$20/HR Minimum Wage! Is It A Win For Employees?

[00:00:00.000] - Alice

Welcome to Books in the Biz, a podcast that looks at both the financial and operational sides of success. Please welcome our hosts, Dan Paulson and Richard Veltre. Dan is the CEO of Envision Development International, and he works with leaders to increase sales and profits through great cultures with solid operations.

[00:00:26.770] - Alice

Rich is CEO of the Veltre Group and a financial strategist working with companies to manage their money more effectively. Now on to the podcast.

[00:00:33.560] - Dan Paulson

Thank you, Alice. Welcome to Books and the Biz. How are you doing, Rich?

[00:00:41.070] - Rich Veltre

I am doing well. How about you, Dan?

[00:00:43.090] - Dan Paulson

I am doing wonderful. It is Thursday afternoon, at least for us. Everyone out west of us is still a little bit earlier, but they can deal with it. So what you've been up to? How's tax season been going?

[00:00:56.480] - Rich Veltre

Oh, not too bad. Got it under... I You know what? I got to knock on the wood desk. I was going to say, got it under control. And that's a bad thing to say on the 11th of the month. So I think I'm going to stop there. Just say it's okay, Dan. It's okay.

[00:01:16.250] - Dan Paulson

It's okay. I understand that completely. Well, hey, in some ways, we're talking about taxes today. It's definitely a tax on all income levels, at least, especially the lower income levels, but also businesses. So we found this article a week ago. I think that's when the law came into effect. But California has decided to put it upon themselves to make sure that minimum wage workers, specifically ones that work in fast food restaurants, get $20 an hour. And I'm impressed by that. I'm like, how well is this going to work? And what havoc is this going to cause on not only the businesses in California, but I always believe that when California does something, there's almost always a ripple effect to it. And other people think, well, if California is good enough to do it, then maybe we should do it, too. But all I can think of with this particular law, and actually another one we're going to be talking about that California implemented is just pure chaos and actually costing employees more money than it's going to help them make. What was your thoughts on that?

[00:02:27.480] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, I think, yet again, dealing with the government thinking it knows how to deal with the private sector, and we operate differently. So my concern always is, is the ripple effect well thought out? Or is it just yet again a knee-jerk reaction to something, and somebody got a happy day, and then a week later, they regret the fact that they did it? So I don't know yet. So my jury is still out a bit on the $20 an hour minimum wage.

[00:03:06.150] - Dan Paulson

Well, I've done a little bit of research on this, and just so people can see what we're talking about, I'm going to pull up one of the articles here. So here's an example. California's minimum wage has both workers, franchisees, and politicians divided. And I think here's the big reason for it. The law only really applies to fast vast food chains franchises over a certain number of people. And there's even some gray area in that. I'm sure some people might have heard that certain people or certain companies got an exemption from it. I believe Panera Bread is exempt from this because they wrote in the law that if you serve baked goods or serve bread, or something like that, it's pretty specific to one particular company. You're not qualified for this. So And then you find out that the governor of California and the CEO of Panera are best friends, and he spent money on campaigns, though it supposedly hasn't donated that much. But that's just one of the interesting aspects of it. It seems like they picked and choose who qualifies and who doesn't. Now, you might look at it and say, well, if it's only fast food change, it's only large companies, then everyone else is okay, right?

[00:04:28.890] - Dan Paulson

Well, I believe the minimum wage in California is already $16 an hour. If you remember for several years now, they've been making a push to have a national $15 an hour minimum wage. So California is already exceeding what most people are wanting to set as the government minimum. Now you've got a specific group of people who are making $20 an hour. And I think of, Rich, I don't know what size town you are in in New Jersey, but I think you're not in one of the huge metropolises. You're in one of the smaller towns. But even in the bigger cities, you have businesses that aren't franchises, aren't food chains. They're mom and pop shops. They might have one location, or they might have a couple of locations, but they don't have hundreds of locations. They don't have ways to distribute costs over multiple things. I'll let you get into some of this. But from my experience in the restaurant industry, you benefit from economies of scale. So you take a McDonald's or a Burger King or somebody like that because they have thousands of restaurants, and they're ordering so much, they get a much lower price than, say, a mom and pop shop would.

