Every time I see a discussion about minimum wage I see at least three things:

1- You can immediately tell who has experience running a non-trivial business. Let's define that as a business that actually makes physical products (not private labeling something someone else makes) and has, say, more than ten employees. People who are not exposed to business mathematics say things that cause any business owner to immediately go for a forehead slap and jaw drop.

2- Nobody ever fires-up Excel to do some math before opening their mouths.

3- The intense effects of an educational system that has indoctrinated people with the most ridiculous of ideas. These include such things as "corporate greed" and business owners wanting to build a business on top of people "not earning a living wage". There's more. Lots of truly ridiculous ideas.

If I haven't lost you, read-on, you might just learn something.

I was going to put together a quick spreadsheet in an attempt to educate those who might be interested in actually thinking through the problem and, as part of the process, learning something. However, I fear the effort will have few takers. It's easier for people to stay with comfortable preconceived notions than to be exposed to mathematical facts that destroy what they've been told. Most people are not interested in learning they are wrong.

Instead I found this [0]. It's a decent article which exposes the numbers for starting and running a basic restaurant. Anyone with non-trivial business experience has gone through this kind of math many times. After a while you understand the business equation viscerally and know what such things as government-forced costs --be it wages, regulatory or other costs-- can do to a business.

Most businesses do not run with huge lavish profit margins. This is certainly true of most restaurants. Competition is such that profits tend to find equilibrium somewhere above zero but certainly not very high above zero, in most cases likely not double-digits. Which means most businesses operate at a very delicate balance on the very edge of financial insolvency if they are not run carefully.

Anyhow, if you care to learn and not say things that truly make absolutely no sense whatsoever in the context of the reality, versus the fantasy, of running a business, please read this article, do the math and then do a little more research.

As an exercise, take this article and increase your labor costs in steps between 25% and 50%. In this exercise, please explain how you are going to stay in business, what changes you would implement and how these will affect your product, ability to compete with others, ability to survive economic downturns or additional competition (you don't get the entire market to yourself) and long term viability of your business.

Forced, artificially high minimum wage causes damage to the very people who actually support politicians who push for these populist measures in order to get their votes. It's a very destructive force that actually hurts a lot of people rather than help them. The politicians, ironically, actually benefit from pushing for these populist ideas because voters will never do the math and understand they are slitting their own throats. The politician wins elections and continues to make millions atop a very well protected hill while truly doing nothing, or worse, causing harm, to the people they are supposed to help.

Don't believe me? OK, do the same exercise suggested above and DOUBLE labor costs. If a high minimum wage is so good, well, why not go to $30 per hour then?

Another important point: Forcing a hike in minimum wage shifts the entire cost of labor upwards. Why? The person who was making $15 per hour when minimum wage was $10 will demand a raise when the $10 worker starts making $15. So, the $15 worker moves up to $20, the $20 to $25 and so on. It's a chain reaction up the labor cost scale with pernicious effect.

For a deeper dive into restaurant labor costs, read [1]. You'll be surprised to learn how tight the range of labor costs is for different types of operations in order for a restaurant to remain viable.

[0] https://www.7shifts.com/blog/restaurant-costs/

[1] https://www.7shifts.com/blog/restaurant-labor-cost/