S. F. bookstore closes. Why? Minimum wages.

[AndyC]

Originally Posted by Robert Fischer

Now you go back to the drawing board and form an actual businessplan that doesn't depend entirely on undervalued labor to be mildly successful.

Going into business takes some skill.

It's not just an entitlement that anyone with the means to cover overhead is going to be given a free ride.

You have to actually have something going for you.

How do you determine what labor is undervalued? Some people who make minimum wage are way overpaid. For those people the minimum wage is a subsidy dictated by the government and paid by the employer who gets no quid pro quo.

[Tom]

What they need to do is go back to the table and figure out a government model that works.

Stealing from one group to get votes from another is not good government.

[delayjf]

It's not just wages that's driving businesses out of SF. They also have mandatory healthcare which charges (if I remember right) @ 2.00 per hour and mandatory sick leave.

[Robert Goren]

Originally Posted by Clocker

This is the part the do-gooders don't understand. The owner of the book store said he also runs a cafe next door. He said he had to close the book store because the market would not let him increase prices on books, and that he can keep the cafe open because he can increase prices there.

I would bet that folks in cities like SF and Seattle will soon begin seeing touch screen ordering at fast food restaurants, and won't have a clue why.

If only that were the case. Please let that be case. Some people should be on welfare because when they are "working", all they do is screw things up and add a little bit of unnesecessary misery to everybody who has to deal with them. Fast Food workers are at the top of that list. If you can not fill an fast food order correctly, you should not be working.

[mostpost]

Originally Posted by wisconsin

If the guy had 6 employees, and let's say they work 25 hours per week. $3.92 x 25 x 6 = $588 per week. Add 7.65% for FICA match employers are forced to pay and it's suddenly $633 per week. This is before FUTA and local UC contributions. That becomes $32,916 per year that comes from somewhere. Oh wait, the owners pocket, that's where. Suppose you are the store owner making, oh, $52,000 per year. Now what?

I am always amazed at how you conservatives are so protective of business owners yet have so little feeling for the workers. Your example employee who works 25 hours a week at $11.08 an hour is earning $14,404.00 a year. You complain about the the 7.65% FICA match. Well the employee pays that too, which cuts his take home down to $13,302.00. Who can live on that-especially in San Francisco?

The employers will figure out a way to pay the extra and they will do it without cutting jobs. They always have. Absent a recession, a raise in the minimum wage has NEVER coincided with a rise in unemployment.

Let's not forget this is being phased in over three years and does not start until November. Most businesses will figure it out. For those that don't, well there is no right to run a business guaranteed in the Constitution.

By the way, I have not noticed you posting much lately. Good to hear from you. I wonder if we will be doing an Arlington trip this summer???

[mostpost]

Originally Posted by delayjf

It's not just wages that's driving businesses out of SF. They also have mandatory healthcare which charges (if I remember right) @ 2.00 per hour and mandatory sick leave.

God forbid we should treat employees like human beings.

[Tom]

Many human beings are not worth $10 an hour.
Deal with it.

[mostpost]

Originally Posted by Tom

Many human beings are not worth $10 an hour.
Deal with it.

You are right, but amazingly, someone is paying you more than that.

[Tom]

H4C been tutoring you in mindless replies?

[Clocker]

Originally Posted by mostpost

The employers will figure out a way to pay the extra and they will do it without cutting jobs.

Did you read the OP? That guy cut 6 jobs.

And yes, most employers do not immediately cut jobs when the minimum wage goes up. The impact takes longer than that as employers do not fill vacancies, do not create new jobs, and figure out ways to replace workers with capital.

Minimum wage increases do not kill jobs. No one that understands the private sector ever said that. They kill job creation and growth.

[wisconsin]

Originally Posted by mostpost

I am always amazed at how you conservatives are so protective of business owners yet have so little feeling for the workers. Your example employee who works 25 hours a week at $11.08 an hour is earning $14,404.00 a year. You complain about the the 7.65% FICA match. Well the employee pays that too, which cuts his take home down to $13,302.00. Who can live on that-especially in San Francisco?

