The higher the minimum wage, the higher the minimum prices on goods. It is a direct relationship.Ford still pays their employees enough to afford almost all of their vehicle lineups. This is basic economics, micro-economics. If you pay someone $15/hour, how many widgets do you need to produce and sell in order to stay afloat?
If you pay someone $9 a hour, 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, to produce a $5 widget that costs you $2 in material, how many widgets must you produce and sell just to break even?
$9x40 = $360 (benefits excluded, or other fees, etc.)
At $360/wk, you need to sell at least 120 widgets a week to account for the break even point. That's 3 widgets an hour. That's 120 widgets sold a week at $5.
120 widgets at $5 = $600 minus material cost of $2/widget ($240), $360.
For the employer, they have historical data to say they sell 150 widgets a week at $5. If they sold them for $4, demand might go up. If they sold them for $6, demand might go down. Again, this is per single employee.
If you pay the employee $15/hour minimum, that's a $6/hour increase the employer has to account for. They were selling 150 widgets a week, per employee, and raking in $150 profit a week.
At $15/hour per week, that's $600/week. They were only making $600 a week at $5/widget. Now, we assume that the company is producing at a reasonable rate - their best production rate to maximize profit.
So, $5 widget doesn't cut it anymore. Employees can't consistently produce more than 3 widgets/hour. Employees are paid bare minimum, costs are as low as they can go.. the only option left is to raise the price of the product.
$6/widget selling 130/week (we assume a natural drop because of the increase in price) is $780/week, leaving a $180/profit. They were maintaining $150, so that's where they want to stay.
$7/widget selling 100/week, again demand drops as price goes up, is $700/week. Only a $100 profit. Need it to be $150 - that is what the business was running before and paying operating costs, etc.
If it was $7 and selling 120 a week, that's $840/week, a $140 profit assuming demand remains constant.
The employer option is to raise the product's price and hope demand stays the same. If demand drops, they'll have to increase prices again to maintain previous profit per item.
Then move into the operating factors.
If they were producing 150 a week but price increase means they're only selling 100/widgets a week per employee, that means if they had 4 employees, one would be laid off. 4 employees were producing 600/widgets a week. Demand drops to 520/week at $6, one employee can be let go.
Demand drops because the price goes up, supply goes up temporarily and an employee is laid off citing decline in sales.