I was watching an old Dirty Harry movie last night. I think it was Magnum Force. In it, Callahan is assigned to Human Resources to interview rookie cops. On the panel with him is a very lesbian looking old bag who lectures Harry about the progressive new way the police will hire cops. Harry responds dismissively with a line about how that’s very fashionable. Fifty years on and we keep repeating that scene over and over in different settings.
Brian Hibbs, the owner and operator of Comix Experience, is having a difficult time confronting the reality presented by San Francisco’s new minimum wage law.
The law passed in November by a huge majority requires that wages increase, as of May 1st, to $12.25 and will end up at $15 by 2018.
Anticipating only a slight increase in his costs, Hibbs was originally supportive of the law. But, then he did the math:
I was appalled! My jaw dropped. Eighty-thousand a year! I didn’t know that. I thought we were talking a small amount of money, something I could absorb.
We’re for a living wage, for a minimum wage, in principle. . . . But I think any law that doesn’t look at whether people can pay may not be the best way to go.
The problem he faces is that comic books and graphic novels, the cornerstone of the business, have their retail prices printed on the covers, so he can’t raise those prices to offset the increase in costs. Also, his store’s usually staffed by only one counter worker, which makes reducing the store’s labor costs impossible.
The solution he’s come up with is to start a special club with an annual fee of $240, whose members will get special perks.
His comments and his business’ story drew the attention of alocal newsstation, which reported on Comix Experience and another local book store,Borderlands Books, which has resorted to crowdfunding in order to generate extra revenue.
With that publicity, customers have directly commented to Comix Experience on the wage change:
‘I’m hearing from a lot of customers, ‘I voted for that, and I didn’t realize it would affect you.’
Hibbs is a self-identified progressive, but he’s looking for answers. Then he asked a profound question:
Why can’t two consenting people make arrangements for less than x dollars per hour?
He admits to believing in capitalism, and according National Review, he’d “like to have the market solve this problem.”
This last bit is something that is a pet peeve. Capitalism is not the same as markets. I’m for free markets to a point, but I’m not in favor of predatory capitalism fueled by currency manipulation. Letting Amazon use negative interest rate debt to clobber retail is not market competition.
Further, saying you “believe” in something means you think there is some chance it does not exist. In other words, you are pretty sure X is true, but you have no evidence that X is true. For that reason, no one says, “I believe in gravity.” Capitalism is a thing that exists, whether or not some hippie dipshit believes in it.
Of course, what he really means is he likes making money, but he resents the fact others make more money. That’s the core of Progressive populism. It is resentment that one particular set of career choices don’t pay very well. Comic Book Guy think he should make as much as a banker and hates the fact he makes the same as a janitor at the bank.
None of these people are very bright. They get caught up in these progressive fads because it beats thinking and it sure as hell beats standing alone. I doubt he so dumb as to think raising his labor rates would not impact his business. It was was just easier to go along with his idiot neighbors. He cares more about being one of them than being in business.
The maths are hard for the Progressives!
Nobody publishes the math behind an increase in the minimum wage. How much would a $1 McDonalds hamburger rise in price with $15 wages? One percent? Ten percent? I would happily pay ten percent more for everything I buy if low level workers got a livable wage.
The math is kind of misleading. Looking at more primary sources one learns he is claiming he needs 80k of *sales* to pay for the increase of the wages. My first interpretation of the story made it seem like it would literally cost him 80k to do so. This seemed really queer to me and after running the numbers this is not the case.
He claims he has one employee as a clerk for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week per store. That is 3650 hours, assuming no holidays. He has 2 stores for a total of 7300 hours. From what I can tell they are currently being paid 10.50 an hour. A increase to 15.00 an hour is a 4.50 difference. 7300 * 4.50 is 32850, an approximate cost not including having to pay additional FICA taxes on that amount. For simplicity sake let us assume that brings us up to 35000 additional cost. Assuming a standard 2:1 mark up on hard goods like comic books, the 80k figure makes sense. 40k cost of product + 35k additional labor costs.
