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Economy |
Surprise: Bay Area Restaurants Disappear After Minimum Wage Hike |
2017-01-26 |
[Breitbart] Restaurants are rapidly going out of business in the Bay Area, after San Francisco passed a $15 minimum wage law in 2014 and the State of California followed suit in 2016. Yet the media are struggling to make the connection between high minimum wages and restaurant closures. The East Bay Times, for example, asked Tuesday: "What’s behind the spate of recent Bay Area restaurant closures?" It barely mentioned new minimum wage laws, brushing them aside as if they were largely insignificant. It is true, of course, that merely because one thing follows another does not prove that the second was caused by the first. The "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" fallacy that is familiar to first-year economics students would apply to this case as well. Yet that does not mean the prior factor should be excluded as a cause. But that is largely what the Times seems to have done, even though the closure of businesses and the loss of restaurant jobs is exactly what critics of the minimum wage hikes predicted. |
Posted by:Besoeker |
#11 Apparently there's more money in protesting than food prep. |
Posted by: Hupuck Gray8571 2017-01-26 22:10 |
#10 Demolition Man. Not a great movie, but it is fun. |
Posted by: rjschwarz 2017-01-26 11:36 |
#9 And the last restaurant left standing will be Taco Bell. |
Posted by: gorb 2017-01-26 11:22 |
#8 ...and so many fickle employees. First blue-collar job was dishwasher in high school. Three scheduled to work Sat and Sun; I was the only to show up. Except one time this dumbass showed up in berkinstocks and wool socks. He lasted 15 minutes and a cig, then walked, where I was actually relieved to be working alone. So picture this very popular Italian restaurant in competitive downtown market if this once a future man (still consider myself a boy at that place in time, this job changed that) with a work ethic did not show. |
Posted by: swksvolFF 2017-01-26 11:01 |
#7 As far as I am concerned, food/beverage service is among the toughest businesses out there. So many variables, so many expiration dates, so little profit margin. |
Posted by: swksvolFF 2017-01-26 10:55 |
#6 Gosh it's like raising a high jump bar doesn't mean the participants jump higher. |
Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2017-01-26 10:02 |
#5 the restaurant biz is a very difficult space catering and alcohol have higher margins and less waste and if you can get these going you have a chance otherwise, its a precarious situation article says 60 closings in 3 months -- that's probably not too much more than the average |
Posted by: lord garth 2017-01-26 09:17 |
#4 Not to mention the possible interplay of raising minimum wages with the raising of other costs. Of course the restaurants the media favor are the last to be effected. |
Posted by: AlanC 2017-01-26 09:09 |
#3 Everyone knows that restaurants have enormous profit margins. Right? Right? |
Posted by: charger 2017-01-26 08:14 |
#2 Yet the media are struggling to make the connection between high minimum wages and restaurant closures. Cause they live in an alternate universe in which cause and effect are unknown. Hey, they can't even figure out why newspapers and magazines are going out of business. |
Posted by: Procopius2k 2017-01-26 08:04 |
#1 new minimum wage laws, brushing them aside as if they were largely insignificant Well, of course wages are insignificant. Businesses just have to take a tiny, little cut in their enormous, obscene profits. The science is settled. Besides, it could've been the new regulations. |
Posted by: Bobby 2017-01-26 07:32 |