"Do you want Food Deserts? Because that's how you get Food Deserts."
Posted on 04/19/2021 9:03:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Long Beach is now short two big grocery stores.
Ralph's and Food 4 Less have shut their doors, unable to sustain the city council's order that they raise worker "hero pay" by $4 an hour, pretty much forever.
According to the Epoch Times:
Grocery chain Kroger said it closed down two California stores Saturday after the Long Beach City Council approved a COVID-19-related "hero pay" ordinance that increased wages by $4 per hour.
The move was announced earlier this year, but the Ralph's and Food 4 Less—both operated by Kroger—were shut down on April 17, employees told local media outlets.
"As a result of the City of Long Beach's decision to pass an ordinance mandating Extra Pay for grocery workers, we have made the difficult decision to permanently close long-struggling store locations in Long Beach," said a spokesperson for Kroger several weeks ago. "This misguided action by the Long Beach City Council oversteps the traditional bargaining process and applies to some, but not all, grocery workers in the city."
So instead of highly compensated "hero" workers as dictated by the central planners, the city has got 300 more heading for the unemployment lines. Proud of yourselves, morons?
It's not as if they didn't have warnings — they most certainly did. Los Angeles passed a $5-an-hour "hero pay" measure and got a wave of shutdowns to show for it.
That didn't register with the clowns on the Long Beach City Council, who passed the "hero pay" legislation of their own, late, way, way late into the pandemic this past January. Groceries warned that the increased labor cost of 28% would soar well ahead of the grocers' tiny 2.2% profit margins, rendering their businesses unsustainable. That was brushed off as union ignoramuses and rabid-left crazies
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
FROM Supermarket News:
[EXCERPT]
CGA [California Grocers Association] said it commissioned a study finding that grocery costs for a family of four could increase by $400 a year with a $5-per-hour extra pay mandate, as proposed in Los Angeles County. The report pegged grocery industry average profits at 2.2% during early to mid-2020, at the height of pandemic-triggered panic buying, but determined that the higher wage would hike overall costs 4.5%, twice the size of the industry profit margin and three times historical profit margins.
“The Long Beach City Council rushed to enact the misguided extra pay mandate without any meaningful dialogue with grocers in their community. We repeatedly warned that a $4/hour increase would have major unintended consequences, including potential store closures, the reduction of work for employees, and higher grocery costs for customers,” according to CGA’s Fong, who said a $4 hourly increase translates to a roughly 28% rise in retailers’ labor costs. “There’s no way grocers can absorb that big of a cost increase without an offset somewhere else, considering grocers operate with razor-thin margins and many stores already operate in the red.
The Long Beach City Council put politics ahead of families and jobs in the middle of a pandemic. This was entirely avoidable. We are hopeful that Long Beach and other cities reconsider these misguided proposals that do far more harm than good.”
To be a good ProgDem National Socialist Justice Warrior is to be utterly detached from Reality, drinking deep from the Cup of Illusion and Self Adulation.
Bah, humbug.
I’ve said for years that the minimum wage is textbook fascism. It is the government insering itself into a contractual arrangement between two private parties. If the city thinks these people should have $4 an hour of “hero pay”, they can pay it via their taxpayer funds. But forcing a business to do it is ludicrous.
It is also fascist.
The Soviets used to have ‘Hero’ Projects, so we know where the communistic city council stands.
Minimum wage = if you can’t produce enough, you’re not allowed to produce anything at all.
Marxists and Socialists will NEVER understand the basic laws of Economics. Many on the Right are confused about that too. Where was everybody during Econ 101 and Econ 102?
Governmental interference in the economy via wage and price controls VIOLATE the natural equilibrium of supply and demand artificially driving supply down. That is why the stores and cupboards are bare in socialist countries.
GET RID OF minimum wage!!!!
Capitalism works. Let the market set wages. Market interference, by whatever name, is anti-capitalism and anti-American.
That is why it annoys me when people said that we’ve given capitalism a chance and it is not working. The problem is that our current system is NOT capitalism. The government plays way too heavy a role in trying to control it via taxes, tax breaks, fascist laws, etc.
Well who elected these morons? The people of Long Beach did. Let them suffer, but like most all Democrat voters they're too stupid to realize that they did it to themselves.
To the minimum wage crowd, productivity is a dirty word.
Yep. They don’t care about consequences or results. All about virtue signaling and “feelings”. They’ll just blame it on Trump and white people.
Wow. Unlimited immigration + no minimum wage = road to socialism.
"Do you want Food Deserts? Because that's how you get Food Deserts."
Capitalism may work by open borders and an unlimited supply of labor doesn’t.
Food desert? Nonsense! They have 7-11s don’t they?
the best way to compensate “essential” workers, which I was until last November, would to have had a tax holiday for them....and I’m talking the ones who actually had to GO OUT TO WORK and not stay home in their jammies getting full pay....
“...Many on the Right are confused about that too. Where was everybody during Econ 101 and Econ 102?...”
*************************************
Probably the same place they were during Biology 101 and Biology 102.
acutally, some of our hardest working people are on minimum wage..
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