Remember last month when Karen Dumas entered the serious person echo chamber to explain how fast-food workers don't deserve higher wages because they clearly failed at life?
No? Well, here's a sample of Dumas' pseudo-Calvinist economic morality: "As a result, we have too many residents who are undereducated and under- or all-out unemployable," Dumas wrote on Bridge. "This problem does not justify raising the wage to meet these compromised qualifications. To do so would be a false seal of approval for failure and lack of training both by the person and a system that should help prepare them."
Of course, on planet earth, wages aren't set by evidence of grace as determined by work ethic, but by the economic value of labor. The question of whether fast-food workers should earn (as labor activists are currently demanding) $15/hour wages has nothing to do with the morality of their educational achievement and everything to do with their economic value to their employer.
For the Dearborn Heights burger joint Moo Cluck Moo, paying their workers $15/hour isn't just a matter of "doing the right thing," it's (as Gov. Rick Snyder likes to say) all about providing good customer service.
The business, which launched this spring, was paying employees $12/hour but is boosting wages to $15/hour because, according to owners Brian Parker and Harry Moorhouse, it makes good business sense.
Daily Beast: And while Moo Cluck Moo has only been in business since the spring, Parker believes higher wages lead to better results. “We’ve had very low turnover,” said Parker. “Of the people that are working for us, we don’t have anybody disgruntled.” Over the weekend, three customers came up to Parker, without prompting, and thanked him for the quality of the customer service. Paying people more means you spend less time firing, hiring, and training. And Parker and Moorhouse would prefer to spend their time thinking about the business than supervising employees. “If I have to babysit these people, I’m a high priced baby-sitter.”
Well, sure, that's sound good until you realize, Brian Parker, that your fancy high wages may be good for your business, they also provide a "false seal of approval" to employees who should be forced to live in Hoovervilles and subsist on government cheese because they didn't get the proper training to deserve a living wage.
