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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBusinessman: Raising Minimum Wage is “an existential threat to the business model” he uses
from the Working Life blog:
Businessman: Raising Minimum Wage is an existential threat to the business model he uses
Posted on 04 April 2014.
Workers are just human fodder, who just gum up the works and get in the way of the dreams of some tin-pot small business owner, just a glorified term for a guy running a restaurant. Thats the view of a low life who is whining about the proposal to raise the minimum wage for waiters, a minimum wage that was set much lower than the minimum wage for everyone else because of the power of the restaurant lobby. And its indicative of the philosophy underlying the opposition to hiking the minimum wage (a very meek and mild proposal, as an aside).
In the bill being advanced by Democrats in Congress to raise the overall minimum wage, there is also a proposal to raise the wage for tipped workers to at least $7.10 an hour from the paltry $2.13 now being paid. The scam over these many years was that waiters earned a great bounty from tips so restaurant owners were blessed by having to pay a far lower minimum wage hovering around Third World sweatshop levels.
And, oh, boy, the world would come to an end if a waiter earned more:
Mr. Garner, co-owner of the Glory Days Grill restaurant chain here in Maryland and northern Virginia, sides with many Republicans and much of the restaurant industry in opposing the move, which would primarily affect workers in the restaurant trade.It creates an existential threat to the business model Ive been involved in for the last 35 years, Mr. Garner said.
Poverty is even a greater danger to waiters:
A report prepared by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the Labor Department and others said tipped workers are twice as likely as other workers to experience poverty, and almost three times as likely if they are waiters. Nearly three-quarters of tipped workers are women, and about half of all tipped workers would earn more under the proposal, the report estimated.
By the way, in Australia, the minimum wage for a restaurant worker is $15.96 an hour, and, though tipping is not expected, tips comes on top of that, not to mention free national health care AND a legally mandated 9 percent employer contribution into a pension plan (superannuation fund, which works essentially like an IRA). And, based on personal observation, restaurants are doing just fine in Australia. ..............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.workinglife.org/2014/04/04/businessman-raising-minimum-wage-is-an-existential-threat-to-the-business-model-he-uses/#sthash.Kes8S5b6.dpuf
xchrom
(108,903 posts)TomClash
(11,344 posts)Was repealed by the 13th Amendment.
corkhead
(6,119 posts)The Magistrate
(95,255 posts)The impudence of these exploitative cretins never ceases to amaze.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts). . . . or something along those cliched lines.
The Magistrate
(95,255 posts)bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)Where does the pic come from? I want to steal it, if permissible.
Wounded Bear
(58,717 posts)Pretty easy. Right click on the image, then select "Save as" and it'll be on your hard drive in the Downloads folder. You can even change the name to something more usable.
bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)I thank you - I do know that, though there was a time I didn't until someone as nice as you explained it to me. But by "permissible" I mean who owns it?
reACTIONary
(5,781 posts)a2liberal
(1,524 posts)Yes I understand that technically there is copyright and all that, but the people who make these expect them to be shared (though who knows whether they got permission from whoever took the original photo)... I doubt you would even be able to track down the original creator of one if you tried.
Actually I just looked and I might be wrong... this one looks like it might have originated here: http://silencedmajority.blogs.com/silenced_majority_portal/2013/05/index.html
What I usually do when trying to look up where an image came from is use tineye.com ... it lets you put in an image URL or upload one and will look through its database for matches. I only see the one match linked above for this, but it's also possible that it just hasn't indexed other ones.
Springslips
(533 posts)THAT'S SOCIALISM!!!!
bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)I also know that some artists/writers/photogs are trying to make a living on-line. Personally, I think that if anyone posts an image they don't want reproduced without payment they should put a C on it - but they don't, always. And some don't want $ but do want attribution. I just try to abide by the wishes of the creator; having no wit myself, I have a vast appreciation for the wit others share and so want to "do right" by them if possible.
Grateful for the info shared re: my question.
bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)phantom power
(25,966 posts)99Forever
(14,524 posts)... employees, doesn't deserve to remain in business. Period.
Close your doors asshole, you are easily replaced.
DaveJ
(5,023 posts)Any moron can pay people less money than other people get paid, and make a profit. Hell I guess I can start up a burger place and in this small town if I pay $1/hr I bet I'll find people who have no other options and make a profit! That's plain dumb.
Paying people less is not smart, not thriving business, just miserable exploitation.
If a business doesn't have enough demand to be able to pay its employees well, then it's failing.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Too many small businesses cannot, because they cannot compete against the subsidized franchises, the big box stores, the money-laundering fronts, and the illegal immigrant abusers.
And those "going concerns" that might actually be legal and legit. are being eaten alive by the vulture capitalists. They haven't long to live, either.
It's gonna be an amazing crash, when it comes. We will be back to barter, and better for it, once "the surplus population" has died off, to quote a Scrooge.
The trick is to remove the cancer without killing the patient.
DaveJ
(5,023 posts)I actually don't think capitalism works, based on what I was saying before... the owner makes more by paying people less.
