Those places all sound so sweet and trendy, and to maintain their image, if they needed to maintain their image, they would want to support nice, progressive things like a jacked up minimum wage law.
Restaurant owners, expecting to operate on thinner margins, have tried to adapt in several ways including “higher menu prices, cheaper, lower-quality ingredients, reduced opening times, and cutting work hours and firing workers,” according to The Seattle Times and Seattle Eater magazine. As the Washington Policy Center points out, when these strategies are not enough, businesses close, “workers lose their jobs and the neighborhood loses a prized amenity.”A city dies, but — oh! — what a beautiful corpse!
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116 comments:
As usual the pompous ride astride their high horses, trampling the little people. Of whom they care not one shit.
Seattle resident to Seattle restaurant owner "We support the new minimum wage and your need to increase prices. But excuse me, my partner and I are going check out that new suburban restaurant."
They should have made the minium wage $1,000 an hour. Then everybody who works there would be rich!
Unintended (But Eminently Forseeable) Consequences.
Next up for Seattle: a law forbidding businesses from shutting down.
Left wing commentators have repeatedly assured me that there are no negative consequences to raising the minimum wage and that any claims that doing so might lead to fewer jobs due to the need to cut costs and might even cause some businesses to have to close are just scare mongering by greed heads who main enjoyment in life is exploiting the poor.
Therefore it is self-evident that these so-called "reports" are false and such things cannot possibly be occurring.
@DanTheMan
Why limit it to such a paltry sum? Why not $100,000 or $1,000,000 an hour. And why hasn't the Washington legislature passed a law to award all of the state's residents Bachelor Degrees? Do they approve of the lifetime pay differential between those with a college degree and those without?
There was a story about a bookstore closing too.
But, hey! The consequences, they were unexpected!
McDonalds can go to robots but "trendy little restaurants" can't.
Seattle's also trying to compete with the Bay Area and L.A in becoming a homeless attraction.
The best you can hope for in Seattle proper is a kind of slightly mature neo-liberalish approach when crafting the budget.
Otherwise, it's pretty insane.
>>Next up for Seattle: a law forbidding businesses from shutting down.
I'd suggest they first repeal the law of supply and demand.
Is anybody with a basic grasp of economics surprised by this? Fewer jobs and reduced hours (especially at the bottom of the pay scale) are the natural consequences of increasing the minimum wage. Usually a minimum wage hike is small enough that the damage remains hidden, but in this case the rise was big enough that even the ideologically blinded Progressives may see it.
I'm pretty sure the Yogurtland on the Ave by the UW Bookstore just closed for that reason.
Only so much you can charge the customer for yogurt.
I am Laslo.
the minimum wage is always $0, as any worker who lost their job can tell you
Aside from unemployment due to the gap between the market and statutory minimum wage for low productivity workers, I think the interesting thing to measure is whether a too high minimum wage can actually pull-down wages for higher productivity/experienced workers.
The commenters to that article are interesting. One called "tensor" is a typical lefty. Cookie was that you ?
Yes the "city dies" language absolutely fits here. I expect pieces of what used to be Seattle to be absorbed into surrounding suburbs any day now.
Because this story proves neoliberalism is the only way to go!
Restaurants? So can I assume that the minimum wage law in Seattle does not allow waitstaff to earn a lesser amount so long as tips are reported?
If that's the case, then I know not to tip in Seattle.
Heh.
Nothing pisses off the leftist elite more than the idea that somewhere, a peasant is enjoying steak. From climate change to University of Wisconsin projects for Africa; to bloody cattle ranchers in Nevada, to school lunches: the long-term goal is always, always to get the proles off of meat and onto bugs and vegetables.
So why on earth do you guys think that shutting down quality restaurants enjoyed by the masses is in any way an "unintended" consequence? It might not have been openly bandied about, but it certainly wasn't unexpected, nor considered unfortunate.
Now I know, I know, there are going to be some leftists out there who lose their favorite all-organic coffee shop or vegan bistro. Shock! Horror! But these are your useful idiots - if you're the sort of leftist who gets surprised by the backlash of 'unintended consequences', then you're the sort of leftist who was never slated for the commissar class, no matter how much you dreamed of your improved lot in life following the revolution.
