by Jack
It’s just one bookstore, but its representative of a trend, i.e., the closure of other small businesses. The store had a profit margin of $3000 a year after all salaries, benefits, rent and taxes were paid. Just enough to keep it going with a little extra in the slush fund. Then the City Council raised minimum wage to $15.50 and hour from $10.50 an hour. The store was looking at a shortfall of about $23,000 a year. Even after raising prices, they store was well into the red, so the owner decided he would be better off to retire and so he laid off 6 employees and closed the doors. How many times has this been repeated over the years? Plenty. And the worst part the employee is not given any options because it is illegal to work for less than the minimum wage.
A similar thing happened in Hawaii over a decade ago when they passed mandatory health insurance coverage for their entry level workers that were working full time. Suddenly there was a whole lot of part-time jobs.
The thing liberals don’t understand is, profit and loss is a math problem, not a social problem. It would be wonderful if we could just legislate good paying salaries for everyone, but we can’t. That would violate the two most important laws of economics:
1. A business must make a profit to stay in business, unlike government that can just print more money.
2. A person is worth what they bring to the job, paying them more than they are worth violates rule number 1.
It should be a law that before anyone can run for office they must have been in private business for at least 3 years, so they could understand how difficult it is to survive when government is constantly working against you.
“” Maybe they’ll form cartels, rip off both consumer and employee, and chortle all the way to the bank.” Really? Oh Libby….”
Denial is always your only defense. But neither the Sherman nor the Clayton Anti-Trust Acts materialized out of thin air. They were spawned by desperate inequities.
And you are pathetic.
Really Libby? You have to reach all the way back to 1890 to find government acts that protect consumers against noncompetitive “monopolies, cartels, and trusts.”
It seems to me that in this imperfect world America has been the model for competitive enterprise!
The real problem concerning monopolistic tendencies lies with the federal government. And you are all in favor of government monopoly of our healthcare, and who knows what else, and for some reason cannot see that this is just as harmful to consumers.
How do you justify this idiocy?