The employers will figure out a way to pay the extra and they will do it without cutting jobs. They always have. Absent a recession, a raise in the minimum wage has NEVER coincided with a rise in unemployment.

Let's not forget this is being phased in over three years and does not start until November. Most businesses will figure it out. For those that don't, well there is no right to run a business guaranteed in the Constitution.

By the way, I have not noticed you posting much lately. Good to hear from you. I wonder if we will be doing an Arlington trip this summer???

The guy has 6 employees. Some businesses cannot absorb the cost. I provided a glaring example by reducing it to the ridiculous. There is nothing to figure out in a bookstore where pricing is already set by the publisher. The book store owner can't live on his new reduced income, either.

Yes, I hope to see you at Arlington. We put differences aside in that atmosphere

[GaryG]

Originally Posted by Tom

Many human beings are not worth $10 an hour.
Deal with it.

And some of them are not worth $10....period.

[mostpost]

Originally Posted by Clocker

Did you read the OP? That guy cut 6 jobs.

And yes, most employers do not immediately cut jobs when the minimum wage goes up. The impact takes longer than that as employers do not fill vacancies, do not create new jobs, and figure out ways to replace workers with capital.

Minimum wage increases do not kill jobs. No one that understands the private sector ever said that. They kill job creation and growth.

So how long does it take? Six months? A year? Two years? Ten years?
I understand that presenting you with the facts is not going to change your opinion. You are far too rigid for that. Nevertheless, I will do it anyway.

The first thing I did was find a list of all the increases in the minimum wage since 1950. Then I eliminated those which occurred during or very near to the start of a recession. That left me with sixteen times that the minimum wage has been raised. Using data from bls.gov, I calculated the number of jobs created in the twelve months following the increase. That data is presented below. The first column is the date of the increase. The second column is the number of jobs created in the subsequent twelve months.

1/25/50.......................................3,350,000
3/1/56.........................................930,000
9/3/61........................................1,540,00 0
9/3/63........................................1,679,00 0
9/3/64........................................2,609,00 0
9/3/65........................................3,279,00 0
2/1/67........................................1,398,00 0
2/1/68........................................2,633,00 0
2/1/69........................................1,738,00 0
1/1/76........................................2,430,00 0
1/1/77........................................3,960,00 0
1/1/78........................................4,265,00 0
1/1/79........................................2,000,00 0
4/1/91........................................negative 314,000*
10/1/96......................................3,177,000
9/1/97........................................3,958,00 0

*this was the one outlier in the group. The only time we lost jobs after a hike in the minimum wage. Unless there was a coinciding recession.)

[davew]

for some reason when you present 'facts', I think snowjob...

The bookstore owner said the raising wages was final straw that made him decide to close up shop. Bookstores are a dying breed, just like video rental stores 5-10 years ago. It does not say how many years they operated, or how many thousands of dollars are tied up in necessary inventory, or they had a bad business model when they started.

To feel that anyone who has a 'job' should be able to raise a family of 4 must be dem thing - unless of course you don't have a job, and you should still be able to raise a family of 4 from gov't handouts.

I have seen disabled/challenged people working at fast food joints, and get the impression they would rather be there working than sitting at home doing nothing colleting welfare.

[Clocker]

Originally Posted by mostpost

I understand that presenting you with the facts is not going to change your opinion. You are far too rigid for that. Nevertheless, I will do it anyway.

You are right. I am so rigid that I understand that the raw data you present is totally meaningless as far as being able to show anything about the impact of the increase in the minimum wage. I would insist on a statistically significant test of the data. At the risk of extreme repetition, you cannot show cause and effect in economic data by eyeballing raw numbers.

Your raw data shows that after an increase in the minimum wage, jobs were still created. A miracle! Jobs were created in a non-recession economy! The data is meaningless. It says nothing about the minimum wage.

To prove your point, you have to show how many of those jobs that were created were minimum wage jobs, and you would have to show how that number compared to the number of minimum wage jobs that would have been created if the minimum wage had not increased. The first is a matter of disaggregating the data. The second is a matter of constructing a statistically significant econometric model to forecast the number of minimum wage jobs that would have been created and comparing the forecasts with the actual data. This kind of study is routine, and the methodology is standard.