Posted on 06/05/2014 11:51:16 PM PDT by South40
Full title: Who’d a-thunk it? Following $15 per hour minimum wage in SeaTac, local businesses are adding ‘living wage surcharges’?
Erin Shannon, Director of the Center for Small Business writes on The Washington Policy Center blog that “In SeaTac, Everyone Pays for the $15 Minimum Wage“:
Last week I blogged about SeaTac employers who have responded to the new $15 minimum wage law by reducing or eliminating the benefits workers receive. Employees earning the new wage say they have lost benefits such as 401k, paid holidays, paid vacation, free food, free parking and overtime hours. As one SeaTac worker put it, “It sounds good, but it’s not good.”
But workers aren’t the only ones paying for the high wage. Consumers are also picking up the tab, in the form of increased prices. Many SeaTac businesses have tacked on an additional fee to mitigate the increased cost of labor. On the receipt pictured above, a $6.93 “living wage surchage” was added to a $84.00 parking charge. That is the equivalent of a 8.25% tax.
(Excerpt) Read more at aei-ideas.org ...
I am glad to see this. IMHO, businesses should try to find ways to itemize the costs of taxation on every price tag and receipt.
If only our property tax statements did that.
How is there more money in the economy?
The pencil neck liberals and leftists who imposed the wage failed to help businesses prosper by reducing the tax and regulation burdens. Instead they stupidly assume that the businesses can simply pay more out of their obscene profits.
The politicians who impose increased wages should be required to pass Economics 101, instead of helping the poor get poorer. But, of course, the leftists are excused because they have "good intentions."
Go West Young man. How did that work out?
“The people making their $15 and hour have to pay those extra charges too. That’s the way government tampering with the economy always works. Inflation gets em’ on the backside.”
These minimum wage hike movements are just de facto acknowledgment that the inflation is already here; the numbers are simply fudged by the government to suppress payouts on entitlements with inflation adjustments. Our overlords will increase the minimum wage to get people to work instead of opting for the dole (that is why these movements are in the areas with the best welfare standards of living), but they are quite content to let our retirees suffer (even offering them the legal option to kill themselves - ala “Soylent Green”).
Scary...
I have a small sign hanging on my wall in my office...it says:
“I’m an 82 survivor”
It refers to the financial oilfield disaster that happened in 1982 here in Texas and the gulf coast.
The better solution would be to send people who are willing to work for 10 cents a day out of the country instead of good paying jobs and to stop printing money like it was going out of style.
This is a vote against poor people. Seattle wants to drive them out of town.
You should see it. You can’t touch living there unless you make $150K/year. Between the incubators, the Gates Foundation, Google, MSFT, the Cancer boondoggle there is so much money downtown that every vacant lot has a building going up on it.
It’s as dense now as SF. There’s no open lots at all.
It’s weird. It reminds me of DC in terms of the opulence and all the fake commerce going on. Seattle doesn’t seem to be producing anything. Novo Nordisk is there, producing insulin, and nothing else. Fremont has Adobe (and Google, and a secret agreement not to poach).
Lots of startups and incubators. The schools are among the worst in the state, but nobody with kids is living downtown. Breeders live in the burbs, or at least Greenlake, but better off in Edmonds, Lynnwood, or Everett. The deputy chief of Seattle’s kid goes to school in Everett (Dad must commute, or Mom’s living in Everett).
Seattle is a pretty soulless place. Reminds you of the Capitol in Hunger Games.
First, you have lease fees of up to $4500.00 per acre for mineral rights, and for some who farmed several sections (each a square mile--640 acres), that added up fast.
Add in up to 20% royalty interest for produced oil and gas as well, and the checks were fairly significant.
Then consider the rig count went up to 218, each of which directly employing over 30 people in full time jobs paying from $60,000/yr to $300,000/year. For every job on the rig, consider there are nearly as many in support occupations from truck drivers to equipment operators, sales, specialized oilfield services, cementers (for casing), frac crews, production personnel, supervisory positions, supply companies, and state inspectors, to name a few.
Taxable sales for the county (Williams) exceeded those in Fargo (the most populous city in the state) and environs, the highest of any county in the state.
With unemployment below 3%, in most quarters around 1%, there is more money in the local economy than most areas.
Oh, my bad. I thought you meant that the minimum wage law had increased the cash.
No, there is no special minimum wage law, it’s all supply and demand. (More jobs than workers.)
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