SHOCKING: Restaraunts in Seattle closing down as $15/hour minimum wage approaches
- Thread starter KingpinOG
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JahFocus CS
Get It How You Get It
An advantage, sure. Top management, including CEOs, typically have stocks, options, and investments outside the firm. Their livelihood isn't contingent on working. They won't starve. In that way, their situation is materially different from that of the working class, and you could properly exclude them and correctly place them in the bourgeoisie or petit bourgeoisie.
We do live under capitalism. I'm not saying the society isn't capitalist or works any other way, but that's precisely the point. It needs to be changed if the vast majority of people want to live better and freer lives. The task of liberation falls on the working class. No one will do it for the class. Which is why class consciousness is important -- so workers know how to fight for their interests and for freedom.
On a side note, it isn't all about capitalists as individuals. It is more so about the rule of capital and how it subjugates labor, and through that, acts as a social relationship manifested in the hierarchy and -isms that inflict people today (racism, imperialism, sexism, etc.).
I suggest they let the working class "eat cake" a little, before they liberate the cake.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Conservatives Say $15 Minimum Wage Is Killing Seattle Restaurant Scene, Restaurateurs Disagree
BY ALAN PYKE
POSTED ON MARCH 18, 2015 AT 2:26 PM UPDATED: MARCH 18, 2015 AT 3:39 PM
CREDIT: AP
As Seattle prepares for the April launch of the highest minimum wage law in America, conservatives are warning that businesses are already shuttering under the pressure of higher labor costs and pointing to a recent report of a rash of restaurant closures as evidence. The problem is, the actual owners of those restaurants say that they’re not closing because of wages, and the city seems to be enjoying robust growth in that industry.
The New York Post editorial board, American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Perry, Forbes contributor Tim Worstall, and Rush Limbaugh all cited a Seattle Magazine articlefrom March 4 that claimed a “rash of shutterings” was afoot in the Seattle restaurant world. The magazine suggested that the minimum wage law might be a contributing factor in the closures of the Boat Street Cafe, Little Uncle, Grub, and Shanik.
“That’s weird,” Boat Street Cafe owner Renee Erickson told the Seattle Times when fact-checkers emailed to confirm the Seattle Magazine story. “No, that’s not why I’m closing Boat Street.” Erickson’s three other restaurants remain open, and two brand new ones are in the works in Seattle. “Opening more businesses would not be smart if I felt it was going to hinder my success,” said Erickson, who described herself as “totally on board with the $15 min.”
Poncharee Koungpunchart and Wiley Frank of Little Uncle “were never interviewed for these articles,” they told the paper. They are closing one of their two locations, “but pre-emptively closing a restaurant seven years before the full effect of the law takes place seems preposterous to us.” Frank reportedly asked one conservative writer who had picked up the wage-menace red herring to “not make assumptions about our business to promote your political values.”
The owner of Shanik told the Times that closing has “nothing to do with wages,” and Grub’s owner explained that they’re being bought out and rebranded by new ownership because the breakfast and sandwich bistro has been “a huge success.”
The Seattle Magazine article itself notes that new restaurants are opening at a healthy clip around the city, and that the Capitol Hill neighborhood is in the middle of “an unprecedented dining boom.” And while numbers compiled by data wonk Evan Soltas offer only an imprecise snapshot of restaurant employment in the Seattle area, the empirical evidence shows “no sign of a minimum-wage hit to employment.” These details did not make it into the punditry that initially swirled around the article’s suggestion that some closures might relate to the wage law. Forbes’ Worstall published a follow-up piece insisting that his point stands despite the crumbling narrative of specific Seattle restaurant closures. AEI’s Price has not yet responded to an request for comment.
Worstall, Price, and the other conservative economists and pundits who latched onto the overblown narrative from Seattle Magazine argue that minimum wage hikes reduce job growth, but many other studies and analysts have challenged the assumptions about business behavior that underlie the opponents’ claims. A recent academic analysis of how fast food companies would adapt to a law very similar to Seattle’s found that the industry would not have to fire anyone to cover the jump to $15. And states that increased their minimum wages in 2014 experienced faster overall job growth than states that did not.
All of this is happening weeks before anyone in Seattle has been forced to change anything about how they pay workers, and about six years before small restaurants like these will have to pay $15 per hour. The first tier of the city’s wage increase law goes active on April 1. From there, businesses will have between three and seven years to gradually step up to $15, depending on both the total number of people a firm employs and the health care benefits they offer workers.