This fifteen-dollar minimum wage increase must mean that there are no more ten-dollar blow-jobs in the city. Theoretically. Check Cherry Street.
Even hookers start at 'entry-level'.
I am laslo.
Laslo,
Blow jobs don't take an hour
Next thing you know, Seattle Progressives will pass a law against unintended consequences.
They are closing because they have a good sense of what their customers are willing and able to pay for their food. Doubling the wage expense (which may also increase workman's comp and other costs that scale to wages) of the food will push the cost of the food past the affordable point so they are shutting. A side dish of charitable wage boosting is apparently a plate the local diners aren't interested in ordering.
The confluence of supply, demand and price curves... it's not just a suggestion, it's the law.
This completely foreseeable consequence will be the fault of everyone/anyone BUT the people that pushed for and won this minimum wage increase. It will be mostly blamed on "greedy business owners" and "greedy capitalists".
If progressives REALLY believed in things like "a living wage" they would get together, pool their money, start their businesses and pay their workers whatever they want. Instead, they would rather use the force of the state to make everyone else do what they "feel" is right because it is far easier to make the state do your dirty work than to actually "work".
Seattle needs its own Super Scott Walker to the rescue.
Restaurants? So can I assume that the minimum wage law in Seattle does not allow waitstaff to earn a lesser amount so long as tips are reported?
If that's the case, then I know not to tip in Seattle.
3/13/15, 9:41 AM
---
Cooks, preps, bussers, dishwashers, and hostesses. Most of the staff in many restaurants isn't tipped.
This is going to be good for Snohomish County, into which the Seattle metropolitan area extends. King and Snohomish counties are divided by an invisible and imaginary line, and you have to look at a map to know which one you are in. Snohomish County is keeping the state minimum wage, which is already the nation's highest at $9.47.
It will be interesting to see if enrollment at the U of Washington declines too as many students depend on minimum/low wage jobs to make ends meet. Will those student move on or go elsewhere if minimum/low paying jobs aren't available?
@BDNYC:Restaurants? So can I assume that the minimum wage law in Seattle does not allow waitstaff to earn a lesser amount so long as tips are reported?
If that's the case, then I know not to tip in Seattle.
Waitstaff have to be paid the state minimum wage regardless of tips.
However, in states where this is NOT the case, employers have to make up the minimum wage if waitstaff don't make enough tips, so feel free to go on tipping in Seattle.
I especially liked this comment:
"Keep in mind that $15 an hour isn't some crazy made up number, it's the same value (correcting for inflation) of the minimum wage in the 1970s. Are you saying that businesses now are so badly run that they can't pay what businesses 40 years ago could pay workers?"
The Seventies, when, thanks to a high minimum wage and wage and price controls, the U.S. of A. enjoyed rapid economic growth, low unemployment, low interest rates, and low inflation. Then, for some reason Ronald Raygun was elected to destroy the economy and reinstate the use of child labor on the aristocracy's diamond farms.
What? You don't remember it like that at all? Stagflation? Recession? Long lines at the gas pump and gas rationing?
Good Day Sir! I said, Good Day!
Unexpectedly !!!
Idiots.
A city dies because a few restaurants are not sustainable without underpaying people?
I'd say trendy restaurants are not that important. The entire restaurant tip culture is long overdue for a reset anyway.
If 1968 minimum wage was happening today it would be 11-12 dollars nationally, not just in a higher priced area like Seattle.
"Most of the staff in many restaurants isn't tipped."
Most restaurants require that tips be shared.
Just think of those restaurants like the functioning cars destroyed in Cash For Clunkers and it makes more sense.
Raising minimum wage ignores causes, distorts the economy, and devalues capital (e.g. savings). It may be tolerable for large corporations, and necessary to compensate for governments that indulge in liberal fiscal policies, but it's a planned closure of many small businesses and individuals.
to maintain their image, if they needed to maintain their image, they would want to support nice, progressive things like a jacked up minimum wage law.
The bottom line matters, no mattery how cutesy a place is or how much they care. Restaurants have been coping with higher food prices the last few years and have already been cutting back on portions, subbing cheaper ingredients and raising prices. If that doesn't put you in the red, you are going to close.
