employment numbers to the corresponding month a year prior doesn't make any sense. One reason is that the law has only been in effect since April and another is that the employment trends in 2023 in fast food restaurants match trends in overall employment which you can look at here: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/SMS06000000000000001?amp%253...

I suppose arguing over whether this redistributive scheme constitutes a shell game or simply wise governance isn't very interesting.

[eigen]

> This statement is literally false if you include november.

look at other states, they also had a decline in fast food employment from October 2024 to November 2024. E.G. Nebraska had a 0.62% decline and California had a 0.29% decline.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/seriesBeta/SMU31000007072259001S...

[jandrese]

> As for who the losers are, the data is quite clear: Mostly corporate profits.

2024 was the most profitable year McDonald's has ever had.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/gros...

[eigen]

> Their own choice of a time interval to look at (Apr - Oct) looks cherry picked. If you include the next month, it goes from a +1000 job gain to -1200 loss.

I didn't check all states, but most show a decline in fast food employment from Oct to Nov 2024, based on "All Employees: Leisure and Hospitality: Limited-Service Restaurants and Other Eating Places in X" data from St Louis Fed.

Nevada Oct 2024: 65.424 Nov: 65.192 0.35% decline

California Oct 2024: 740.069 Nov: 737.886 0.29% decline

Utah Oct 2024: 69.571 Nov: 69.406 0.23% decline

Nebraska Oct 2024: 37.732 Nov: 37.4999 0.61% decline

[plantwallshoe]

They offered several other forms of analysis besides just looking at April - October (for instance comparing each month to the previous year’s month and comparing other states that didn’t change their minimum wage laws.)

As for if it was effective: if the point of the law was to increase the money flowing to fast food workers it managed to increase their wages without decreasing employment, so I think it was pretty clearly a success. Now if that is a worthwhile thing to try to accomplish is completely a matter opinion.