Up with an interesting idea. Make a pact to raise the minimum wage in all their counties. Therefore prevent any businesses from fleeing to less expensive areas. Here now are two of the men behind the plan. D. C. S City Council chairman Phil Mendelsohn and Montgomery County councilman mark elrich. There you both are, excellent. Thank you both for joining me. Chairman, if Companies Went out and did this would be price fixing, bid rigging. Why can counties do this and it is not illegal . I dont think that analogy works at all. Melissa why not . What is wrong with it . For about 60, 70 years the federal government set minimum wage for the country. Three jurisdictions set minimum wage for the region. You cant compare that with price fixing. The fact is that the minimum wage in 1968, if it had kept pace with inflation would be roughly equal to what we agreed to wage the minimum wage too which is 11. 50 over the next several years. This isnt about price fixing this is about Public Policy and it is about helping roughly, you know, improving the melissa finish with that. Helping roughly, because youre taking me to my next question and maybe other councilman wants to take it. Were only talking about lessf. And youre ban banding together and putting a lot of effort behind raising wages for a very small percentage. It makes it feel like gimmicky and political. Well i dont think that is correct either. The reason is because even though it is a small percentage of workers who get the minimum wage, it does tend to affect what the Wage Structure is within companies. So more people than that will benefit. Melissa councilman, what do you think . Were affecting a range that is bigger than 7. 25. Part of the problem is, this is all focused on difference between 7. 25 and 11. 50 but there is whole range of wages above 7. 25 which dont allow people to make a living and put a roof over their heads, feed themselves or meet their basic needs and needs of their families. So, it may be 3 of the people doing 7. 25 but the data we had in the county was that it is actually a larger percentage that fall under the rate theyre actually going to arrive at. The other thing that you dont account for people who make the least are the largest consumers of Government Services. I mean we run lots of programs in the county. Theyre all on sliding scales. Melissa but problem with that logic is that economists from the university of amherst say if you raise the minimum wage you will put half a Million People out of work. You say theyre biggest consumers Government Services but if you now force them on to the unemployment lines, because youve raised wage and businesses fire a few people, youre only making those people absorb even more services. What about that . Go ahead. That research, im curious about that because there have been met at that studies done about the effect of raising the minimum wage and the, it is very clear that there is not a net loss of jobs as a result of raising the minimum wage if we raise melissa i dont think it is very clear. I dont think the university of amherst is known to be conservative think tank. Its a pretty liberal institution. They say employment falls 3 for every 10 increase in labor costs. Follows the logic. If you have only so much to spend on labor and raise the Price Per Unit you will have less units overall. Just basic math. Now, but i dont know about that basic math because chamber of commerce for the District Of Columbia did this study, commissioned a study and that study did not say there would be a loss of jobs. The one thing they couldnt answer whether there would be dislocation of businesses and they concluded there wouldnt be. Yes, you could look at individual business and say, well make they would lay off a person. Maybe. Melissa yeah. But on the macro, there is not a loss of jobs from raising minimum wage. Melissa yeah well have agree to disagree. Please continue. Minimum wage has been stagnant for years. The minimum wage as i said at beginning if it kept the pace with inflation would be 10. 77 today across the country. By holding minimum wage down and basically requiring poverty wages we have not produced more jobs. That is not what produced more jobs. That nobody talks about well keep the minimum wage down as way of increasing jobs. Melissa lets let councilman elridge. There are business beyond the three borders. You include together and set minimum wage in your area but businesses can go even beyond that. Are you worried about that . What has the feedback been like . Im not very worried at all. When you look at sectors involved in the low wage market, theyre not sectors that are going to go anywhere. Mcdonalds melissa then why collude together in the first place . Why get counties together if theyre not going to move . I think there were some issues because we share really tight borders, you could literally cross the street be in a different county and not know youre in a different jurisdiction unless somebody told you, there would be ability for somebody literally to cross the street and take ad advantage lower rate. Melissa they could move. Youre contradicting the point you made just before that. I dont share that kind of border with the other jurisdictions around us. Going across the river or going up i270 or going up route 29 and 95 is way different than crossing georgia avenue. And those businesses are concentrated in basically hospitality services. Theyre not going anywhere. If you have a hotel and got customers for your hotel, hotel will not walk away from the customers who want to be in the d. C. Area. Melissa gentlemen, an interesting plan. Were out of time. Thanks for both of you coming on. Good luck to you. Thanks. Melissa fastfood workers around the country are protesting for higher pay some companies in the Food Industry are rated among the top places to work. What are they doing right . And why are their employees