[00:05:36.500] - Dan Paulson

So that's one benefit. And so if you up their labor costs a little bit, and I saw this online because somebody pointed out that, Well, here's a picture of the menu at Burger King in California, and the big, not Big Mac, because it's McDonald's, but the Wapper only went up by like 40 cents, and something else went up by 30 cents. So it's really, you're paying a buck more for somebody to get a quote unquote living wage. But again, that's because you have somebody who can lower their food costs, maybe change the quantity or the volume of food that they're giving out in those meals and absorb some of that. So it's not as big of an offset. Now you take that to a smaller restaurant, and they've got to hire people, too. And they're already paying $16 an hour. But then the McDonald's across the street now is paying a minimum of $20 an hour. In some cases, they might even be paying more than that because if everyone was the middle workers or the good workers were making $20 an hour, and now the new workers come in at $20. Well, the middle workers are probably going to get a bump up proportionately, and the managers are going to get a bump up proportionately, and so on and so forth.

[00:06:55.600] - Dan Paulson

But now it makes it more difficult if you're a small operation to hire your help, because how are you going to compete? So what do you do? You raise your rate to meet the rates of the others, which then, of course, your food costs increase that much more because you're not buying a thousand pounds of hamburger a week. You might be buying a couple of hundred. So there's a big difference here. And I guess that's from the operations perspective, I look at it and say, is this really good for employees? And to be clear on my viewpoint, I always talk to my clients about, you need be above market rate. You should be in the top, I would say, 70 to 80th percentile within your industry for what you're paying people if you want good people, because good people should be paid more for what they're doing. That doesn't mean you pay everyone the same, nor does it mean somebody who has zero experience is just starting out, should make the money that somebody who has maybe 10 years of experience at doing a particular job should be. I also think that there are certain jobs that are more of an entry level position to help you develop communication skills, develop organizational skills, learn what it means to work and what it means to earn money.

[00:08:08.280] - Dan Paulson

But that's not where you stop. That's an entry level point. And what I think of is high school students, some cases, college students, some cases, people who maybe are getting back on their feet for something and trying to build a career. That shouldn't be looked at as that's the only job that they can get. However, we can go into another story about why that ends up happening. But that's some of the issues that I'm seeing early on that are really going to be impacted by this law. And I think it's not going to be good for the employees because you've now raised the bar for everyone. What does that mean for rent? What does that mean for food? What does that mean for everything else? Everything else is going to need to go up proportionately in that state. So now $20 an hour isn't enough. When is it going to be $30 an hour, $50 an hour, $100 an hour? Where's the cut off? That's what I need to know.

[00:08:59.860] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, I I think from my perspective, you hit on a lot of the same points that I did. I went through the article, I started writing down my notes. And the first thing that I thought of was my 16-year-old son works at one of the drink places in town. And I'm like, it's great for him. It's a learning experience. Should he be paid $20 an hour for his part-time experience, which you just mentioned in what you were saying? So I'm just It's repeating that from the finance standpoint, from the dollars and cents standpoint, I'm hitting on the same points as you are, right? So should he be making $20 an hour, or should he make the $15 an hour or $10 an hour, whatever it is he makes, because I can't remember. But should he make the 15? And the five is the cost of the learning experience. Now, if you talk about somebody who's taking this job as a full-time job because that's their skill set, $20 $20 an hour is a $40,000 a year job. Right. I mean, so that starts to make sense from a full-time perspective. Like $20 an hour, you're working there full-time.

[00:10:13.410] - Rich Veltre

Shouldn't that be what somebody should be making in this country? One of the richest in the world.

[00:10:19.040] - Dan Paulson

So you can't help- But here's the thing, Rich. I've worked in the restaurant industry. I've been a manager there. Nobody or very, very, very few people who aren't in a management role get 40 hours a week. I would say in most cases, because of flexibility and schedules and everything else, 20 to 30 is probably on the high side. So now take your... Do your math on your $20 an hour and put that time, say, a 25 hour a week position, you're still well below where you need to be, because I just haven't seen it, whether it's Burger King, McDonald's, It's a small restaurant chain. You look at the flexibility of the individuals, and this is why you have 30 to 40 employees, even a small restaurant, because somebody can't work Saturday, or somebody can't work mornings, or somebody can't work evenings. And then you have to have enough flexibility. So as your workflow increases and decreases, because you have peaks and valleys within the restaurant industry, some days are going to be more productive and you're going to have more need for more people based off of the volume per hour you're doing. And other days you're going to need So now you see this expansion and contraction of number of employees that you have on during certain times of the day.