If any of these minimum wage people understood economics, they might understand this.
Seattle's corpse outleant
It's crypt the cloudy canopy
SOJO said...
A city dies because a few restaurants are not sustainable without underpaying people?
3/13/15, 10:17 AM
Sorry but this is the kind of idiotic comment that I only expect from a select few of the Althouse posters.
What is "underpaying"? How is that actually determined? I don't mean by a law, I mean economically. Do you even have a clue?
A job is worth as much as the employee can get and as little as the job owner is willing to pay. If those two desires cross, that is the pay. For simple jobs, those that take little to no skill. The worth of that job is affected by the pool of acceptable workers. Too few workers and the hourly rate will rise until it gets too close to the value of the work performed and then, additional rate pressure will cause the job to go away.
Why in the world would anyone pay someone more than the actual job was worth? If a waiter can only generate $15 an hour in value (overly simplified) than paying them $15 is a great way to bankrupt the business. In the restaurant business, the value brought in by the waitstaff has to support rent, utilities, cooks, cleaners, supplies, advertisement, benefits, taxes, etc., etc., etc. As some point there is just not enough dollars coming in to support the rate of wages due to artificial rates set by these laws.
So now the citizens get to crow about how much they care about the poor working stiff as they push those folks out of jobs.
Chickens, roost...
Acm,
In my experience bussers and hosts/hostesses are often tipped, although not by the customer.
The waiter/waitress will usually give them a portion of their tip so that their tables get cleaned faster and people are more likely to be seated in their area.
It may not be the same amount but it does happen.
Why are liberals so anti-science? They refuse to accept laws of economics.
If raising it to $15 is good, with no bad impacts, just raise it to $20.
It's like the government creating jobs.
Shanna said...
If any of these minimum wage people understood economics, they might understand this.
If any of these minimum wage people understood economics they wouldn't be these minimum wage people.
I also found the fact that a restaurant doing $700,000 a year in business would only return a profit of $28,000 interesting. And you have to assume that that's a well ran restaurant where the owner is working his or her ass off. Poorly run restaurants don't make any money at all, in fact they lose money and go out of business.
So assume a wait staff of five, each working 8 hours a week.
At $9.50 an hour (rounding the state minimum wage) the total cost per year is 9.50 * 5 * 40 * 12 = 22,800.
At $15 an hour it is $36,000
36,000 - 22,800 = 13,200
So the profit is now
$28,000 - $13,200 = $14,800
So the owner is making half the money with no reduction in work load.
So obviously the only reason the owner would close his business is because he hates his workers and is upset because he can't exploit them any longer.
I have never known of waitstaff being required to share tips with cooks, prep/expo or dishwashers. Some restaurants pool tips between waitstaff/bar and bussers and hostesses, but only if they're not paying those staff min wage either. In any event, a tipped employee needs to claim enough tips to make min wage, or the restaurant has to make up the difference. So tipped employees are guaranteed a min wage regardless.
I sit on the Civil Service Comission of the school district in a large Los Angeles suburb. There is a strong move afoot in the City of Los Angeles to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Earlier this week I reviewed a job notice posting for a teacher's aide position; the minimum educational requirement was an A.A. degree--and the starting salary for the job was $11.50 an hour, stepping up to a maximum of $15.40. So much for the value of a two year college degree. You'd be better off grabbing a mop in a hotel and getting $15 an hour to start.
I always get the feeling that most of the supporters of such legislation are just one step away from demanding that the Govt. change every $1 bill into a $100 bill so we can all be rich.
I wonder if any economists have done studies mapping how inflation has reduced the real cost of the minimum wage to increasing economic growth?
Michael K said...
McDonalds can go to robots but "trendy little restaurants" can't.
Ah! An evil right-wing dream come true! All the trendy restaurants closing down and leaving the soy-latte crowd with nothing but McDonalds! It's like burying a vampire in a garlic patch!
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...
Michael K said...
McDonalds can go to robots but "trendy little restaurants" can't.
Ah! An evil right-wing dream come true! All the trendy restaurants closing down and leaving the soy-latte crowd with nothing but McDonalds! It's like burying a vampire in a garlic patch!