Seattle’s business community was heavily involved in crafting graduated wage hike schedules that provide deferential treatment to employers who are already offering workers some non-cash compensation. The law’s complexity and flexibility owes in large part to the business community’s fierce negotiating in months of meetings with labor officials and local politicians. All sides left “a little bit of blood on the floor and some deeply held principles,” the business community’s lead negotiator told ThinkProgress last summer.
With time and data on what Seattle’s economy actually experiences as the wage hike phases in, the spread of the $15 idea seems almost inevitable to another key negotiator. “When we enact this law and our state does not slide into the ocean,” venture capitalist Nick Hanauer told ThinkProgress in the summer, “that will make it easier for people to be like, ‘well, fukk, why shouldn’t we do that?'”
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/20...e-restaurant-ragnarok-not-actually-happening/
BY ALAN PYKE
POSTED ON MARCH 18, 2015 AT 2:26 PM UPDATED: MARCH 18, 2015 AT 3:39 PM
CREDIT: AP
As Seattle prepares for the April launch of the highest minimum wage law in America, conservatives are warning that businesses are already shuttering under the pressure of higher labor costs and pointing to a recent report of a rash of restaurant closures as evidence. The problem is, the actual owners of those restaurants say that they’re not closing because of wages, and the city seems to be enjoying robust growth in that industry.
The New York Post editorial board, American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Perry, Forbes contributor Tim Worstall, and Rush Limbaugh all cited a Seattle Magazine articlefrom March 4 that claimed a “rash of shutterings” was afoot in the Seattle restaurant world. The magazine suggested that the minimum wage law might be a contributing factor in the closures of the Boat Street Cafe, Little Uncle, Grub, and Shanik.
“That’s weird,” Boat Street Cafe owner Renee Erickson told the Seattle Times when fact-checkers emailed to confirm the Seattle Magazine story. “No, that’s not why I’m closing Boat Street.” Erickson’s three other restaurants remain open, and two brand new ones are in the works in Seattle. “Opening more businesses would not be smart if I felt it was going to hinder my success,” said Erickson, who described herself as “totally on board with the $15 min.”
Poncharee Koungpunchart and Wiley Frank of Little Uncle “were never interviewed for these articles,” they told the paper. They are closing one of their two locations, “but pre-emptively closing a restaurant seven years before the full effect of the law takes place seems preposterous to us.” Frank reportedly asked one conservative writer who had picked up the wage-menace red herring to “not make assumptions about our business to promote your political values.”
The owner of Shanik told the Times that closing has “nothing to do with wages,” and Grub’s owner explained that they’re being bought out and rebranded by new ownership because the breakfast and sandwich bistro has been “a huge success.”
The Seattle Magazine article itself notes that new restaurants are opening at a healthy clip around the city, and that the Capitol Hill neighborhood is in the middle of “an unprecedented dining boom.” And while numbers compiled by data wonk Evan Soltas offer only an imprecise snapshot of restaurant employment in the Seattle area, the empirical evidence shows “no sign of a minimum-wage hit to employment.” These details did not make it into the punditry that initially swirled around the article’s suggestion that some closures might relate to the wage law. Forbes’ Worstall published a follow-up piece insisting that his point stands despite the crumbling narrative of specific Seattle restaurant closures. AEI’s Price has not yet responded to an request for comment.
Worstall, Price, and the other conservative economists and pundits who latched onto the overblown narrative from Seattle Magazine argue that minimum wage hikes reduce job growth, but many other studies and analysts have challenged the assumptions about business behavior that underlie the opponents’ claims. A recent academic analysis of how fast food companies would adapt to a law very similar to Seattle’s found that the industry would not have to fire anyone to cover the jump to $15. And states that increased their minimum wages in 2014 experienced faster overall job growth than states that did not.
All of this is happening weeks before anyone in Seattle has been forced to change anything about how they pay workers, and about six years before small restaurants like these will have to pay $15 per hour. The first tier of the city’s wage increase law goes active on April 1. From there, businesses will have between three and seven years to gradually step up to $15, depending on both the total number of people a firm employs and the health care benefits they offer workers.