[00:11:36.600] - Dan Paulson

So even somebody who is a high value employee, if they're just an employee, in most cases, they might work a lunch rush, or they might work an evening rush, or even if they do that three or four times a week, again, there's still about 25 to 30 hours a week. So that's where I struggle with all this is while it might, let's even say it's in the best of intentions. I just really struggle to see see how this benefits. Actually, I was talking with an executive yesterday, and we got on the subject here because we were talking about our kids. And my son works for a local food chain here in Wisconsin. And he was relating to And I have a story where he has a worker. And it's a manufacturing company, and the guy, I believe, did welding or whatnot. And he comes up to this man, his boss, and says, hey, my kid's 18 years old, and he's making 1925. At this restaurant, and I'm making $25. I have 20 years of skill as a welder, and this kid's not even just out of school, and he's already making just four or five dollars short of where I'm at.

[00:12:50.070] - Dan Paulson

How is that fair? And why should I work here? Maybe I should go work for the restaurant. So that's the other thing that you start running into is, there's different industries, there's different needs There's different levels of skills and qualifications. Urban areas pay differently than rural areas for various reasons due to cost of living and expenses and whatnot. I just really don't see where this is going to help the the end result that they're trying to create.

[00:13:18.750] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, well, on top of that, add the next piece to it. Well, before I leave that, you use the word benefits, and that's the other part that we haven't even touched on, right? So you're right. If somebody's only getting $25, $30, they're in $25, $30 a week, they're not going to qualify for benefits, which means they have to buy them themselves, which puts them out into potentially a marketplace or an exchange or in order to get an affordable health care, and who's affordable, right? So that's a whole another piece to this spider web. But then add the next piece, which is look at it from the corporate side of it, that, yes, this benefits the workers. But the business owner, the articles alluded to a couple of things, and I wrote them down in these little notes that I wrote. The biggest chain is going to smile, complain, jump up and down, whatever. But the first thing they're going to do is they're going to lay people off because the increased wage is going to not fit their bottom line, so they're going to have to make it fit, and they'll sacrifice a bit of, shall we say, customer experience in order to make sure they hit the bottom line that they promise their shareholders or their partners.

[00:14:43.330] - Rich Veltre

Then you get to the middle size chain that looks at it and says, well, the first thing I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to automate, or I'm going to have to change and use more kiosks. Changes some of the user experience, but they again have to hit their bottom line. So the ones that are are affected the most are the smallest businesses.

[00:15:04.040] - Dan Paulson

Exactly.

[00:15:05.100] - Rich Veltre

Because the biggest businesses, they'll just shed it off like a snake shedding its skin.

[00:15:13.200] - Dan Paulson

You use that analogy on purpose, did we? Yeah, maybe. Maybe. With some of them anyway. There are good companies out there.

[00:15:22.120] - Rich Veltre

Yes, there are. And I apologize. It was funny. But the middle group finds a way guy is going to find their way around labor costs. And then the small guy is going to try to say, this is a great opportunity for us. Look at this labor pool. And then they're going to say, but we can't afford it. So who's going to benefit? Are you going to wind up with more of these people on unemployment, but can say that everybody's got a $20 an hour minimum wage? Because what's the qualifying number? And this is where in the beginning, when I said that this is a government reaction, and not following it all the way through, somebody got to release balloons because they got the $20 an hour. But what's the residual effect? What's the piece that comes out five years from now, when the data finally catches up? And they say, oh, unemployment is up. Or because these people were the ones that got put onto the unemployment line, they don't have the skills to move on to the next, because there's nothing in here that talks about training these people. There's nothing to redeploy or rearrange.

[00:16:34.010] - Rich Veltre

So that's the short-sightedness of the whole thing.

[00:16:37.880] - Dan Paulson

And to me, that's the bigger issue is you are eliminating those entry-level positions where people gain the basic skills that allow them to advance in their career. Now, there are certain people out there, obviously, that they have no motivation to go beyond the bare minimum. That's just human nature. So we can't always We can't put everyone on an equal playing field here. But there are a number of people that, given the opportunity, and given the skills, and given the training, move either into management roles, or moved into higher skill level positions, or it allows them to advance maybe into a new career altogether. But now you take away all that stuff that bills are basic human skills of communication, conflict management, customer service, all what they call the soft skills that you don't get otherwise. And there's no opportunity, as you point out, if they go on unemployment, what does that do? Well, they're going to get paid probably an eighth of what they would get paid working. And where are they going from there? Then it goes to different entitlement benefits and whatnot. And we really haven't moved the needle any further ahead. But you know what's going to happen in five years, Rich.

