Buc-ee’s, the creator of the world’s greatest gas/charging stations and accompanying convenience stores that are beyond football field length, doesn’t need a law to compensate its employees well. Just the same, Buc-ee’s doesn’t consult “supply and demand” charts to happen on the “right” employee wages. Which means Buc-ee’s is a wonderful rejection of left AND right and their increasingly bogus economics.
To see why the above is true, consider the new Buc-ee’s location in Pass Christian, MS. Mississippi is a poor state by U.S. standards, so logic suggests the Buc-ee’s there would benefit economically from the relatively low wages that would prevail? That would be true if Buc-ee’s aimed for mediocrity. But since Buc-ee’s is great, low wages are anathema to it.
Buc-ee’s recognizes, as do all great businesses, that “supply and demand” notions when it comes to the people who represent the business are truly harmful. Yes, Buc-ee’s overpays. Low wages are prohibitively expensive. It overpays so that thousands compete for employment in its locations.
As a recent New York Times report about the Pass Christian superstore indicated, “pay starts at $18 an hour and goes as high as $225,000 a year for general managers.” Keep in mind that the minimum wage mandated by law in Mississippi is $7.25.
Which means Buc-ee’s is a reminder to the left that minimum wages are superfluous. The best businesses, and the U.S. is full of the best businesses, are invariably way ahead of politicians when it comes to compensation offered.
Conversely, members of the right claim that minimum wages foster unemployment. It’s those much-worshipped supply and demand curves at work. The right-leaning claim wage floors render would-be workers unemployable, and more puzzlingly, they claim the wage floors force automation.
More realistically, automation would be rampant even if the minimum wage were properly “zero,” or much better, less than zero. And this would be good for workers. What replaces them doesn’t put them out of work as much as it propels them to better work options, including places like Buc-ee’s. Much more importantly, superfluous minimum wages don’t put Americans out of work simply because the good and great are once again always paying more than they need to in the first place.
California instructs here. The minimum wage there is $16.50. California’s left cheer allegedly enlightened politicians who foisted the high number on California’s businesses. They’re incorrect about the need for wage floors, but so are California’s critics on the right; albeit for different reasons. The right-leaning claimed that wage floors in the Golden State would drive massive unemployment, and would severely limit the ability of fast food restaurants and other retailers to hire staff in the right amounts.
If this is doubted, just Google “California,” “minimum wage,” and “unemployment.” You’ll find lots of articles claiming a correlation between California’s mandates and the state’s headline rate of unemployment. Through the Buc-ee’s in Pass Christian, we can see how both sides are incorrect.
Wages at Buc-ee’s don’t just exceed Mississippi’s minimum wage, they also exceed California’s. It’s worth adding that in addition to $18/hour starting wages, the Times reports that Buc-ee’s offers three weeks of paid vacation annually, retirement plan contributions, plus health insurance. All this yet again in Mississippi.
It’s a long way of saying that the left are once again wrongheaded in clamoring for minimum wage laws. Good businesses don’t need laws to overpay their workers. Which is why the right’s impassioned op-eds about the horrors of wage minimums similarly overdo it. Good businesses aren’t just way ahead of lefty politicians on the matter of pay, they also see the right’s supply and demand charts in the rear-view mirror.
