The minimum wage has been and always will be zero. As many states and locales that have passed ever-higher minimum wage hikes are learning to their sorrow, the cost of an employee must be less than the value added to the business by that employee, and minimum wage hikes can negate that added value.

Food service establishments are particularly vulnerable. My father-in-law ran cafeterias in several places for almost 60 years before finally retiring at age 80, and he has repeatedly maintained that not only are food service establishments the most failure-prone of small business models, but they also operate on small margins. Now, with the advent of the new year, the city of Seattle's minimum wage law has gone into effect, and one small restauranteur has already closed her doors.

The owner of a popular waffle shop in West Seattle said she had no choice but to shut down her business after the city’s new minimum wage law went into effect on New Year’s Day — hiking hourly pay to $20.76.

Bebop Waffle Shop, which was founded by a former New York City resident more than a decade ago, closed its doors for good on Monday.

“I’ve cried every day,” Corina Luckenbach, the waffle shop owner, told Fox 13 TV.

What's heartbreaking about this is the way it hits small, independent businesses - like the Bebop Waffle Shop. The big chains have resources; they can adopt technologies, like self-ordering kiosks and burger-bots to attenuate the fiscal damage done by mandated minimum wage hikes. Small businesses cannot, and while it's tempting to point out that the people of Seattle voted for this city government and likely will continue to support blue-city policies, this doesn't help Corina Luckenbach's former employees any.

Of course, in Seattle, there are more problems than just the minimum wage hike:

Luckenbach, who founded Bebop more than 10 years ago after relocating from New York to the Emerald City, said that her business had already been suffering from high inflation which caused the price of food to spike.

The waffle shop has also been hamstrung by lower foot traffic in the city — a result of many people working from home.

The minimum wage increase was the last straw, she said.

Let's see - Inflation is largely caused by the economic illiteracy of the Biden administration. Lower foot traffic - while we don't have those numbers, this may very well be not only the working-from-home matter but also the increasing crime and rampant homelessness in Seattle, that latter piece being something I witnessed for myself only last year.

Whatever the contributing factors, the Bebop Waffle Shop is still closing its doors, and the minimum wage hike was the deciding factor.

“This is financially just not going to make sense anymore. Because, just for me, the increase would cost me $32,000 more a year,” Luckenbach told Fox 13 TV.

The minimum wage law - any minimum wage law - is a stupid idea. It's sold with envy, it's economically illiterate, and minimum wage laws at the federal level are unconstitutional to boot; meddling with wages is not among Congress's or the Executive's enumerated powers. But worse is the idiocy of the claim that a minimum wage must be a "living wage." A minimum wage is for high school kids with part-time jobs, and not that many high school kids work at part-time jobs anymore. Anyone who is trying to raise a family on a minimum wage job, frankly, needs to take a long, hard look at their life.

See Related: The Minimum Wage: Fact vs. Fiction

California's Fast-Food Industry Suffers, While Gavin Newsom Prepares His Exit

As for Seattle, it is as H.L. Mencken said, "Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard." The people of Seattle would seem to be learning that lesson - the hard way. Whether it sinks in or not remains to be seen.