Sister Toldjah:
Call it a “teachable moment?”
Due to the new increased minimum wage law in San Francisco, a beloved bookstore and mainstay of the Mission District has been forced to close its doors for good.
The minimum wage for San Francisco workers, currently at $11.05 an hour, soars to $15 an hour in July 2018. The store’s projected labor costs, reported ABC7 News, impelled Borderlands Bookstore to write its final chapter.
The store owner had this to say:
In November, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly passed a measure that will increase the minimum wage within the city to $15 per hour by 2018. Although all of us at Borderlands support the concept of a living wage in principal and we believe that it’s possible that the new law will be good for San Francisco — Borderlands Books as it exists is not a financially viable business if subject to that minimum wage. Consequently we will be closing our doors no later than March 31st.
But the best line came from one of the stunned customers:
“You know, I voted for the measure as well, the minimum wage measure,” customer Edward Vallecillo lamented. “It’s not something that I thought would affect certain specific small businesses. I feel sad.”
Evidently Mr. Vallecillo and the other voters of the Special City were asleep during their economics lessons — assuming that’s even taught anymore. Let’s review, shall we?
Labor is a cost, because the business owner has to provide wages and, often, benefits that cost him more money. When a government mandate increases that cost, the business owner has three choices: pass the cost along to the customer, who may decide it’s too much and stop shopping there; cut employee hours and stop hiring to save on labor costs, thus costing potential jobs and putting a burden on workers still employed; and, finally, just decide it’s not worth it anymore and close up shop. In the low-margin bookseller business, Borderlands’ owner chose the last course as the only one viable.
All these cool liberals must have thought there would be a cool business exemption for all of their favorite places.
But….there is supposed to be a leprechaun riding a unicorn over the rainbow bridge bringing a magical pot of gold to pay for such government mandates, isn’t there?
Isn’t CA the state who froze the amount energy wholesalers could charge consumers ? Didn’t that cause energy wholesalers to go out of business and greatly increase cost? Isn’t that how an action hero actor became the GOV? Liberals never learn!
@Pete –
What? There’s no magical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? 🙂
Atlas shruggs
If it wasn’t the wages, it would have been the rent increases. In San Francisco, low rent is $20 per square foot per year. Let’s assume the book store is 3,000 square feet., making rent $60,000 per year. Property owners in California are increasing rent even if the property does not have tenants. At 5% increase per year, it comes out to $32.50 per square foot. So in 10 years, the rent would be $97,500 for that year. A full time worker works about 2,080 hours so that’s an $18.02 per hour increase.
I live in California and where hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial property is not being used due to high rent.
@Gregory_Dittman: Actually, the rent had been increasing at that bookstore.
It had survived a recent 100% rent increase.
It had only had a $3000 profit last year.
It was this wage increase that was the last nail in the coffin according to the owner.
When we left Long Beach there were empty storefronts everywhere.
High min wage.
When we looked around in Utah we saw Help Wanted signs and open stores everywhere.
Low min wage.
Liberals continue to live under the impression that any business can do what they enjoy their government doing; spend money like it belongs to someone else, don’t worry about debt or fiscal responsibility, if you spend more than you have, just borrow and keep borrowing and, if all else fails, just print more money.
Sounds to me like a business on its last leg finding an excuse rather than admit their very own failure and a hack web site gladly jumping on another fraudulent argument to support their plutocratic agenda.
@Ronald J. Ward: Yet, until it was mandated by typically stupid liberals to raise minimum wage to an artificially high level, the business operated, bought goods, provided employment and paid rent. Thanks to brilliant liberal ideology, no more.
@Bill:
My poor misguided, kool aid induced stalking friend, MW went up 29 cents and this operational, rent paying, employment provider folded like a cheap chair!
You run your mouth like an abject idiot, oblivious of what you’re even running your mouth about! This business folds 3 years prior to any MW increase of any significance.
Have you ever heard of Amazon? Kindle? Online reading? Could they, like, maybe play a role?
You and your low intellect cohorts of FA can surely do better than this in your scraping the bottom of the barrel to drum up something better. I didn’t think it possible but you’ve actually reached an all new low level of jaw dropping idiocy.
@Ronald J. Ward: You and, apparently, every other liberal that exists by the sweat and effort of others still don’t get it, do you?
Some businesses exist by a thread. While they are conducting business and employing people, they are not making the kind of profits that can afford some air-headed liberal assuming there is enough money to take and just “spread the wealth”. In real life (a realm not occupied by liberals), this is not always possible.
Notice how when the reality finally begins to eat into their OWN money (Solyndra, for instance), liberals demand taxpayer-reimbursement for their losses, then they cut and run. Actual people don’t get that benefit; they risk their own capital and livelihoods to try and make a go of it. Liberal stupidity is destroying the very fabric of this nation… and idiots, such as yourself, stand by, live off the taxpayer and cheer it on. The left doesn’t get to decide (or shouldn’t, at least) which businesses survive (as long as they contribute generously to the liberal agenda) and which fail.
When it becomes more costly to do business than the business earns, most cannot just print some more money or operate at a perpetual loss. This is why in the real world, self-sustaining businesses do not hire more people simply because they are out there and pay them whatever makes them feel better. See, they are spending their OWN money, not someone else’s and profit is survival. Loss of profit is closure. Jacking up the minimum wage finally killed the profit. The result was closure. I am not sure how much simpler it can be stated so that even the dumbest of the dumb (which would be the smartest liberal) can understand what happens in the real world, but I am trying.
Raise taxes. Increase regulation. Mandate procedures. Keep it up, moronic left.
Lefties also seem to miss the fact that some jobs are not meant to have a “living wage”. Back when I was a lad, I had a paper route, was a stockboy at a drug store, and earned money for college working in some of the local shops. All of this while living, and eating at home. So I didn’t need a “living wage”, but I did need what I earned, and all these dain bramaged government rules don’t help today’s kids.