[00:17:51.870] - Dan Paulson

They're going to say, well, see that $20 an hour wasn't enough, so now we need to up it to $40. Of course, there are. Now $40 becomes the minimum wage, and that's the of the state or the land or whatever they do. And it just keeps going up. Because I would say even at $20 an hour, depending upon where you live, that's not even going to get you by. So here we are, government is trying to fix a problem that they created, and I just don't see how this is going to get them out of it.

[00:18:21.630] - Rich Veltre

I see the same thing. I see it just being problematic. And it's just going to need constant to be retweet. And I think you're right. I think eventually they think the tweak is, well, we just didn't do enough. We didn't do more. Yes. Okay.

[00:18:40.120] - Dan Paulson

And away we go again. And away we go again. And they'll still do Whatever they want.

[00:18:46.090] - Rich Veltre

In five years, we'll have another podcast that'll just be- We'll just replay this one again, and we'll just add it in the 20 to- We'll go in and scratch out the 20.

[00:18:55.830] - Dan Paulson

But to what we're talking about here, for those who are watching, they'll see it. But for those who are listening, they won't. I pulled up this fortune article, and once we got past the paywall so we could read it again, we pulled it up here. And basically it says, California's new $20 an hour fast food minimum wage is so good that schools are worried they can't compete for cafeteria workers. So here, again, is another one of those negative ripple effects is you might say, well, the small mom and pop guy, they got to suck it up, pull up their big pants and just pay the higher wage and charge the higher amounts. But I mean, I saw an article, what, three weeks ago where somebody went to Five Guys and they spent like 30 bucks on a burger, fries and a shake. If that's what we're turning to where one meal costs 30 to 40 bucks at what we would call a fast food restaurant or a fast casual restaurant, how can people afford that? Because who tends to go to maybe more fast food places to get their nutrition? Whether you like it or not, it tends to be middle or lower income people who spend more time going there, because in the past, it was at least an affordable meal that would fill you up.

[00:20:11.110] - Dan Paulson

Now, I would argue it doesn't do even that. But here in this situation in California, now you're looking at the school saying, well, we're not going to get enough help to feed the kids. I don't know about you, but that's where I start thinking, okay, now we already talk about kids maybe not getting enough nutrition or not being able to get food because of their income levels and how important school is, because sometimes that's their only good meal of the day. And now they're going to struggle to even get employees in to manage that. That's not going to be a good situation.

[00:20:42.880] - Rich Veltre

No, no. And again, this whole shuffle thing, because now you get to that point, like you said, people are going to chase the $20 an hour, because they're going to jump off of whatever they were doing. And you don't know where that ripple effect is going to come from. And here's point one. The state-covered cafeteria workers are the first ones to say, Hey, state, thanks a lot for the $20. Go find other people. And now the state is going to have to pay the dollars anyway to replace those people. Exactly. I don't know where they're going to get them from.

[00:21:25.560] - Dan Paulson

Yeah. I mean, there's already people not able to fill those positions as it is. So Now you've just made it that much tougher. But hey, Rich, here's what we can do. And maybe this is what we should coach our people on. Why don't we start working more in the gig economy? So this is where you're an Uber driver, maybe you work or start in a band or you use some talent or skill you have to make more income. And you're in California. Well, guess what? I'm going to pull this up here, too. I think this is the... Here we go. Watch out. California's damaging gig worker law is going nationwide. So the whole point of creating this law was because they were recognizing that people who drive in an Uber, people who participate in different gig projects where maybe they're selling their services on an app, and that's giving them an opportunity to market their wares to somebody. They said, well, that person is not making a fair wage doing that. So we're going to put in place a law where that person basically has to become an employee. And that's where you've seen Uber and Lyft in a lot of these companies now start pulling out of California and a lot of the West Coast states.

