Posted on 01/26/2017 8:43:35 AM PST by ColdOne
Restaurants are rapidly going out of business in the Bay Area, after San Francisco passed a $15 minimum wage law in 2014 and the State of California followed suit in 2016. Yet the media are struggling to make the connection between high minimum wages and restaurant closures.
The East Bay Times, for example, asked Tuesday: “What’s behind the spate of recent Bay Area restaurant closures?” It barely mentioned new minimum wage laws, brushing them aside as if they were largely insignificant.
It is true, of course, that merely because one thing follows another does not prove that the second was caused by the first. The “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” fallacy that is familiar to first-year economics students would apply to this case as well. Yet that does not mean the prior factor should be excluded as a cause. But that is largely what the Times seems to have done, even though the closure of businesses and the loss of restaurant jobs is exactly what critics of the minimum wage hikes predicted.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
If only someone, somewhere, some how .... could have seen this coming.
Let them eat liberalism.
;)
Ha! Ha! How do you like those enforced wage increased now?
There could be other factors too. A liberal area such as the Bay Area likely has seen a number of vegan/organic/farm to table restaurants start up in recent years. But the market can only support so many of these types of places. Its likely that a number of marginal establishments went under.
And if so, that’s just capitalism at work. The market will let us all know, what the demand is for various goods and services.
Even liberal Bay Area types apparently don’t eat out in sufficient numbers, and willing to pay the higher costs of doing business,to support the number of restaurants which were there before the minimum wage hike.
California , in a state of Oblivion.. How predictable. A populace unaware of the continued dangers it faces at the hands of the Left.
Liberal “fairness”... replace “unfair” too low minimum wage with NO WAGE! #RustyIrony!
The minimum wage is why there is such a high demand for illegal alien labor.
if the close Taco Bravo,,
then I’ll be concerned..
While I tend to agree with the good economic cautions against laws mandating “minimum wages”, I think the other costs (commercial rent) and labor force factors in San Francisco, including the high cost of living there and the stress that puts on having enough of various types of labor, are all factors that can be just as important, in San Fransisco, as a minimum wage. I think I’d trim my blame of the minimum wage a bit, in the San Francisco context.
Who can afford to live in San Francisco proper, and if not who can afford or wants a long commute to work there, just to work at a job that likely just barely pays for itself living close enough to commute?
San Francisco deserves this... I'm thrilled they were too 'arrogant' to see it coming. Let them stew in their own juices.
All liberal elite ideas should be tried in San Francisco first - - just like all 'liberal base' ideas were tried in Detroit first... Why damage the whole country?
“Authorities remain baffled...”
As they are about so many things.
They were told that this was exactly what would happen.
All the experts agree—the debate is over—global warming caused this. :-)
Let them eat liberalism.
Or nothing, as the restaurants go out of business.
Oh well, I guess liberals will increase it to $50/ hour soon...restaurants will then be opening...(without liberals).
All they had to do was contact the owners of the closed restaurants to find the answer. They didn’t want to know the answer because they guessed it would be the $15 minimum wage.
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