The economic illiteracy of Americans — including most who have taken one or more college Economics classes — can be breathtaking. But instead of always complaining about this malady, I decided that with this article, I’d here offer a one-lesson business accounting course that SHOULD be taught in high school (if not at home).

Herewith, a cram course on the fundamental math of a retail business — specifically a fast-food establishment. And why almostallsuch culinary establishments will be cutting back their hours of operation — making that late-night fast-food eatery largely a thing of the past.

Every business has two kinds of costs:

1. Fixed Costs— These are costs that don’t change much from month to month. At the top of the list of fixed costs is usually property costs — mortgage (or rent), taxes, insurance. Add to that franchise fees, accounting cost, some insurance costs, etc.

2. Variable Costs— These costs primarily consist of the cost of goods sold, utilities, franchise percentage payments and… Read More

California’s minimum wage is set to rise to $15/hour over the next six years. While this topic has been beat to death, it is seldom pointed out that the inflation-adjusted minimum wage, based on 78 years of precedent, at most should only be around $10 per hour. Arecent UnionWatch post “Raise the Minimum Wage, or Lower the Cost of Living?,” proved this using CPI data. As can be seen, only once, in 1968, did the minimum wage in 2015 dollars exceed $10/hour.

Historical Minimum Wages Expressed in 2015 Dollars

From the State of California’s Department of Business Prevention comes another random minimum wage hike to help kill off more businesses. The final phase of the 2013 Assembly Bill 10 went into effect Jan. 1, bumping the minimum wage to $10-per-hour statewide. AB 10 is the final step of a two-stage increase. California and Massachusetts are now the states with the highest minimum wage. Only California is also home to the highest income taxes, sales taxes, and high property taxes. Bureaucrats Interfere Work should be valued only between those who … Read More

Flexing Republican muscle, the Irvine City Council is making headway on repealing years of heavy-handed Democrat policies, which are bad for business, and worse for taxpayers. On the heels of passage of the new Los Angeles minimum wage of $15.00 per hour by 2020, the new GOP supermajority in Irvine just repealed its “living wage” ordinance. While the rest of the state seems to be pushing for mandatory minimum wage laws, or higher minimum wage laws under Democrat majorities, killing free market principles, as well as driving up the cost of city contracts, and preventing many employable students from getting important work experience, Irvine is doing things differently. The Irvine City Council voted last week to repeal its Living Wage Ordinance, the only of its kind in all of Orange County.Where Republicans are governing, ridiculous and burdensome top-down mandates get cut. The City of Irvine website explains the living wage:

“The Living… Read More

Increases to the minimum wage in California are moving closer to reality. As reported on March 30th byMyNewsLA.com, “Los Angeles County Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis will ask their colleagues to approve spending up to $95,000 to have the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation review a series of studies of the issue performed in relation to the city of Los Angeles’ proposal to raise the minimum wage to $13.25 an hour by 2017 and to $15.25 an hour by 2019.” California’s minimum wage is currently $9.00 per hour. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 per hour. Largely lost in the debate over the “fight for fifteen” (dollars per hour) is America’s inflation adjusted minimum wage based on historical precedents. It’s an interesting topic that deserves discussion, becausehistorical minimum wagesexpressed in 2015 dollarsvary a great deal. Since … Read More

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson’s signature showed up on a letter to state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, expressing support for raising the statewide minimum wage to $13 by July 1, 2017. And then it didn’t. An announcement from the mayor’s staff said that “staff miscommunication” was to blame for Johnson’s signature on the letter. What happened? Is Johnson for or against a minimum wage increase? Did he sign the letter or not? Perhaps because Johnson is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which supports raising the federal minimum wage, his staff got their letters mixed up. (Big 10 mayors letter.pdf) Either way, the discussion should be about negative impacts on employment and income growth caused by minimum wage increases. Signature ‘Miscommunication?’ The Sacramento Bee … Read More

About 95% of the public policy studies and reports circulating among California state and local governments reject a free market approach to societal challenges. Instead, these studies and reportsadvocate more governmentspending, more government programs, and more government intrusion into commerce and personal behavior. Obviously “Progressive” intellectual thought in California gets a disproportionate share of funding. Who funds the policy institutes churning out the vision that will likely define the future of the state? You do. For many of these operations, government is a major source of funding. Federal, state, regional, and local governments move money around with little accountability through grants and contracts. Some of it ends up going to Left-leaning policy institutes. One notorious example of a government-funded policy institute is the union-oriented University of California Miguel Contreras Labor Program. After the California Labor Federation succeeded in establishing the program with a $6 million appropriation in the 2000-01 state budget, the annual budget always included a specific line-item amount for the program. The UC Labor Program … Read More

Does a salary increase of 17.6 percent translate into 17.6 percent better job performance? Chances are, it does not. The Los Angeles Unified School District and Service Employees International Union recently cut a dubious deal to increase 33,000 minimum-wage non-teaching workers’ pay to $15 an hour, nearly doubling some workers’ salaries. I wrote about it July 7 in “Dubious Deal Between Los Angeles School District and … Read More