so happy . Texas roadhouses president is here with their secrets for success. And amazon may have delivered drugs but google has robots drones. They are awesome. Look at that . The internet giant owns robots that move like animals, insects like humans. Well tell you if there is a practical use for any of them. I dont know, look at that. What would you use that for . It might be a gimmick. More money coming up. You. Melissa what does it take to run one of the best companies to work for in the country . Glass doors list of the top 50 best companies to work for 2014 is out. There are a few surprises on there like some restaurants and Quick ServiceCompanies Making the grade. You might wonder how they do it especially in the midst of the wage wars, right . So texas roadhouse president is here to teach you how to keep employees happy. Thanks so much for coming on the show and congratulations. Well, thank you very much, melissa. Good afternoon to you. Melissa you know it is really impressive, glass door for anybody in the audience is opportunity for employees to go anonymously complain about the place where they work. In order to qualify for this survey the company had to have 1,000 employees and you needed 50 approved reviews on the site which means that they have independently verified that they are different people. So it is pretty hard to even qualify. You guys were in the top 50 along with Companies Like bain, twitter, eastman, facebook, google. I mean all kind of Big Companies who ostensibly pay a lot of money. What did you think about this . How do you do it . Well, were very proud of it, to say the least t really starts with our founder and ceo kent taylor, when he created the concept almost 20 years ago with a set of ideals. One of those made from scratch food. Which our employees are very proud of, Great Service. One of the big foundations is having fun and we have a lot of fun in our restaurants throughout our company and that is one of the things employees talk about most. They really love working for texas roadhouse. They have a lot of fun. Melissa i think a lost bosses think their employees are out there having fun or want to believe that and may not be true. Your guys in the video definitely look like theyre having fun. One of the things i noticed about you guys doing research you have hourly workers who you think would be making minimum wage which is exactly what we all have been debating. You have chosen in a lot of locations to pay i think 15 bucks an hour even where the minimum wage is half that. Is that a conscious decision . Am i getting the math right . Is that part of what is going right for you . Well the vast majority of our employees, hourly employees, do make more than minimum wage. A lot of them make substantially more than minimum wage as tipped employees. Were one of busiest restaurants in almost every city were located. It does so much business to give employees a lot of money in tips. Melissa do you try to make sure theyre making more than restaurants in the area . Is that one of the things you focus on . Absolutely. We want to be very, very competitive. Certainly when youve got happy employees, that will lead to happy guests. What would you do if they raised the minimum wage in your area . Youre targeting to keep it above so you can keep your folks happy and retain them, would you have to kick it up another notch . We definitely would pay them who are more. Were in 48 states and many of those states today have different minimum wage rate structures. So were kind of used to dealing with that we dont spend a lot of time worried about minimum wage. We spend more time worrying about the quality of our food and quality of our service and fundamentals of each restaurant. Melissa how do you make sure theyre having fun . That is a nice concept in the abstract. They are working. Theyre carrying food back and forth. Theyre dealing with hungry and irrational customers. How do you make that fun . Fortunately a lot of our customers are pretty happy because we do have great food and provide Great Service and great prices. That help as lot with job satisfaction. Our employees get to wear tshirts and jeans and they love that. We have contests. We have gift card contests going on. Some of our employees might win tvs as an example. We do tons of recognition. Melissa i dont want to run out of time. You have great incentive programs. The managing partner of the year award. You get a ring, a car and 20,000. You have a spouse of the year award. All kinds of different cash gifts and things throughout the year for all your employees to keep them motivated. What is the number one is in take you think other number one mistake folks in your businessessare doing with their employees. I think they forget the importance of employees in the business. They discontinue a lot of programs making a few extra bucks here and there. They forget how important those things are. As our employees. As goes our concept. Melissa very interesting to me, scott. Your story tells me the market works. By market force you are paying more because it makes sense for your business as opposed to the government telling you must pay more. You have a happy employees as a result. Interesting story. Thanks for coming on and congratulations to you. Youre very welcome. Thank you. Melissa google is buying up companies that make amazing robots. Have you seen these . They now own big dog, cheetah, and wildcat. But what are they planning to do with them . You have got to hear this. Why are chinese investors buying up properties by the hundreds . Moat town has motown has one of the worst economies in the nation. Its real estate is on high demand, sight unseen. Is detroit becoming one of chinas busiest cities . Dontar move. Do you ever have too much Treatment Options and cost estimat, so we can ke Better Health decisions. Thats health in numbers. Unitedhealthcare. Just by talking to