He hasn’t found takers in over a year of running “help wanted” ads, so he’s made do by working extra shifts in the kitchen and paring back the menu.
Could it be that the offered wages are too low? Over a year and no takers says something about you not the workforce. But hey, kids can be payed even less, so let’s make it possible to put them to work serving adult beverages. And after that we can let the be farmhands on a pot farm.
Not every employer can afford to pay more. Restaurants in particular operate on very thin margins. If the minimum wage, whether natural or legal, goes above what they can afford, the outcome isn’t restaurants that pay more, it’s fewer restaurant jobs.
This is just one of the many reasons why people who actually care about the poor, working or otherwise, should be transitioning away from a massive package of subsidies and entitlements that separately target an innumerable number of groups that need some kind of help (including workers whose wages are insufficient to live) and toward a single Basic Income program. In addition to being much cheaper to administer and much easier to access, it would also allow us to put the burden on those privileged individuals and entities that can actually afford to bear the burden, rather than putting up a sign that says “your business must be at least this profitable to operate”.
If a business can’t afford to pay a living wage then it shouldn’t really be in business.