Posted on 03/14/2015 6:54:42 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Seattle is about to embark on a civic experiment that most experts predict will be an economic disaster; a $15 an hour minimum wage is set to go into effect on April 1st. And some restuarants in the city have already shuttered their doors and are either going out of business or moving to friendlier climes.
This was entirely predictable - and was predicted when the measure passed the Seattle city council. Restuarants are particularly sensitive to this sort of increase in wages since most of their employees are paid at the minimum, and such a large percentage of their operating costs go to labor.
“Washington Restaurant Association’s Anthony Anton puts it this way: “It’s not a political problem; it’s a math problem.”
“He estimates that a common budget breakdown among sustaining Seattle restaurants so far has been the following: 36 percent of funds are devoted to labor, 30 percent to food costs and 30 percent go to everything else (all other operational costs). The remaining 4 percent has been the profit margin, and as a result, in a $700,000 restaurant, he estimates that the average restauranteur in Seattle has been making $28,000 a year.
“With the minimum wage spike, however, he says that if restaurant owners made no changes, the labor cost in quick service restaurants would rise to 42 percent and in full service restaurants to 47 percent.”
Restaurant owners, expecting to operate on thinner margins, have tried to adapt in several ways including “higher menu prices, cheaper, lower-quality ingredients, reduced opening times, and cutting work hours and firing workers,” according to The Seattle Times and Seattle Eater magazine. As the Washington Policy Center points out, when these strategies are not enough, businesses close, “workers lose their jobs and the neighborhood loses a prized amenity.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Once those workers who happen to work in an establishment where tips are paid AREN’T getting tips anymore, they are in for a rude awakening with respect to their now-W2 income taxed and that which they ALWAYS underreported on TIPS.
They got what they wanted. Live with it.
Where is this communist edict written in any constitution that the government shall set prices for labor instead of having a free market?
Libs don't want to figure that out.
/johnny
See Venezuela. Collectivists don’t care about the consequences, and changing course is not an option.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Next up...”We have a RIGHT to dine out and pay less, now OPEN YOUR DOORS!!” Leftists are whacky.
Pass this on to your local skulls full of mush.
When these full service restaurants raise their menu prices to offset the additional costs of labor, I wonder if anyone has taken a poll amongst those who no longer frequent these establishments as to why they don’t go there any longer? IMO, libs have a high tolerance for spending other peoples money but when it comes to their own, they have deep pockets.
Maybe they should unionize. That’ll teach those pesky small businesses.
And for the waiters who manage to keep their jobs, the tips (which can be extraordinary!) will plummet. Jackasses.
I believe most waiters did not want this. Certainly NY waiters are dead set against it. Liberals they may be but suicidal they are not.
Margaret Thatcher: Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.
I remember once Nixon instituted a wage and price freeze. It was later determined to be unconstitutional and reversed.
It seems Democrats are perfectly willing to abridge your Constitutional rights when it involves people whose greatest aspiration is to someday hope to get a GED so they can go on Jerry or Maury and proudly proclaim that whilst telling the baby mama they found a new b!tch because you a “stank, broke-ass, controllin’, triflin’ ass b!tch”.
Indeed.
That $15.00 an hour will reduce the incentive to tip.
We always knew that waitresses in fast food joints made very little money, and a tip for good service was a way to help them along.
Higher wages will mean higher prices, and the incentive to tip will be gone. Also the incentive to provide good service will be gone.
With poor service, high prices, and bad attitudes, the pleasure of eating out will be gone.
If it’s no longer a pleasure to eat out, why bother?
Brown-Bagging becomes the norm, for those who can find jobs, anyway.
For the rest, there will always be soup kitchens.
Tips in Seattle would be poor before all this.Liberals are really tight when it comes to their own money.
Minimum wage dissent: San Jose's law resulted in lost jobs [many restaurants cut jobs and hours]
[Seattle's $15] Minimum wage limbo keeps [liberal] small business owners up at night
A Tale Of Two Cities: Oakland Workers Celebrate Minimum Wage Hike As Business Owners Worry
Oakland mayor urges support for small businesses struggling with new minimum wage
I would first ask those NY waiters for whom did they vote in 2008 and 2012. They don’t like it because they never reported a majority of the tips they received as income. Now they have to. They can thank Obama for that.
Good to see you’re still kicking.
I understand that many of them voted for Obama not realizing what he and his liberal cohorts were up to. They voted for him because he was so gay-friendly!
I hope it’s a lesson well learned.
IIRC, urban Amish are the worst nontippers of all.
There is now a smile on the face of Seattle’s Lenin statue.
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