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When Minimum-Wage Hikes Hit a San Francisco Comic-Book Store
National Review ^ | 05/01/2015 | Ian Tuttle

Posted on 05/01/2015 6:47:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

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1 posted on 05/01/2015 6:47:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
"Despite being a progressive living in San Francisco..."

Well, there's your first problem right there.

2 posted on 05/01/2015 6:51:38 AM PDT by Fresh Wind (Falcon 105)
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To: SeekAndFind
‘I’m hearing from a lot of customers, ‘I voted for that, and I didn’t realize it would affect you.’”

Liberals being liberals. Duh!

3 posted on 05/01/2015 6:52:50 AM PDT by Don Corleone ("Oil the gun..eat the cannoli. Take it to the Mattress.")
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To: SeekAndFind

Holding on to an anchor of socialism while insisting capitalism is bad but trying to make a living in the free market. Bipolar thinking.


4 posted on 05/01/2015 6:54:24 AM PDT by Redcitizen
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To: SeekAndFind

5 posted on 05/01/2015 6:55:17 AM PDT by Malone LaVeigh
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To: Fresh Wind

6 posted on 05/01/2015 6:56:02 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
“I was appalled!” he says. “My jaw dropped. Eighty-thousand a year! I didn’t know that. I thought we were talking a small amount of money, something I could absorb.”


7 posted on 05/01/2015 6:58:28 AM PDT by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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To: SeekAndFind
San Francisco’s Proposition J, which 77 percent of voters approved in November, will raise the minimum wage in the city to $15 by 2018. As of today, May 1, Hibbs is required by law to pay his employees at Comix Experience, and its sister store, Comix Experience Outpost on Ocean Avenue, $12.25 per hour. That’s just the first of four incremental raises that threaten to put hundreds of such shops out of business....

...He notes with pride that his store has turned a profit each year — no small task — since its very first year [1989]. But that may not last. Hibbs says that the $15-an-hour minimum wage will require a staggering $80,000 in extra revenue annually. “I was appalled!” he says. “My jaw dropped. Eighty-thousand a year! I didn’t know that. I thought we were talking a small amount of money, something I could absorb.” He runs a tight operation already, he says. Comix Experience is open ten hours a day, seven days a week, with usually just one employee at each store at a time. It’s not viable to cut hours, he says, because his slowest hours are in the middle of the day. And he can’t raise prices, because comic books and graphic novels have their retail prices printed on the cover.

How he managed to make a profit every year, and still think this "small amount of money" would be a business cost that was "something he could absorb" escapes me. Welcome to the cost of theft-by-ballot-box.

8 posted on 05/01/2015 7:01:02 AM PDT by Alex Murphy ("the defacto Leader of the FR Calvinist Protestant Brigades")
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To: Fresh Wind

Shoulda checked with Kipling first

“The Gods of the Copybook Headings”
Rudyard Kipling

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn.
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had
plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not God that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four-
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man- There are only
four things certain since Social Progress began:-
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!


9 posted on 05/01/2015 7:01:38 AM PDT by Stosh
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To: SeekAndFind
It's how liberals view businesses. In the liberal view businesses exist to give people jobs. In the real world businesses exist to make money.

Unlike government, if businesses don't make money, they don't exist. The law of unintended consequences (which affects liberals far more than conservatives) strikes again.

10 posted on 05/01/2015 7:03:50 AM PDT by driftless2
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To: SeekAndFind
But that may not last. Hibbs says that the $15-an-hour minimum wage will require a staggering $80,000 in extra revenue annually. “I was appalled!” he says. “My jaw dropped. Eighty-thousand a year! I didn’t know that. I thought we were talking a small amount of money, something I could absorb.”

You have been in business for 26 years? You should have been able to calculate this in less than a minute.

He evidently makes a profit solely by accident.

11 posted on 05/01/2015 7:04:02 AM PDT by exit82 ("The Taliban is on the inside of the building" E. Nordstrom 10-10-12)
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To: SeekAndFind

Rush is correct that the majority of Americans have absolutely ZERO understanding of economics...period. Liberals in particular cannot understand the most basic principle of cause and effect as it applies to businesses. The majority of them have a deranged idea that businesses have this huge stash of money that they refuse to pay their employees and it’s the liberals job to steal it away from the owners and redistribute it to liberal constituents. Reality sets in when the jaws of the Economics unintended consequences trap slam shut. Oops.


12 posted on 05/01/2015 7:05:32 AM PDT by MasterGunner01
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To: SeekAndFind
IMHO this is just the beginning of problems for SF and other places instituting ridiculous, unsustainable minimum wage laws.

Related articles.

13 posted on 05/01/2015 7:05:48 AM PDT by upchuck (The current Federal Governent is what the Founding Fathers tried to prevent. WAKE UP!! Amendment V.)
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To: SeekAndFind

You most likely voted for the minimum wage and now you cooked your goose you stupid asses.


14 posted on 05/01/2015 7:06:44 AM PDT by peteyd (A dog may bite you in the ass,but it will never stab you in the back.)
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To: Fresh Wind

Minimum wage in San Francisco? Raise it to a hundred dollars an hour.

Why kill off businesses slowly? If progressives want to destroy the business community, do it quickly... hundred bucks an hour.


15 posted on 05/01/2015 7:07:05 AM PDT by GOPJ (The thugs loot stores. The community leaders loot cities. - Daniel Greenfield)
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To: driftless2

I would also add;

Liberals view “Profits” as evil.

But somehow they don’t see their own personal savings the same way. A persons savings is essentially the same as a profit.


16 posted on 05/01/2015 7:08:02 AM PDT by Zeneta (Thoughts in time and out of season.)
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To: Don Corleone

Stupid is as stupid does.


17 posted on 05/01/2015 7:09:18 AM PDT by Blood of Tyrants (True followers of Christ emulate Christ. True followers of Mohammed emulate Mohammed.)
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To: SeekAndFind

“My jaw dropped. Eighty-thousand a year! I didn’t know that.”

Math is hard.


18 posted on 05/01/2015 7:13:13 AM PDT by envisio (I ain't here long... I'm out of napalm and .22 bullets.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Meanwhile in another cultural reality on the Big Bang Theory Stewart the former comic book store owner continues to leech of the Wolowitz family. :)


19 posted on 05/01/2015 7:15:23 AM PDT by xp38
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To: exit82

BUMP! When I was in business we did a detailed payroll projection for next month, next quarter and for the year.

Putting this into a spread sheet made it fairly simple to play “what if” games. What if I give Joe a 10% raise? How much additional revenue will it take to bring on four more people? We have new contracts that total 105K/year. How many more people can we hire on that? Etc.

Based on what we see in this article, if Mr. Hibbs has made a profit every year since 1989, it has been by accident. He is indeed lucky.


20 posted on 05/01/2015 7:15:35 AM PDT by upchuck (The current Federal Governent is what the Founding Fathers tried to prevent. WAKE UP!! Amendment V.)
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