3/13/15, 10:35 AM
Actually, most right-wingers don't really think about the soy-latte crowd at all except for how to effectively target them with advertising.
Why don't all you like-minded lefties get together, open a bunch of businesses and show those heartless right-wingers how it is done!
They need a law forcing businesses to remain open.
Todd said...
Why don't all you like-minded lefties get together, open a bunch of businesses and show those heartless right-wingers how it is done!
David Bonior, former Democrat whip from Michigan, a far-left Progressive, now owns two restaurants in DC. From the Washington Post:
"to make the numbers work, he pays his 50 or so employees — who are not union members — what he calls 'the tip wage,' which is $2.36 an hour."
CarlF said...
David Bonior, former Democrat whip from Michigan, a far-left Progressive, now owns two restaurants in DC. From the Washington Post:
"to make the numbers work, he pays his 50 or so employees — who are not union members — what he calls 'the tip wage,' which is $2.36 an hour."
3/13/15, 10:51 AM
But, but, but... Evil Capitalists!
Don't these Seattle rubes know that a higher minimum wage has no impact on employment? Why Paul Krugman explained this just last week.
I also found the fact that a restaurant doing $700,000 a year in business would only return a profit of $28,000 interesting.
Even more surprising to me- the restaurants those foodie chefs from television operate? Many of them never turn a profit. There's a steady stable of wealthy foodies willing to write a benefactor check, even when they recognize they are unlikely to see a financial payoff. The restaurant gets up and running but operates at a loss, but with a slow burn rate stays afloat for a number of years. Once the place is no longer the bees knees, shut the doors and repeat.
forgot to times by number of weeks. Assuming 50 weeks a year then
9.50 an hour = 95,000
15.00 an hour = 150,000
150,000 - 95,000 = 55,000
So you go from a profit of $28,000 a year to a loss of $27,000.
Also, my wife reminds me that the cost of providing health insurance is going up thanks to Obamacare.
"Also, my wife reminds me that the cost of providing health insurance is going up thanks to Obamacare."
Ah, but the price of insurance has always gone up. How can it be determined what percentage of any present increases have to do with Obamneycare?
Ralph Hyatt said...
Also, my wife reminds me that the cost of providing health insurance is going up thanks to Obamacare.
And the cost of not providing health insurance is going up pretty significantly too.
Todd said...
Why don't all you like-minded lefties get together, open a bunch of businesses and show those heartless right-wingers how it is done!
Because I'm not a leftie. Never have been never will be.
You, however, are an asshole who doesn't understand an attempt at humor.
"Most restaurants require that tips be shared."
I don't know how you can know that "most restaurants" do this. I have worked in restaurants, and the sharing varied in these ways:
All the waitstaff working a given meal shift would pool and divide all tips between them;
or,
The waiters/waitresses working together on their assigned stations shared their tips between them, and with their busboys.
I never saw any other employees getting any part of the tips, as they were paid minimum wage.
I'm sure there are many ways the restaurants work this, but I'd be surprised if "most" required tips to be shared with non-waitstaff.
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...
You, however, are an asshole who doesn't understand an attempt at humor.
3/13/15, 11:11 AM
Well you are entitled to your opinion. As for your attempt at humor, it sounded an awful lot like the actual stuff lefties actually say so I hope you can forgive my confusion...
Nothing pisses off the leftist elite more than the idea that somewhere, a peasant is enjoying steak.
So true. I forget where I saw it or who said it: "There will never be a revolution in America because everyone can buy a steak."
Or something like that.
rhhardin said...
They need a law forcing businesses to remain open.
Wreckers, hoarders, and saboteurs, rhhardin; the State will come for them soon enough.
Todd said...As for your attempt at humor, it sounded an awful lot like the actual stuff lefties actually say so I hope you can forgive my confusion...
Poe's Law
Ann Althouse said...A city dies, but — oh! — what a beautiful corpse!
No to kiss up, but I bet Althouse commenters would kick ass at Exquisite Corpse
"Why don't all you like-minded lefties get together, open a bunch of businesses and show those heartless right-wingers how it is done!"