Sure, it also motivates people to work, but with automation there's less need for jobs that create traditional merchandise. You can't just open a store that makes hats. But if a business creates a new and innovative product I think it might stand a better chance.
salib
(2,116 posts)Not work at things.
Worst type of motivation
Nobel_Twaddle_III
(323 posts)Because then we the taxpayers have to provide additional support for His/Her employees to survive. I want to call it what Corporate Welfare.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)for him to live on too.
That restaurant and any like him will never see my business
mountain grammy
(26,655 posts)Skidmore
(37,364 posts)He wouldn't entertain that notion. Perhaps the citizenry needs to stop acquiescing to the tin gods of commerce and finance in the halls of consumerism.
BeyondGeography
(39,382 posts)I know who I'm rooting for.
Ed Suspicious
(8,879 posts)Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
Ed Suspicious
(8,879 posts)In fact I amenability to change is a criteria the deem important enough to explore during pre employment interviews. I assume they are all comfortable with change to have lasted in business for so long.
Brigid
(17,621 posts)Last edited Sat Apr 5, 2014, 10:44 AM - Edit history (1)
No such luck.
NastyRiffraff
(12,448 posts)Another restaurant to cross off my list. BTW, What's with the "Glory Days"? Seeking religious exemption?
pffshht
(79 posts)Which makes them feel sad and old, which makes them order another beer.
NastyRiffraff
(12,448 posts)I wish they hadn't used the Boss's song for their crappy restaurant.
TransitJohn
(6,932 posts)His business model is getting his customers to directly pay his labor costs through tipping, after he has extracted some of the tips for his own profit. Fuck him, and cry me a river.
Iggo
(47,568 posts):fistshake:
malthaussen
(17,216 posts)You don't see him whining about that.
I wish we could take all these people and isolate them in their own private little world where they could feed off each other.
-- Mal
stg81
(351 posts)RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)is not based on capitalism, it's based on feudalism. Serfs work for nothing, because that's what he wants to pay them.
A proper capitalist system would pay workers an amount that would allow them to purchase the goods and/or services that are sold.
If one does not do this, he is expecting workers to essentially work for free. Especially tipped workers.
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)malaise
(269,182 posts)If you can't pay livable wages then you ought not to have a business. It's that simple.
Solly Mack
(90,787 posts)Grins
(7,231 posts)A restaurant lobby then headed by - Herman Cain.
The restaurant industry (in 1996), led by the National Restaurant Association -- and its board chairman Herman Cain, who would later become the group's president -- successfully pressured lawmakers to have the minimum wage for tipped employees separated from the increase and kept at $2.13.
Yup! That Herman "Spermin" Cain. The bad part - Clinton and the Democrats went along with it.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/the-20-million/
TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)jmowreader
(50,562 posts)This bears repeating: Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington all require employers to pay tipped employees the same wage as non-tipped employees. None of those states seem to have a shortage of restaurants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_States
A bigger threat to his business model is "sports-themed family restaurant with thirty TVs and a huge bar in the middle," the kind of place his restaurants are, is the most overpopulated segment of the restaurant industry.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)Fact after chart after graph after study proves that idea dead freaking wrong, and if you have workers with no disposable income, there will be no DEMAND. That's not "Economics 101", that's Common Freaking Sense.
I mean, no one wants an entrepreneur to feel pain or close down. I just have to understand why these people thought that they could get away with paying people a pittance forever . . . and it IS a pittance. With studies showing that 40% of workers now making LESS than the inflation-adjusted minimum wage of 1968, it borders on idiotic to think that a proper inflation correction (which used to be sound economics and sound capitalism but is now apparently "SOSHULTITS" in 2014) is "asking too much".
Is it that they just want every other company besides theirs to get demand going by increasing worker's wages?
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,212 posts)I'm already boycotting Papa Toilet's pizza and several others.
FWIW I did restaurant work while in college. Physically it was the most demanding job I ever did. These people deserve better than minimum wage.
secondvariety
(1,245 posts)construction worker for the last 30 years and my stint as a short order cook in an insanely busy restaurant was way more physically and mentally taxing. Restaurant work is a bitch.
Vincardog
(20,234 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)dionysus
(26,467 posts)there's got to be a way to get those workers better paid without killing the business.
tclambert
(11,087 posts)(What I imagine some plantation owner said before firing on Fort Sumter.)
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)dionysus
(26,467 posts)a razor thin profit margin while the chains do not.
Initech
(100,104 posts)You have to be a complete sociopath to think like that!,
AAO
(3,300 posts)Skittles
(153,193 posts)Skittles
(153,193 posts)f*** him
Trillo
(9,154 posts)Headline might as well say the above.
House of Roberts
(5,186 posts)act like they are the only one that will have to pay their workers more. Like their competitors will still get to pay the old rate. The playing field is still level! It's just elevated slightly from where it used to be.
niyad
(113,581 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)After all, back during Ike in the 50s when the tax rate was over 90% NOBODY had a job.
Right?
AAO
(3,300 posts)fujiyama
(15,185 posts)which depends or thrives on exploitation is morally bankrupt and is already a failure. Mr. Garner should rethink his model or close his doors.