San Francisco Screws Small Businesses
Francisco not only screws small businesses, but their workers too.
“How could that be?” you Liberals ask. “Don’t you know that San Francisco is the nearest thing to Heaven that has ever graced this planet, and undoubtedly the Universe?”
“Muslims have Mecca. Liberals have San Francisco.”
The news of San Francisco’s callous regard for the small businessman and his key employees was uncovered by the unlikeliest of sources, the socialist welfare state’s most ardent supporter, the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Chronicle, which has the same relationship with news as Hillary has with candor (for example, in Iowa), John Kerry has with Christmas in Cambodia, or Al Gore has with world peace, in some way put ideology aside long enough to note that small San Francisco restaurants were put on a fast track to failure by the minimum wage and health insurance mandates the San Francisco Board of Stupidvisors laid on.
Of course, the San Francisco Supervisors are not the only economic illiterates in San Francisco, where most of the electorate firmly believe that there is such a thing as a free lunch, and take every chance offered them to destroy San Francisco’s job base while saving San Francisco workers. At the rate they’re going, the San Francisco worker will soon join the San Francisco businessperson on the Extinct Species List.
Liberal San Franciscans (please excuse the advertent redundancy) have never absorbed the simple truths that brought down Communism – that for every centrally planned and mandated assault on free market forces, there are unintended consequence that result in economic damages far outweighing conceived benefits.
A case in point. San Francisco is renowned for small, high quality restaurants, and these restaurants are high on the list of reasons that San Francisco is a Mecca for tourists. Good restaurants need good cooks. It would also help if they have good waitpersons too, but if the cooks are good, good wait staff will be abundantly available.
So what does San Francisco, one of the most tourist dependant cities in the world, do? It mandates minimum wage and health care benefits that drive up the cost of waitpersons while pulling money from the pot available to pay cooks. Unlike other more rational cities, which include all the other cities of the world except those run by Communist or Islamic ideologues, San Francisco does not allow a “tip credit” to the wait staff to offset a portion of the minimum wage.
Even New York, almost as beknighted by liberalism as San Francisco, allows a tip credit which reduces their minimum wage to $4.60 per hour, versus $9.14 per hour in San Francisco. That minimum wage differential, plus the San Francisco mandate to give paid time off and health care to employees working ten hours or more a week, means that a dining room staff of twelve costs $285,696 in San Francisco, and only $128,064 (45%) in New York.
Of course, San Francisco restaurants are not competing directly with New York restaurants. However, small San Francisco restaurants are competing directly with large San Francisco restaurants, many of which are owned and operated by large corporations. Because of economies of scale, buying clout, and such things as already existing corporation employee benefit plans, the corporate restaurants are not in the least inconvenienced by the minimum wage and health care mandates.
In fact, the corporate restaurants will be directly benefited by the mandates, because many of their competitors will be driven out of business, or will have to raise their prices precipitously
Wealthy San Franciscans and well-heeled tourists won’t mind, and won’t even notice.
The Middle Class, and the Poor, the ones Liberals are always caring about, will notice, and they’ll dine out less often, and have fewer medium priced and sized restaurants to choose among.
Many high priced restaurants, many fast food restaurants, but very few of the kinds of restaurants that have given San Francisco its reputation for quality and variety.
More Liberal unintended consequences.
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The trend of framing topics as liberal vs. conservatives on this website and in general is ridiculous. People's opinions and ideas are nuanced and complex. A liberal can have many conservative elements to their ideology and vice versa. Framing an issue as purely liberal or conservative and then attacking and blaming the opposing side gets us no where, so can we just stop it? As an aside, the Dead Kennedies taught me that a "Holiday in Cambodia" can't be beat, or something like that.
I agree. I have a friend that thought I was a conservative, but Roger and Evriglnt would not consider me to be anywhere near that. Anyway, on the article: Is the minimum wage in question for all jobs across the city, or just restaurant workers? Because I could see a minimum wage for all workers being beneficial.
The minimum wage in San Francisco is across the board. It is an equal opportunity job destroyer. Many San Francisco businesses do have to compete against businesses outside San Francisco, which don't have high minimum wages. San Francisco loses those jobs, evidenced by the rapid and steady decline in San Francisco's student population. Fortunately they are replaced by two-income, no child couples who are not concerned about the minimum wage level. This allows San Francisco to demonstrate they care for the poor, while getting rid of them.
I agree with Aaron, too many people on this site try and paint liberals or conservatives into a corner. Has the past 7 years of bad politics not taught us to be better than that? Howabout we just share our thoughts/concerns/opinions on a given article on the basis of facts? With regards to the article, I work in policy today and also have about five years of background in the restaurant industry as both a bartender and a manager. Here is my take…..Restaurants have very little allegiance to their staff. Servers and tenders work viciously long hours and also work very hard, and are only rewarded through the business becoming more profitable and increasing their gratuities. The reality is this, privately owned smaller restaurants really should have a higher minimum wage. While on a busy night servers may do well with tips, these smaller establishments are far more likely to have slow nights where a server may work 7-10 hours at $4.00 an hour, and only take in another $20-40 in tips. If a business can't afford to pay their employees, it is time for them to be shut down and let another take a stab at running that type of business properly. That is capitalism. It is not the government's job to protect business owners from losing money when their product is mediocre, but is the responsibility of government to ensure that people are paid an appropriate living wage for the hours they log.
An 'equal opportunity job destroyer'? I'd think a minimum wage ACROSS THE BOARD would only give workers more money to spend. Also, like Jonathan said, you have to get paid…
Simmons - The pay increases for workers have to come from the business' revenue stream. The law of supply and demand shows us that when the business offers to sell a certain product at a certain price at a place and time, its customers will decide how much of the product they want at that price. What the customer is willing to pay depends on many things, one of which is how much they are willing to pay for a bundle of goods, or product as a factor of their own income, competing needs, and alternative means of satisfying their need. If the price goes up, we know that less will be purchased, and that revenue could increase, decrease, or be unchanged as a result. As an example, higher restaurant costs may result in more home meals, or going to cheaper restaurants. Higher labor costs in San Francisco auto repair shops may cause people to get their cars repaired in Oakland. Why would raising the minimum wage increase the wages of auto repairmen? Because a minimum wage increase eliminates wage differentials, and those in higher paid jobs soon get raises to reestablish the skill differentials. If raising the minimum wage didn't have a negative effect on small business, I guess we could raise it to $20 an hour. Or why not $25?
Jonathan – you commented: "If a business can't afford to pay their employees, it is time for them to be shut down and let another take a stab at running that type of business properly. That is capitalism." I reply: That is exactly what happens in a capitalist enterprise. If a business can’t afford to pay its employees, the owner will lose employees, lose money, probably lose his business, or have to sell it real cheap. No one has to shut him down. The market takes care of that.
Jonathan - You also commented: "It is not the government's job to protect business owners from losing money when their product is mediocre, but is the responsibility of government to ensure that people are paid an appropriate living wage for the hours they log." I further reply: It is neither the responsibility of government to protect business owners from losing money, nor to ensure that people are paid an appropriate living wage. It is the owner’s responsibility to try to succeed at business (legally), and the employee’s responsibility to develop skills and work diligently to attain and maintain an income to achieve their desired living standard.