And you can hire Obama's Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to explain how to do it.
Earlier work by Princeton economists David Card and Alan Krueger (now the chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers) purported to show that modest increases in the minimum wage don’t necessarily decrease employment and may even have a positive impact on jobs for low-skilled workers. Their use of survey data, however, was seriously flawed and their results were refuted by University of California at Irvine economist David Neumark and others.
In an article in Cato’s Regulation magazine in 1995, Donald Deere, Kevin Murphy, and Finis Welch carefully examined the Card-Krueger case studies, which appeared in Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage, and concluded: “Higher minimum wages go hand-in-hand with substantial declines in the employment of low-productivity workers. . . . The conventional wisdom remains intact.”
Oh well. It's a good idea anyway.
You, however, are an asshole who doesn't understand an attempt at humor
I thought it was pretty funny.
"Ah, but the price of insurance has always gone up. How can it be determined what percentage of any present increases have to do with Obamneycare?"
This a new talking point? When you are mandated, by law, to provide insurance then the percent increase is %100.
gerry@11:23am/
That quote is used to explain that a true socialist party has never developed in America "..because of the low price and ready availability of beef-steak.."
"There will never be a revolution in America because everyone can buy a steak."
Full supermarkets make the propaganda work. The Soviets learned this and demonstrated its opposite.
Beautiful corpse?
It's already decomposing, like the rest of blue-state America.
Left wing economics are famous for their great success! Look at how well the oil industry is doing in Venezuela while the workers are wearing their revolutionary red.
But the lefties on this thread are right, who gives a crap about the low skilled workers in any city. If they can't make themselves worth $15, they should just leave.
And people say that liberals don't really care about the poor.
"Earlier work by Princeton economists David Card and Alan Krueger (now the chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers) purported to show that modest increases in the minimum wage don’t necessarily decrease employment and may even have a positive impact on jobs for low-skilled workers."
The science is settled.
Cookie: "Ah, but the price of insurance has always gone up. How can it be determined what percentage of any present increases have to do with Obamneycare?"
Ah, but people were always dying in countries where communists took over. How can it be determined what percentage of those millions murdered and lobbed into mass graves have to do with communist rule?
Inevitable fallback: more millions would have been murdered if the capitalists had their way. In that sense, communism resulted in many more lives "saved or created"!!
#winning.
tim in vermont: "But the lefties on this thread are right, who gives a crap about the low skilled workers in any city. If they can't make themselves worth $15, they should just leave"
Even better, with millions more uneducated 3rd world mentality illegals getting to work here there will be no problem paying folks to work under the table for tips only.
#evenmorewinning
Wilbur: "Earlier work by Princeton economists David Card and Alan Krueger (now the chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers) purported to show that modest increases in the minimum wage don’t necessarily decrease employment and may even have a positive impact on jobs for low-skilled workers."
The science is settled."
Republicans are "Employment Not Necessarily Decreased By Minimum Wage Increases" DENIERS!!!
"The science is settled."
It is, and anyone questioning it is a minimum wage-denier.
Well, since I've lived in Washington nearly all my life maybe commenters will find this information useful.
a) All non-exempt employees have to be paid minimum wage, there is no exception for tips, and Washington has the highest minimum wage, so no we are not getting a Cracker Barrel.
b) I worked at restarants going to school. Every place had an informal tip out policy, since no one can be required to tip out. Some tipped employees were better about it than others. We were all making at least minimum wage but cooks generally got a buck or two more.
c) Seattle is very affluent and was almost unaffected by the economic downturns the rest of the country has suffered. We can afford a lot of stupidity, which is good because we have many, many more stupid ideas that we have implemented and that we wish to implement.
d) Businesses will probably just move over the county line. Seattle's not that large area-wise. Fancy places in Bellevue won't move, since their clientele can afford a lot more. And those places are probably already paying about $15.
Many people (most, to be brutally honest) simply can't accomplish anything in an hour that's worth $15 to anyone. Until inflation catches up with it, Seattle is fucked.
Think: ""The science is settled."
It is, and anyone questioning it is a minimum wage-denier"
Great minds think alike.
Additionally, so do ours. At least momentarily. Fleetingly perhaps.
