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Comment by willcipriano | Hacker News Reader

> There are millions of people who can have a livable wage in a service industry.

There are millions of illegal immigrants, living 5 to a bedroom proping up the resturant industry. The back of house doesn't do very well at all, its only the wait staff that makes a fair wage for the effort.

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The solution is not to provide assistance to underpaid illegals. Better to penalize the company for hiring and underpaying them.

Ok so having roughly doubled the cost of restaurant meals what's our next move?

Not eat out often. Only on special occasions.

K so having bankrupted the restaurant industry, what's next?

Then we don't need so many immigrants.

Apparently we do if having a restaurant industry is desirable. We've already established raising wages to something that might attract less desperate applicants is a non-starter. Now if you were to say pivot the conversation to the H1-B system that fills more desirable jobs...

You aren't entitled to below cost dinners.

You trying to make this about me? I'm just the messenger. Restaurant margins don't support increased wages without passthrough to customers. People already bitch about the overhead associated with tipping waitstaff, one can easily extrapolate how they'd react to the changes in restaurant prices associated with labor costs tripling. If that makes you sad take it up with your neighbors.

Isn't America supposed to be the richest country in the world? You can afford to pay people a decent wage you just don't want to.

You could double the price of a beer in NYC or Miami and people would still come.

In fact they seem to have done this each time I've visited...

Richest by what metric? Household debt is up, personal savings are down, and wages have been stagnant here for decades. I'm sure the roughly 750 billionaires currently living in the country are having a fine time of it though.

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