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Comment by ItsMonkk | Hacker News Reader

The abstract states that there are 2.7% less fast food jobs, not 2.7% less jobs. There might be 2.7% less fast food restaurants as a result of this change, but in their place will be other businesses that employ people of higher than minimum wage. Those businesses might hire the best fast food workers while the average fast food worker continues to be employed doing fast food. As a result, there may be no people who have now become unemployed as a result of this change, and only increases in wages. The data is inconclusive.

Regardless, instead of arguing over which commercial property takes which spot and trying to engineer the perfect fit with the limitations we are dealing with, we should be increasing the amount of places that are zoned for commerce. This will bring increased demand for labor, which will increase wages.

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>in their place will be other businesses that employ people of higher than minimum wage.

Why would raising fast food minimum wage create these businesses?

If one of these fast food places shuts down, it's not like the lot is just going to sit vacant forever.

The primary effect of these types of laws is that businesses that employ fast food workers are less profitable, and thus when they compete against other businesses for a given lot, will bid less for the land. If the marginal buyer changes, it would have to do so to a business that relies less on minimum wage fast food workers.

That isn’t what’s happening. A lot of these areas are permanently hollowing out far beyond fast food, at least with respect to local businesses. Lots of places in decent neighborhoods are boarded up and stay that way. This is an issue even in some cities with strong population growth.

I recently had the mayor of a major west coast city tell me this was a permanent trend, that there was no way to reverse the loss of these small businesses and that the disposition of all that real estate was a major issue, compounded by a loss of basic neighborhood services like groceries that used to operate out of this real estate.

The future isn’t other businesses that somehow magically pay higher wages. The future city planners are seeing is all delivery all the time from warehouse districts, and ghost towns of commercial real estate for which there is no purpose. Even city centers are starting to turn into suburbs in terms of occupancy density.

Sure, but this has nothing to do with the land values which are still extremely positive. It has everything to do with Prop 13 allowing speculation. Repeal Prop 13 and all of those lots will be better cared for and rented out.

> their place will be other businesses that employ people of higher than minimum wage

Worth noting that California’s regime extends to fast food industry exclusively.

Presumably some of those job losses were absorbed by industries still paying minimum wage - retail, construction, warehousing, etc.

Presumably if those losses were not absorbed by those low-skill sectors, the job loss figure would've been higher.

So I guess, as you said, data is conclusive.

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