Lo, the People, gathered by the Magic Money Tree, shook most vigorously of trunk and branch.
"Give us equality" they cried. "Render unto us a Living Wage"
But the magic money tree remained silent.
"Looketh there' shouted one, a corporate Fat Cat among the leaves"
'Take it by the throat" growled another.
'No, This is a Man. Do not be fooled by appearances'
But The Magic Money Tree remained silent.
The People Sat there And Sang Songs and Demanded That All Shall Be Equal and Fair, Just and Happy.'
Drago,
Why bring in "communists" in a post about Obamneycare? It's manifestly not a socialist/communist program, but a conservative one, (hence the name Obamneycare, after Mitt Romney).
This is what is objectionable about Obamneycare: it doesn't go to the root of the problem: private health insurers operating for profit. The law is a boon to the private insurers.
I was never a supporter of the Obamneycare option. The better choice would be Medicare for all. That said, if there are citizens who are now able to obtain some degree of health insurance who would not previously, then the law is at least a marginal improvement on having done nothing at all.
@Smilin Jack:Until inflation catches up with it, Seattle is fucked.\
Probably not. Microsoft, Boeing, Costco, and Amazon employees might have to pay a little more for their lattes.
You know Microsoft drives its employees to work? You can hardly change lanes without hitting a white/green Microsoft shuttle. They have individual cars, they have vans, and they have full-size buses, many of them propane-powered. I don't think a higher minimum wage is a problem for them.
Seattle can afford a lot of stupid; which is good, we're not running out that article any time soon.
@Robert Cook: The better choice would be Medicare for all.
Says someone who is clearly not on Medicare. Or Medicaid for that matter.
But of course the problem is profit. Disinterested, impartial bureaucrats will bring the same savings and efficiencies that they've brought to Amtrak, the VA hospitals, and DMVs all over the country.
Shanna @ 10:24 nailed it!
Food prices are way up and now they add a labor price jump on top of that. Bad time to be in the restaurant business. Not that the SJW's would acknowledge any of that because Greed!
Why is it that greed seems to be an affliction suffered only by business owners.
Robert Cook's like that guy who keeps calling in to remind Democracy Now! how they don't 'really get' the level of corporate collusion in The United States of Plutocracy.
I think I can see you out there in far Left field, Robert, chilling on the warning track.
Drago, LOL. As it appears that neither of us follow ideological lines, but instead take each issue on its own, it is probable that we will think alike occasionally.
Robert Coook said...That said, if there are citizens who are now able to obtain some degree of health insurance who would not previously, then the law is at least a marginal improvement on having done nothing at all.
Is "there are some benefits, so as long as you ignore all the costs this must be better than what existed before or what could have existed" what you're asserting, then? Insightful.
"It's manifestly not a socialist/communist program, but a conservative one, (hence the name Obamneycare, after Mitt Romney). "
That old myth seems to be stuck in the minds of the angry left. Heritage once supported a mandate for a basic catastrophic care plan. They were under the impression that "free riders:" were a real problem. They decide that was wrong a few years later but the left has never let go of the idea that Obamacare is "conservative."
The other myth that is stuck in their minds is "Medicare for all," which will continue until Medicare collapses.
The stupidity is strong in this one.
Gabriel,
Aside from the shuttles, Microsoft responds to labor markets like any other company. Many people are coming out of India and China ready to work hard, with the right skills, often for less money.
@Chris N: Microsoft responds to labor markets like any other company.
Yes, but the prevailing wage is much higher than $15 per hour, especially when you add in free shuttles.
Many people are coming out of India and China ready to work hard, with the right skills, often for less money.
Which is why Microsoft wants more H1-Bs to address the completely mythical "STEM shortage", which has never existed in my lifetime. But "less money" is not $15 per hour, for Microsoft.
Yes, they are affected by labor markets, but not by a minimum wage law, since they pay far above it already.
Microsoft will not be unaffected though. They outsource the "cheap stuff" like grounds keeping, janitorial services, etc. Those folks generally make toward the low end of the scale and when minimum wages go up, the contractors have to charge more. The margins will get thinner, the hours will be cut or move under the table.
