Pizza Hut is laying off more than 1,200 delivery drivers in and around Los Angeles. The reason? The company will tell you it’s just a coincidence that the layoffs are coming just a few weeks before California increases the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 an hour.
But we know that’s not true.
The local news interviewed a customer who said it’s a shame that big corporations like Pizza Hut are laying off workers. But it’s not Pizza Hut’s fault. The State of California is completely to blame.
I feel compelled to point out that unskilled jobs like flipping burgers and delivering pizzas were never intended to allow anyone to support themselves.
Historically, until a few decades ago, these jobs were filled by high school and college students that wanted to make some money. Not a place to spend their entire lives, but a place for someone to learn that they need to work their ass off so they can do something more with their life.
So, historically, kids filled these jobs for a few months or at most, a year or two, and then went on to bigger and better things.
Lessons Not Learned
Then, a couple of things happened. First, the education system started caring less about teaching kids, and more about grabbing state money by improving their statistics. So, they taught kids how to do well on the tests, but not how to learn.
The thing they forgot, or maybe never knew, is that the main goal of grades K-12 isn’t about learning specific things. It’s teaching kids how to learn things on their own. Those years should be used to instill a lifetime of curiosity and give the kids the tools they need to figure things out by themselves.
Is everyone going to need trigonometry in their daily life? Probably not. But everyone does need the skills that you get by learning how to work through difficult problems. Especially working through things you’re not particularly good at nor interested in.
But when you teach kids how to correctly answer questions on a particular set of tests, they’re not learning anything. Except for answers to test questions they don’t even understand.
Making things even worse, to make time in the day for stupid woke, inclusive and diverse bullshit, they had to remove things like shop class, home economics and even basic algebra. You know, classes that could have given them practical skills like how to fix things, how to feed yourself and how to manage a budget.
Trophies For Everyone!
Finally, the schools decided they didn’t want to hurt a student’s self-esteem so they either nerfed down standardized tests or got rid of them completely. We can’t hold back little Tamika or Deshawn because that would hurt their feelings. And also because standardized tests are…you know… racist.
Without any kind of score keeping, the end result was that a high school diploma turned into the educational equivalent of a participation trophy. You don’t have to learn anything to earn it. You just need to show up.
It’s true that in spite of this some kids still do succeed. But that’s because they already have a strong work ethic and the ability to learn new things. But not all kids come with that right out of the box (so to speak).
So far two generations of students have been pushed through the education system with no practical skills and no ability to learn those skills on their own. And since they don’t have any skills, that means the only jobs they can do are unskilled, low paying jobs. Like delivering pizza.
So, instead of only high school and college kids flipping burgers and delivering pizzas, we’ve got a ton of grown-ass-adults who can’t do anything else. They’re trying to make a living doing things that were never, ever, intended to be anything but jobs that put a little extra cash in someone’s pocket. You shouldn’t be able to support yourself by solely doing one of these supposed-to-be part-time jobs.
Money for Nothing
Except the State of California doesn’t agree with that. So, they’re raising the minimum wage to $20 per hour. Well, technically, that’s not true. If you work at a fast-food joint, the minimum wage will be $20 per hour. But for everyone else, the minimum is $16 per hour.
Think about it. If I sweep the floors at Walmart, my minimum wage is $16. But if I do the exact same job at McDonald’s, I get paid $4 more per hour.
That makes as much sense as saying that places of worship are nonessential during a pandemic, but yet it is essential that liquor stores and massage parlors stay open. And it makes as much sense as believing that passing laws that restrict law-abiding citizens will somehow stop criminals from committing crimes.
But let’s not get sidetracked.
For-profit companies have one job. And that one job is to make a profit. Period. They’re not in business to make the world a better place nor are they in business to promote some Liberal agenda. No, they’re in business to make as much profit as possible.
Hands down, the biggest cost companies have is people. The people flipping burgers and delivering pizza were already getting paid what the job is worth. You’re a reasonable and intelligent person. What do you think will happen if you force companies to pay more for unskilled labor?
One of two things will happen. Either the company is going to increase revenue by charging more for their product, or they’re going to cut expenses. Those are the only two choices.
The Limits of Taste
I may not have mentioned this before, but I absolutely love pizza. Specifically, Pizza Hut Meat Lover’s pizza. I could eat that for every meal and be quite content. I have mentioned before that my personal limit for what I’ll pay for a Meat Lover’s pizza is $10. I don’t think a pizza from The Hut is worth any more than that.
Since Joe ruined the economy, I haven’t eaten my favorite pizza because the price of it has gone sky high. It’s not that I can’t pay the extra money. It’s that I won’t.
I just looked online, and I can get two Meat Lover’s pizzas for $34. That’s 70% more than I’m willing to pay. So, I don’t.
And Pizza Hut knows that.
They know that they’re at the limit of what most people would be willing to pay. But the State of California is forcing them to increase their costs. Pizza Hut can’t charge more to offset the increase in costs because people won’t pay more. And since they can’t increase revenue, they have to cut costs. The easiest and fastest way to do that is to eliminate jobs.
Anyone with half a brain could have predicted that the result of forcing companies to pay more for labor than that labor is worth is that the now-too-expensive jobs would disappear.
Like I said, people were already getting paid what the unskilled job they were doing is worth. Force a company to increase labor costs and they’re going to find a way to reduce those costs. And that means cutting jobs.
This isn’t rocket surgery.
The problem isn’t that fast food workers weren’t getting paid enough for the job they were doing. The problem is that the people doing those jobs are incapable of doing a job that is worth more.
And that’s a failure of the education system. It is not a failure of Corporate America.
Government handouts aren’t going to solve the problem and we shouldn’t be rewarding people for having no ambition. The solution isn’t to give people more for doing menial things. The solution is to teach people the skills they need to earn more money.
