Minimum Wage Disaster : SF Small Businesses Crushed

This is old news but it cannot understated as extremely important to our cities and our country. As this nightmare becomes reality, small businesses are find they are not able to comply with this new wage minimum. Their only option is to shut their doors. Do city fathers and mothers care that this will adversely effect businesses and forcing more people into unemployment, apparently not.

On the positive side for the democrats, this will increase the voters that will not have a job and will have to rely on government servicers to survive. A permanent dependent class of voters. It works for the socialists.

But hey, millions voted for these people to do just this, so why complain when the fruits of so many become reality?

Minimum Wage Hurts Small Business in San Francisco
Source: Ian Tuttle, "When Minimum-Wage Hikes Hit a San Francisco Comic-Book Store," National Review, May 1, 2015.
May 5, 2015

 San Francisco's Proposition J, which 77 percent of voters approved in November, will raise the minimum wage in the city to $15 by 2018. As of May 1st, Brian Hibbs, owner and operator of Comix Experience, is required by law to pay his employees $12.25 per hour. That is just the first of four incremental raises that threaten to put hundreds of such shops out of business. 'I'm hearing from a lot of customers, 'I voted for that, and I didn't realize it would affect you.'" Says Brian Hibbs. Hibbs opened Comix Experience on April Fools' Day, 1989.

Over two-and-a-half decades, the store has become a must-visit location for premier comic-book artists and graphic novelists. He notes with pride that his store has turned a profit each year - no small task - since its very first year. But that may not last. The $15-an-hour minimum wage will require a staggering $80,000 in extra revenue annually. Hibbs runs a tight operation already. He is not the first person to encounter this problem.

On February 1st, San Francisco's renowned science-fiction bookstore Borderlands Books published an announcement that they will be closing their doors no later than March 31st due to the cost added by minimum wage law. "Despite being a progressive living in San Francisco, I do believe in capitalism. I'd like to have the market solve this problem." That applies not just to Hibbs's plight, but to the question of the minimum wage. "Why," he asks, "can't two consenting people make arrangements for less than x dollar per hour?" And the problem goes deeper still.

While forcing hundreds of Bay Area small businesses to close, cut staff, or overhaul their practices, San Francisco lawmakers have given multimillion-dollar tax breaks to lure or keep technology giants such as Twitter and Zoosk. It threatens the entire economic ecosystem of San Francisco.