@SOJO, and other of a similar mind:
What's magic about 1968, besides it being 1968, that should recommend it as the optimal year to use for wage comparisons? Is that based on economic science? If it's just that in 1968, the comparative value of the minimum wage was historically highest, that's arbitrary. Why not use 1938, so that today's inflation-adjusted minimum wage would be $4.14? Why not October 1945? The war was over, our factories are humming along uncontested in the world? That would put today's minimum wage at $5.04. Heck, today's minimum wage was passed by a democrat super-majority and signed by President Obama, adjusted for inflation is $7.90. Why 1968?
We all remember the 1970s as a golden era of prosperity. Just watch the movie Rocky if you want to see what the '70s looked like when I was choosing whether I thought that more of the same would be a good idea.
Michael K: 'Heritage once supported a mandate for a basic catastrophic care plan. They were under the impression that "free riders:" were a real problem. They decide that was wrong a few years later but the left has never let go of the idea that Obamacare is "conservative."
Not true.
It was 1 idea from 1 economist at Heritage that Heritage published.
"Heritage" did not support it, it was the opinion of 1 wag. The Republicans never supported it.
And the health care plan passed in Massachusetts was passed with a super-majority of dems who allowed Romney to add a couple of small items in exchange for his "public" support.
Romney knew he couldn't stop anything given that supermajority so he, as a Northeastern Republican is wont to do, signed on for those small items.
Bit mistake.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what the professional revisionists on the left want you to believe constitutes a "republican idea" and a "republican/conservative" plan that is only opposed now because republicans are racist.
Next up, someone moron will claim that the reason for going to war in Iraq was due to some fictional argument about "vast and new WMD's in Iraq".
ROBERT COOK ROBERT COOK ROBERT COOK!!!
Sorry for yelling but I really want you to read and comprehend this.
"Ah, but the price of insurance has always gone up. How can it be determined what percentage of any present increases have to do with Obamneycare?"
I can tell you exactly how much is due to Obamacare. My wife's and my coverage jumped to $818 a month this year. Ours is a legacy policy. It predates Obamacare but was not cancelled because of Obamacare. It is priced by the old underwritten market driven standards.
I went online to price Obamacare plans to see if we could do better. I was shocked. The equivalent Obamacare version of our policy was $1985 a month!
I know exactly how much Obamcare adds to coverage. $1,167 a month! 143%!
Now before you try to pick me apart and ask me sceptical questions, you should know that my career was a life/health reinsurance dealmaker. I know how to read a policy and compare networks and benefits.
I will repeat. The incremental cost of Obamacare is 143%, $1,167 a month.
"Why 1968?"
"Mony Mony" was released that year.
StoughtonSconnie said...
@SOJO, and other of a similar mind:
What's magic about 1968, besides it being 1968, that should recommend it as the optimal year to use for wage comparisons?
I remember making $1.50/hr in 1968, less deductions.
By 1969, I was making $.22 / hr is an Army Private...with substandard room and board...
I lost my ass leasing and running a bar and grille for six months. The margins are thin. Any little shift in cost, and you're in the red.
Dumbest money / business decision I have ever made. Ran like a scared little boy.
Paid every debt to every creditor though and did not hide behind my LLC.
"And the health care plan passed in Massachusetts was passed with a super-majority of dems who allowed Romney to add a couple of small items in exchange for his "public" support."
Not true. The bill was passed over his veto with the employer mandate. His leftist successor has added more junk.
I won't argue about the "i wag." Go to Heritage, as I have and read.
The catastrophic mandate was not a bad idea except that the theory of damage to ERs was wrong.
But they had good intentions. That's what really counts.
ARM is going to come here and tell us these businesses had it coming anyway.
Re: ObastardCare - my old BCBS policy was canceled ($5k deductible with some paid for annual tests, eye exam, dicounted Rx's). New! Better! Cheaper! ObastardCare went UP $212 (60%) and the deductible went UP to $6k with NOTHING paid out until I spent the $6k. Thanks Democrats! I'm sure the deductibles on the taxpayer subsided policies are low enough so the people that wouldn't buy a policy before now go for regular care. Sure.
Gabriel said...