[00:22:47.590] - Dan Paulson

But here's the other problem that happens. It doesn't only affect them. It affects the yoga workers. It affects the guys that play in your bar band on the weekends. It affects all these other positions that we take for granted Where people are making either side money or they're making good cash doing it. And I think on this article, I don't know where I can find it on here, but it talked about a guy who has a band. And he'd have He has himself, he has a drummer. There's another guitar player, whatever. He said, in order for us to actually play again, I would have to form an LLC. I would then have to hire all these people as employees. I would then have to pay them an hourly wage. I would then have to pay unemployment benefits. I would then have to pay other benefits. And it goes on and on and on. And he's like, that just completely takes us out of the market. So guess what? We no longer have a band. We no longer can do this stuff. And that's the other damaging things about these laws, is they basically take away opportunities for people to make money.

[00:23:51.740] - Dan Paulson

And I know some people argue and say, well, if, for example, Uber isn't paying enough for somebody to be able to live off of, then that's not fair. So why should they have that job? But I'm sure if you talk to the Uber driver, he'll say, well, it makes enough money for me to get by or to pay expenses. And now I don't even have that opportunity. So you've taken money off my plate. And I've got no way to replace that now because nobody else is going to hire me to do this stuff. So again, another example of where best intentions, I'll say, of putting this in place takes away opportunities for others to make money and earn a living.

[00:24:33.010] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, it's such a shame, too, because I am a huge proponent of the gig economy. So I really do believe that everyone should... I believe that everybody should have that opportunity to be out on their own. So forcing people to get back on the on the payroll just seems like a... God, I hate to say this, the bigger government concept.

[00:25:13.860] - Dan Paulson

Yes.

[00:25:14.480] - Rich Veltre

Because eventually, the biggest employer is going to wind up being the government, which takes away the American dream. And now I sound like I should be waving a flag behind my head. I know. But I'm a big proponent of do it on your own because giving somebody else the opportunity to put you on that payroll puts you in a position of losing control.

[00:25:41.560] - Dan Paulson

Yeah.

[00:25:42.950] - Rich Veltre

And so I'm hurt when I see this stuff. I really am. I'm wounded. So I really want to get behind going against that level of push for people to have to be controlled by someone else. And the thing that immediately goes through my head is, the more people on payroll, the more state unemployment payments, the more state benefits, federal benefits. And it has nothing to do with whether or not it's good for the employee. It has everything to do with taking care of the system.

[00:26:18.810] - Dan Paulson

That, to me, is exactly it. That's what I read into this, is it just creates a larger tax base for them to pull money from. But again, it backfires because now people that would... If you own If you earn over a certain amount, you have to pay in taxes on that money anyway. So you get the benefit from doing that. But now, if you've created a situation where those jobs are no longer viable, nobody's getting anything. The state is not getting any tax revenue out of it, either through sales tax or income tax or anything like that. And the gig worker doesn't get the chance to earn any extra income. So here we are back to square one, and we could talk round around about this. But I think we've talked enough about what's possibly broken with this. I guess what can we do? What do you see doing from a finance side that might combat this? Because if it's the law, you got to deal with it. My recommendation, if it isn't the law in your state, then you get on the horn with your your representatives and you make it clear that this is not going to benefit them, the state or the the employees at all.

[00:27:32.600] - Dan Paulson

And don't vote something like this in place. But if you got to deal with it, how do you deal with it?

[00:27:40.470] - Rich Veltre

I agree with you. If it's not here yet and you could try to do whatever you can to not let it be here, great. If it's already there, then I think that you have to point out the negatives to the people who somehow think it's entirely positive and are proponents. I think like the $20 an hour, it's targeted. It's only targeting a certain worker base. If that worker base makes sense, then try to figure out, are you really limiting it too much? Should it be a little bit broader in the category? Should it be a little bit thinner in the category? How do you decide? There's got to be ways that we can point out to people that this may work in in some instances, but trying to make it across the board, as you said, you try to make it so that it blankets everyone, it's not going to work because everyone's in a different situation. Everyone's in a different wage category. So how do you justify the fact that a welder is now thinking, maybe I should go work at McDonald's?

