[Billthedrill]

So why restaurants first? It's pretty simple if you've ever done books for one. A business running a 3-5% margin is suddenly faced with a 25% increase in salary - that's bad enough, but supplies go up too because the suppliers are also facing that salary increase. You end up meeting salary out of business capital, which dwindles because it isn't being replaced. You raise prices for more revenue and end up losing business and getting less revenue.

For a small business there's nowhere to hide. You make salary out of pocket and raise prices and hope that the revenue increases before the money runs out. If not, you're done, and it happens very quickly, and by the way, if the cost of benefits also rises, which it is, it can be in the blink of an eye.

Anyone who has ever run an business of any kind knows the equation. The problem is that the people making the decisions haven't ever done that, and figure the math is done when you multiply the number of employees you have by three bucks an hour. Business failures under these circumstances are a big mystery to them. Here's some news: being broke isn't a capitalist plot, and being unemployed isn't social justice.

[rktman]

Funny how some folks think that those running on a 3-5% margin are all gazillionaires. No sense of understanding from them. Just evil capitalists profiting off the backs of the downtrodden. UPOS.