@Smilin Jack:Until inflation catches up with it, Seattle is fucked.\
Probably not. Microsoft, Boeing, Costco, and Amazon employees might have to pay a little more for their lattes.
You know Microsoft drives its employees to work? You can hardly change lanes without hitting a white/green Microsoft shuttle. They have individual cars, they have vans, and they have full-size buses, many of them propane-powered. I don't think a higher minimum wage is a problem for them.
Seattle can afford a lot of stupid; which is good, we're not running out that article any time soon.
3/13/15, 12:42 PM "
The republicans if they were truly evil bastards would tax the employees for these imputed incomes along with the meals and other benefits the Google's, Apples and large law firms provide. When they get hit in their wallets then they won't be so liberal with other people's money when it comes to taxes and other progressive 'do gooder'nonsense.
Well, at least the wages are now on par with veterinarian assistants, dental assistants, and other skilled positions that requires degrees, certifications, and experience.
But, hey--at least now it's fair!
Gabriel,
Agreed. Big companies, flush with cash, like MS aren't immediately affected, and possibly never will be, by such distortions at the lower end of the labor market.
If it starts to get really bad, they can lobby and throw their weight around, or if worse comes to worse, relocate. But that's unlikely. They're headquartered in Redmond, anyways
Seattle has always been a boom and bust town and there's enough innovation, opportunity and wealth to support a lot of lunacy and this kind of restrictive progressive regulation.
It's not the open socialists, so much (Sawant, City Council) as the collectivist soccer mom crowd and the overall 'spirit' of the city that keeps such demands percolating.
Anti-establishment, vaguely anarchic, 'tolerant,' collectivist, open, unpretentious, relatively uncivilized and immature (by age alone) might help describe Seattle.
Why bring in "communists" in a post about Obamneycare?
Why bring in Obamneycare in a post about the minimum wage?
it doesn't go to the root of the problem: private health insurers operating for profit
Here in reality, Mr. Cook, the health insurance industry is absolutely saturated with nonprofit plan providers even before you count government provision. If "operating for profit" was the root of problems, than health care should be the cheapest and most efficient industry in America, while food and clothing should be utter messes.
Seriously, how can you actually type such utter, absolute, and obvious garbage? If for-profit insurers were the problem, then Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Kaiser Permamente would have solved everything decades ago.
Minimum wage is the beginning of total compensation . What's the cutoff for Medicaid expansion aka Obamacare?
Reality is such a BITCH!!!
Seattle simply needs to repeal the law of supply and demand. This will fix the problem.
Who in the world could have seen this coming? Am I right?
Why don't these business owners just pay the higher wages from the billions in profits that they make?
A moron could have told you that raising the minimum wage that high would impact businesses that can't afford to raise the wage that high. But for lefties it's all about "fairness" and what sounds good, not about what makes sense.
So, enjoy your time on unemployment Seattleers.Brought to you by the good willed but retarded policies of the liberal overlords.
Seatles next move is to make unemployment a livable wage. No limits in place. You just sit at home,read your paper and get paid.
"Washington Restaurant Association’s Anthony Anton puts it this way: “It’s not a political problem; it’s a math problem.”
It always is. Just basic math. Why can't the left do math? Is math racist?
“He estimates that a common budget breakdown among sustaining Seattle restaurants so far has been the following: 36 percent of funds are devoted to labor, 30 percent to food costs and 30 percent go to everything else (all other operational costs). The remaining 4 percent has been the profit margin, and as a result, in a $700,000 restaurant, he estimates that the average restauranteur in Seattle has been making $28,000 a year.
“With the minimum wage spike, however, he says that if restaurant owners made no changes, the labor cost in quick service restaurants would rise to 42 percent and in full service restaurants to 47 percent.”
So liberals, think of a restaurant as a smallish business. Its not a conglomerate that rakes in billions. Even the chains are in fact franchises, and so are all small businesses.
Labor can only be so much. if You drive up labor costs you either drive up prices or reduce the amount of labor. Or get a store to close.
So congrats, Seattle. How many businesses have to suffer because you can't do basic math? and you keep electing people who promise you these grandiose things who themselves can't do math either.
a business needs a liberal like a head needs a guillotine.
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