Posted on 08/08/2014 11:46:18 PM PDT by right-wing agnostic
This is currently the most-read story on the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s web site: “Stillwater cafe faces heat for adding ‘minimum wage fee’ to tab.” Minnesota’s Democratic legislature recently voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $8 an hour, 75 cents more than the federal level. Naturally, that increase is leading to higher prices:
A small cafe in Stillwater has thrown itself into the big battle over Minnesota’s minimum wage increases, inundating the cafe with dozens of phone calls and online comments this week after it tacked on a 35-cent fee to meal tabs.
Oasis Cafe owner Craig Beemer said the fee is needed to offset the 75-cent wage hike that took effect Aug. 1, the first time Minnesota’s minimum wage has increased in a decade. Even with only half a dozen servers, Beemer says it will cost him $10,000 more a year to pay servers $8 an hour instead of the federal rate of $7.25 an hour.
What is unique about the Oasis is that the cafe wants its patrons to know where the higher prices are coming from:
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
That takes courage, even though it may actually boost their business from supportive conservatives.
I agree, but many people also cannot grasp the simplest economic concepts. I've tried for two decades now to explain to my wife that she pays "both halves" of Social Security, without any success.
Money confuses people. I try to talk in terms of people trading goods or services, rather than exchanging money.
““We believe that the industry is overreacting,” Wade Luneburg of the MN State Council of UNITE HERE Unions told the Star Tribune this week. “Putting [minimum wage] fees on tickets and passing the cost on to consumers directly is strange at best, and creates an ‘us against them’ mentality while ordering dinner.”
I believe the libs are overeating. If they don’t want to pay the fee they shouldn’t have pushed for it.
It is strange to put the fee on the bill because it shows what the libs have done? They have to work in the shadows.
It creates an us against them mentality, yes, it does. The sane people against the deranged people. We can’t let people know the libs cost them money, now can we.
He seems to be doing a good job preaching to a large choir here.
I seem to recall that phone/elec utilities were banned by law from showing their customers what gov mandated costs were on their bill to consumers.
Excellent idea. I’d have charged 50 cents though.
I seem to recall that phone/elec utilities were banned by law from showing their customers what gov mandated costs were on their bill to consumers.
The whole intent was "fairness" of some sort. Of course, government would be directly involved to make sure that the right people were rewarded. They, liberals, never understand the consequences of their screwball actions.
Naturally the liberals among us were outraged that taxpayers would vote themselves a tax decrease at the expense of the welfare moms and illegal aliens. So they somehow managed to get a checkbox added to the state income tax form in which people could elect to pay at the original, higher tax rate of 5.85%.
Well guess what? Apparently not a single liberal elected to check that box off. I guess they were expecting the working people to "do the right thing." Local radio host/columnist Howie Carr took great pleasure at election time using FOIA to pull the candidate's tax returns and point out that ZERO of the liberals running for public office elected to pay at the higher rate.
When will the public realize that ALL costs of a business are passed on to customers?
Higher min wage = higher prices.
New insurance requirements = higher prices.
Higher taxes = higher prices.
I like it this way. If the extra were added to the cost without explanation, consumers would be forced to pay it. This way, if the service is of minimum wage quality, subtract the 35 cents from the tip. If the service is of higher quality, don't deduct anything.
Liberals think money grows on trees.
We had a client ask us to provide her with a stamp to mail in her intake sheet. We told her no.
Anyone who pays attention and every politician knows that if this was to happen, our tax system would be changed within a couple of months ... tops.
I remember a small gas station chain in NorCal that would do this. Every shopping bag had printed on it exactly how many taxes you pay with each gallon of gas.
It is a little labor-intensive to put the numbers together, but it would be nice if more businesses would break down the cost of regulation for their customers that way. Many people support excessive regulations because they think those regulations represent free goodies from the government. That just isn't the case.
I'm thinking, for the mathematically illiterate, a graphic would be best. Say, a dollar bill split into pieces corresponding to how much of that dollar goes into the cost of Obamacare, the cost of minimum wage, the cost of hidden taxes, the actual price of the goods or services, etc. Text captions could relay the exact percentages of each cost.
The big secret is that the pols DO know this.
The end game is to raise taxes. They get static when they raise it on the population.
Instead, they do this by proxy, raising the costs of doing business, and let the business pass it on.
More money to the state, and business gets blamed. What is not to like? /s
I have read about people who are completely incapable of grasping numerical concepts. It is like a form of blindness--to them, 10 and 100 are the same, or they might be able to grasp that 100 is more than 10, but not have a feel for how much more. I think that people like that are more prone to be liberal, since they really cannot understand that government goodies and mandates cost a lot of money, and that more money spent means less in the pocket. But they are absolutely certain that everyone deserves government goodies.
Statist politicians believe the best taxes are hidden ones...which is why they all love inflation.
They can blame “the economy” that they had The Fed print more ‘free’ money to create the inflation.
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