a helmet. It grabbed the patients record before we even picked himp. It found out the doctor we neededas at st. Annes. Wiggle your toes. [ driver ] and it got his okay on treatment from miles away. It even pulled strings wi the stoplights. My ambunce talks with smoke alarms and pilots and adiums. But, of course, s a good listener too. [ female announcer ] today cisco is connecting the internet of everything. So everything works like never before. Melissa the race for robotics is on. Google amping up its game buying robot giant boston dynamics. This marks the tech titans 8th Robotics Company acquisition in just the past six months. This news comes on the heels of amazon announcing its future plan for Drone Deliveries but is this all really the rise of the machines or just a marketing ploy . Here now is tech guru ari, and joining us on the phone, marketing maven bruce terkel. Let me start with you. These robots are phenominal. Theyre very cool. What in the world would google use them for . For one thing, mapping is huge, because google has mapping overlay. Need a cheetah to do mapping. The robots could be out in the amazon and start mapping. Stop it. That is the silliest thing i ever heard. How about Disaster Recovery under rubble. So now the robots could run inside. Cheetah, wildcat. I have one at home. I have one in the backyard somewhere. Melissa you have the bobcat . That is fabulous. Bruce, were having problems with video. That is why youre on the phone. I wouldnt excuse you from this segment. You said with sampson drone this is marketing ploy is this a marketing ploy . This is not a marketing ploy. This is for real. Is the only ch wherewithal the means, motivation and now the company they acquired to actually be leaders in robotics. Nobody else is going to understand real world, real World Robotics like theyre going to have it from the programming to the function, the design, to the ip. They will have one management structure. This is the future. This is for real. In fact i think the google robots will shoot down the amazon drones. Melissa but what would they actually use them for . What is the function . Within the next 20 years, robots are going to take over, almost every manual task that is being done right now. Mapping is something google is involved in because of their mantra to make all information available. At some point robotics will take over. Again google has all of the requirements to make this happen. A guy like andy has been in robotics for 10 or 12 years. He knows this space. Here is the most important part from the marketing point of view because you know that is what i care about. Melissa okay. Robots are forefront of our imagination. Robots are the coolest thing out there. Google benefits being cool and trendy with the latest hip thing happening. Robots are hip. Melissa do you agree with that . For the most part. Robots are not new. They have been around 20 to 30 years. Weve only see them in industrial space. Now we move into the consumer space. I want to mention, bruce, obviously its a great marketing and great pr play but what were starting to see, robots also absorb and view content. So that is what google wants to profind the end useer. Why do i need a running cheetah to absorb content . Are they showing off functionality what they can possibly do or is there real practical function for the robots that look so much like animals . There is certainly functionality standpoint. From a humanitarian stand point, from Disaster Recovery, finding people under earthquakes these robots have a very, very distinct function. I think it is important to add saying that google is about search is like saying amazon sells books. I think search is the entree but now here you have tools that can do some other things all controlled with data that google will have at their disposal. I think you will see Amazing Things come out of this. Melissa bruce, if youre a company that for example, you need a robot to do a specific task for you, whatever it may be, to help you finish your line of business, you think google would be the one that would eventually develop and sell you that and manage that equipment for you . I absolutely do. Who would have thought that a couple years ago that would have been number two in the phone business . Who would have thought amazon bruce, i happen to disagree a little bit. What i see happening google being on the back end and google will go ahead and licensing this technology to Different Industries to develop. Melissa sure. I think they still manage it. Interesting, like the way we saw ibm move into services when the mainframe and box computer on top of your desk into commoditys. Same content. All Software Like indof the day, like bruce said. Andy ruben who built Android System is controlling robotics of convergence of package. Convergence is the key word. I love that. Thank you. Melissa bruce, thanks for hanging in there on the phone. We needed you, we love you. Thanks so much. Melissa all right. Earlier this year a chinese tv report claimed you could buy two houses in detroit for the same price as a pair of leather shoes. Now, chinese investors are snapping up depressed properties all over the city. Will an infusion of money from china turn the city around . Who made money today. They are the tech talk of the day. Probably never heard of them before. Keep watching and find out who it is. That was quite a tease. Piles of money coming right up. Its not the juggle a bunch of rotating categories card. s not the sign up for rewards each quarter card. Its the nogames, nomessinground, noearninglimithaving, doilooklikeimjoking, turboboosting, heavyweightchampion oftheworld cash back card. Thiss the quicksilver cash back card from capital one. Unlimited 1. 5 cash back on every purchase, everywhere, every single day. Now tell me, whats in your wallet . Mm. Mmhmm. 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