Seattle’s business community was heavily involved in crafting graduated wage hike schedules that provide deferential treatment to employers who are already offering workers some non-cash compensation. The law’s complexity and flexibility owes in large part to the business community’s fierce negotiating in months of meetings with labor officials and local politicians. All sides left “a little bit of blood on the floor and some deeply held principles,” the business community’s lead negotiator told ThinkProgress last summer.
With time and data on what Seattle’s economy actually experiences as the wage hike phases in, the spread of the $15 idea seems almost inevitable to another key negotiator. “When we enact this law and our state does not slide into the ocean,” venture capitalist Nick Hanauer told ThinkProgress in the summer, “that will make it easier for people to be like, ‘well, fukk, why shouldn’t we do that?'”
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/20...e-restaurant-ragnarok-not-actually-happening/
Conservatives Say $15 Minimum Wage Is Killing Seattle Restaurant Scene, Restaurateurs Disagree
BY ALAN PYKE
CREDIT: AP
As Seattle prepares for the April launch of the highest minimum wage law in America, conservatives are warning that businesses are already shuttering under the pressure of higher labor costs and pointing to a recent report of a rash of restaurant closures as evidence. The problem is, the actual owners of those restaurants say that they’re not closing because of wages, and the city seems to be enjoying robust growth in that industry.
The New York Post editorial board, American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Perry, Forbes contributor Tim Worstall, and Rush Limbaugh all cited a Seattle Magazine articlefrom March 4 that claimed a “rash of shutterings” was afoot in the Seattle restaurant world. The magazine suggested that the minimum wage law might be a contributing factor in the closures of the Boat Street Cafe, Little Uncle, Grub, and Shanik.
“That’s weird,” Boat Street Cafe owner Renee Erickson told the Seattle Times when fact-checkers emailed to confirm the Seattle Magazine story. “No, that’s not why I’m closing Boat Street.” Erickson’s three other restaurants remain open, and two brand new ones are in the works in Seattle. “Opening more businesses would not be smart if I felt it was going to hinder my success,” said Erickson, who described herself as “totally on board with the $15 min.”
Poncharee Koungpunchart and Wiley Frank of Little Uncle “were never interviewed for these articles,” they told the paper. They are closing one of their two locations, “but pre-emptively closing a restaurant seven years before the full effect of the law takes place seems preposterous to us.” Frank reportedly asked one conservative writer who had picked up the wage-menace red herring to “not make assumptions about our business to promote your political values.”
The owner of Shanik told the Times that closing has “nothing to do with wages,” and Grub’s owner explained that they’re being bought out and rebranded by new ownership because the breakfast and sandwich bistro has been “a huge success.”
The Seattle Magazine article itself notes that new restaurants are opening at a healthy clip around the city, and that the Capitol Hill neighborhood is in the middle of “an unprecedented dining boom.” And while numbers compiled by data wonk Evan Soltas offer only an imprecise snapshot of restaurant employment in the Seattle area, the empirical evidence shows “no sign of a minimum-wage hit to employment.” These details did not make it into the punditry that initially swirled around the article’s suggestion that some closures might relate to the wage law. Forbes’ Worstall published a follow-up piece insisting that his point stands despite the crumbling narrative of specific Seattle restaurant closures. AEI’s Price has not yet responded to an request for comment.
Worstall, Price, and the other conservative economists and pundits who latched onto the overblown narrative from Seattle Magazine argue that minimum wage hikes reduce job growth, but many other studies and analysts have challenged the assumptions about business behavior that underlie the opponents’ claims. A recent academic analysis of how fast food companies would adapt to a law very similar to Seattle’s found that the industry would not have to fire anyone to cover the jump to $15. And states that increased their minimum wages in 2014 experienced faster overall job growth than states that did not.
All of this is happening weeks before anyone in Seattle has been forced to change anything about how they pay workers, and about six years before small restaurants like these will have to pay $15 per hour. The first tier of the city’s wage increase law goes active on April 1. From there, businesses will have between three and seven years to gradually step up to $15, depending on both the total number of people a firm employs and the health care benefits they offer workers.
Seattle’s business community was heavily involved in crafting graduated wage hike schedules that provide deferential treatment to employers who are already offering workers some non-cash compensation. The law’s complexity and flexibility owes in large part to the business community’s fierce negotiating in months of meetings with labor officials and local politicians. All sides left “a little bit of blood on the floor and some deeply held principles,” the business community’s lead negotiator told ThinkProgress last summer.