[00:28:57.800] - Dan Paulson

Well, for me, So again, me being the free market capitalist I am, I believe it takes care of itself. And here's the example. Let's talk about the welder example, the story that I brought up a few minutes ago. They're already getting paid 19.50 an hour at a local restaurant here in Wisconsin. We're nowhere near California. So this is an example of where if the population isn't there and you need help, in order to get that help, you got to pay more wages. If that part just naturally takes care of itself, it's not a forced issue because population demographics, we know our population is shrinking, and we know there's fewer generations, fewer in the upcoming generations to fill the job roles that we have. The other side of it, though, I look at is this is now an excuse before you get into this situation. Automate where you can, streamline where you can, look for other ways to conserve labor as you need to. So that way, if something like this were to happen, you're already in a good position where that's not going to impact you directly. That said, I still think, again, we need to coach the next generation up, give them experience.

[00:30:13.250] - Dan Paulson

So then you got to figure out how to manage the And it's a balance between hiring new help versus automating systems so that you need fewer people to do it.

[00:30:24.350] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, but it's interesting, isn't it? That a lot of the conversations that we have and a lot of conversations we hear from people, they're already there. So, again, are you rushing to take care of a problem that, like you said, might take care of itself or might morph into a bigger problem? If the world changes and continues to change at the speed that it's changing now, how is this really But this conversation about this law must have started a year and a half more ago, and now you're dealing with a problem that you had a year and a half ago, and the problem might be completely different by the time you got it passed.

[00:31:12.860] - Dan Paulson

Exactly.

[00:31:14.720] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, I struggle.

[00:31:18.480] - Dan Paulson

And we talk about ripple effects, and I just pulled up for those of you who are not watching another article here, and this is local. This is right in my backyard. Conagra, which is a large company, Birdseye Foods, which frozen fruits, vegetables, that stuff. They had a facility in a smaller town not too far from here. It's not in a large metropolis. It's in a town of probably about, I think, 20,000 people, 10 to 20,000 people. They now lost 250 jobs because they're closing that plant this year. And when you read into the article, you found out the reasons for closing the plant were increased wages, increased inflation, and the fact that they have other facilities elsewhere that are automated, where they don't need as many employees to run it. So again, this is the ripple effect that I'm talking about or that we're talking about here is, as you keep increasing these wages, businesses still have to find a way to make profit. And profit isn't evil because guess what? It pays the taxes, it pays the employees, it pays for new technology. It allows us to have the lifestyles that we all enjoy here in this country.

[00:32:27.340] - Dan Paulson

But if you keep doing this, eventually you're going to put in a position where they're going to automate as much as possible, which then eliminates, again, those positions that allow people to start their careers and also advance.

[00:32:40.590] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, this article was, again, hurt. We're seeing this all over. We're going to see this more.

[00:32:51.680] - Dan Paulson

Yes.

[00:32:52.340] - Rich Veltre

We're really going to see this more, and it's going to accelerate. And I think that the labor cost part of the whole conversation is going to be a hundred 100 % different in a matter of, I can't say years because I don't know it's going to take that long.

[00:33:08.030] - Dan Paulson

Yeah, I think we're on the cusp of all this starting to steamroll through, which means as a business, you need to really be looking at not only today what you're doing, especially if the income that you're generating is good today, you need to start looking three years, five years, 10 years down the road now. So that way you can start implementing things while times are good and get your business set up so that it's going to be successful and profitable either way. And that's where you can talk to either one of us. So Rich, how do they get a hold of you if they want to find out how to streamline their finance us better because they're concerned about paying people more money or having to automate their systems and wondering where they're going to come up with the cash for that?

[00:33:53.460] - Rich Veltre

Best way is to drop me an email at rveltre@veltregroup.com.

[00:33:57.880] - Dan Paulson

And hey, if you need to get a hold of me because Now you need to optimize your systems and put in place processes to keep those costs down and make your employees work more effective. I can help you do that. You can reach me at danpaulsonletsgo.com. Be sure to follow us here, booksnbiz.com. That's B-O-O-K-S, letter N-B-I-Z. Com. That's where you'll hear all these wonderful audio podcasts. We are also available on YouTube, and you can find us pretty much streaming on most social media channels. Rich, this has been a fun conversation. It's always interesting to get your insights on all this, and I'm sure there will be much more to come in the very near future on wages, labor, and what's changing.

[00:34:40.010] - Rich Veltre

Absolutely, 100 %. And look forward to continuing to chat with you on it.

[00:34:45.160] - Dan Paulson

All right. We will talk to you later. Have a good one.

[00:34:47.880] - Rich Veltre

All right. Take care.