Posted on 06/05/2014 11:51:16 PM PDT by South40
Full title: Who’d a-thunk it? Following $15 per hour minimum wage in SeaTac, local businesses are adding ‘living wage surcharges’?
Erin Shannon, Director of the Center for Small Business writes on The Washington Policy Center blog that “In SeaTac, Everyone Pays for the $15 Minimum Wage“:
Last week I blogged about SeaTac employers who have responded to the new $15 minimum wage law by reducing or eliminating the benefits workers receive. Employees earning the new wage say they have lost benefits such as 401k, paid holidays, paid vacation, free food, free parking and overtime hours. As one SeaTac worker put it, “It sounds good, but it’s not good.”
But workers aren’t the only ones paying for the high wage. Consumers are also picking up the tab, in the form of increased prices. Many SeaTac businesses have tacked on an additional fee to mitigate the increased cost of labor. On the receipt pictured above, a $6.93 “living wage surchage” was added to a $84.00 parking charge. That is the equivalent of a 8.25% tax.
(Excerpt) Read more at aei-ideas.org ...
Only Liberals who live in their own make believe world think you can just raise wages!
Very smart of Masterpark to show that stupid government policies have consequences. Businesses are forced to pass through expenses to the consumer.
Then there's this...Study: Wage hike bad for SD
The Marxists are calling the shots in Seattle and the entire state of Washington. This Seattle minimum wage increase was not even by a vote of the people. The Seattle City Council bullied their way through without a vote.
The people making their $15 and hour have to pay those extra charges too. That’s the way government tampering with the economy always works. Inflation gets em’ on the backside.
San Diego voters will have a chance to vote in the issue. So while I feel for those in Seattle who oppose this lunacy, I am thankful we will have the experience there to look to when the time comes to consider it. Hopefully, it is revealed to be the disaster so voters here reject it. It appears it already is.
Yes, but these are the same people who thought that "Free healthcare" meant someone else had to pay for it.
I hope the San Diego voters do not get economic reality blurred with Marxist myth. A measure of how successful this ill conceived polity has affected the economy will be the parking revenue around the city. Parking revenue is tied directly to economic activity in the city. When you have to pay for parking and now have to pay for increased prices, fewer will be spending time in Seattle.
The problem is, rent in the town is off the charts (oil boom) at $2400/month + utilities for a 2 bedroom apt. (or more).
None of this stuff occurs in a vacuum. For people who allegedly get the concept about a butterfly flapping its wings in one place causing a storm hundreds of miles away, they sure don't get how arbitrarily tampering with the equilibrium in an economy ripples through all sectors.
Just wait until that new income tax bracket-shock sets in!
Doesn’t every business have a magic bag that contains an infinite amount of money? Why don’t they take it from there? Why would the price go up for customers?
“Doesn’t every business have a magic bag that contains an infinite amount of money?”
That’s the sort of visionary thinking that keeps unions coming back to the bargaining table.
Great point. That is the beauty of free market capitalism. It is fully based on supply/demand. If I were the owners of fast food restaurants in Seattle, I would close shop, and then let the liberals explain why that there were “No” jobs anywhere for the less trained and experienced.
When there is more money in an economy, there will be higher prices.
The business owner is going to do his best to juggle that issue. Fast food as an example is predicated on convenience. If a burger-fry-coke goes from $7 to $15, there will be many of their customers who will opt for things like, buying outside the town, or cooking at home.
It's spiral that will likely force many businesses to close.
Yep, a boom town mentality that will eventually find it’s level of sanity. Hope the recipients of this good fortune don’t get to used to it.
The popular bumper sticker read "Please, God, give us another oil boom. We promise not to piss it away this time."
The greatest concern is the spending at the State level of oil tax revenue. Seven counties are the main producers in the current boom, but that doesn't stop counties across the state from trying to dig out a share of the money. It is the government expenditures which will have to be paid off or supported in the long run which concern me most, because other sources of revenue will be found to support that--and that means more taxes.
Gov Ed Schafer did a bang-up job of reducing size and cost of government after that first boom went bust, but the current bunch have been spending like sailors on liberty.
LOL... Exact analogy I was thinking of. The thing is though, drunken sailors on leave use their own money. Congrescritters, use someone else's.
That's probably one of the REAL reasons why governments adopted these high minimum wages in the first place. They've incentivized businesses to eliminate benefits like the ones listed here -- most of which are either non-taxable or are taxed in ways that can't be effectively enforced -- in lieu with a higher base wage that is subject to all of the usual income and payroll taxes.
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