With time and data on what Seattle’s economy actually experiences as the wage hike phases in, the spread of the $15 idea seems almost inevitable to another key negotiator. “When we enact this law and our state does not slide into the ocean,” venture capitalist Nick Hanauer told ThinkProgress in the summer, “that will make it easier for people to be like, ‘well, fukk, why shouldn’t we do that?'”
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/20...e-restaurant-ragnarok-not-actually-happening/
Conservatives wrong on the facts again.
How does any of that disprove the article that I posted? Go back and re-read the piece......it never claimed that the specific restaurants named in the article were closing because of the minimum wage increase. It just used the fact that the restaurants were closing as a lead in to a discussion of the effects of a minimum wage increase.
And no one claimed that the Seattle restaurant scene is going to be killed and that the state will slide into the ocean. Liberal blogs like Think Progress always resort to creating ridiculous straw men like that. All conservatives are (correctly) stating is that an increase in the minimum wage will have an negative effect on job creation (everything else being equal). I am sorry but that is just a basic principle of economics: as a resource (in this case labor) becomes more costly businesses will chose to use less of that resource. If restaurants instead choose to pass along that cost to customers by raising prices, then customers will choose to eat out less as prices rise. Less people eating out will mean less need for workers.
Why is it so difficult to understand that all economic choices involve trade offs?
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88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
yellow journalism.
are you incapable of being honest or what?
The right has clung to yet another argument that is utterly ridiculous face it. You're embarrassing yourself.
I've worked in the restaurant business most of my life and have been an owner in two restaurants.
Your post in the thread SHOCKING: Restaraunts in Seattle closing down as $15/hour minimum wage approaches has hit the report threshold and is now under review.
Today at 10:10 AM
Coli posters are now trying to ban me for opposing increases to the minimum wage.....
Today at 10:10 AM
Coli posters are now trying to ban me for opposing increases to the minimum wage.....
you are obviously part of the concerned citizen coalitionYour post in the thread SHOCKING: Restaraunts in Seattle closing down as $15/hour minimum wage approaches has hit the report threshold and is now under review.
Today at 10:10 AM
Coli posters are now trying to ban me for opposing increases to the minimum wage.....
No, they are reporting you for posting misleading propaganda.Your post in the thread SHOCKING: Restaraunts in Seattle closing down as $15/hour minimum wage approaches has hit the report threshold and is now under review.
Today at 10:10 AM
Coli posters are now trying to ban me for opposing increases to the minimum wage.....
Law is not going to take effect for 7 years... why would a restaranteur close that far ahead of a law that might not even happen in the first place? Probably because the restaurant was going to close anyway, and like a typical right winger they were too cowardly to admit personal failure
Stick to the Coliseum duke ur a joke outchea
Your post in the thread SHOCKING: Restaraunts in Seattle closing down as $15/hour minimum wage approaches has hit the report threshold and is now under review.
Today at 10:10 AM
Coli posters are now trying to ban me for opposing increases to the minimum wage.....
Does the "C" in you avi stand for clown?
I
Your thread is a misleading and info fradulent. Do you deny this or could you not comprehend the article?Your post in the thread SHOCKING: Restaraunts in Seattle closing down as $15/hour minimum wage approaches has hit the report threshold and is now under review.
Today at 10:10 AM
Coli posters are now trying to ban me for opposing increases to the minimum wage.....
No, they are reporting you for posting misleading propaganda.
Law is not going to take effect for 7 years... why would a restaranteur close that far ahead of a law that might not even happen in the first place? Probably because the restaurant was going to close anyway, and like a typical right winger they were too cowardly to admit personal failure
Stick to the Coliseum duke ur a joke outchea
The minimum wage law begins being phased in on April 1, 2015 not seven years from now.
Even businesses that might be exempt from the increase for a year still have budgets and business plans that take into account future costs. If the budget shows that cost are expected to increase significantly in the near future businesses may consider experimenting with using less labor now.
Are you guys really this clueless about business?
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I
Your thread is a misleading and info fradulent. Do you deny this or could you not comprehend the article?
There is nothing misleading or fraudulent in the article.
Economic principles like the demand curve sloping downwards always remains true no matter what liberals choose to believe. Human being act rationally and it is rational to reduce consumption of a resource as that resource becomes more expensive. You can either believe in facts or you can believe in typical liberal bullshyt.
What do you propose @KingpinOG