The ultimate question is whether ventures like his are worth doing if you have to pay someone a livable wage to do the work. If you can hire someone at a lower wage but allowing the government to subsidize their healthcare, food stamps, etc so they can live a first world standard of living, are you really any less of an asshole?
Guy runs 2 stores selling comic books to grown ups in pricey san francisco and 17.5k a year per store is going to bankrupt him? He’s running on thin ice anyway if that is the case. You can barely rent a shithole apartment for that much in SF.
One other question I had was the legitimacy of the gripe about comic books having their prices listed on the cover. Maybe it is a CA/SF regulation, but around here gas stations sell $.99 cans of arizona tea for $1.19 all the time.
Can he really not do the same thing? Would it be too much of a logistical burden to do so, or would it be illegal where he operates?
he goes into the math in detail here http://www.comicsbeat.com/interview-retailer-brian-hibbs-on-the-minimum-wage-and-surviving-in-san-francisco/
“The difference between today’s MW and 2018 is $3.95 /hour. $3.95 times 190 hours times fifty-two weeks a year equals just over $39,000 then we have to add about another $3,000 for the matching taxes that all employers pay for Social Security and Medicare, so that’s $42,000 more that staff will cost. (not counting the new-this-year California mandated minimum Sick Days, either!)”
I suggest reading this interview, he really gets into detail about how fucked up the bay area pricing structures are.
That bay area pricing structures are FU is a starting point. Learning why they are FU would lead to corrective actions. Government morons tinkering with the market anyone?
The answer for him is to turn it around and charge a livable wage fee on each transaction. Make it a big noticeable thing so the customers can feel like they are doing Gaia’s work by shopping at his store. The whole point of raising the minimum wage is to appease the gods anyway. There’s no economic argument in favor of it. He needs to out pious the smug assholes in his city. He could also put a donation jar for his poor wage starved help.
Doing on the local level is inviting to shoot yourself in the foot. In the interview he states that half an hour away there is an area where the minimum wage is $9.00 an hour. For a niche store like his, that could make a better opportunity for him. For stores which thrive on convenience and location, like fast food places or gas stations, it would not.
Enacting minimum wage on a state or federal level would have different outcomes than local in respect how minimum wages affect more local competition.
In other places where this has been tried, the small businesses fold or move so that’s the most likely outcome. My point was only that if would like to stay in the hipster area, he needs to monetize the piety. Of course, progressives are the least generous people according to studies on charitable giving so my idea is not likley to succeed.
Speaking of comic books, here’s a great story about that very strange business.
Without paraphrasing Dickens’ Wilkins Micawber here, the age old truism that spending more than you earn has for reasons unknown completely escaped leftists for well over 150 years. The result, in Micawber’s words of not following the common sense approach, is indeed unhappiness.
The man who, being good lefty, thinks that ideas are unaffected by reality can be suddenly struck by the realisation that the generosity of others to apportion his income to the benefit of his fellow man in actual fact is more than just a nice thought: it all adds up. Two and two may well make five in the world of the unthinking commie (and comics) sympathiser but the fact that he doesn’t have enough ones let alone enough twos comes as a real shock.
But I suspect that in conversations with his fellow leftys, it will be capitalism’s fault he has to find a whole lot more cash. So that’s alright then.
There are millions or tens of millions of people, right now, who started at minimum wage or less, and through taking the trouble to show up every day without fail and picking up the experience that only work provides, moved their way up to fifteen dollars an hour over time. What becomes of them? Does not woolly progressive fairness now require that they be paid at least $8hr more than they are worth?
I work in a small company with three well paid individuals, and six who were started at four dollars over minimum wage and never raised. They are expected to move on and up when the opportunity arises. If a wage law like this were in place those six positions never would have existed. That is what has happened in France over fifty years. The average small business employed fifty, now the average is three.
I hate comic books with passion, especially Marvel and DC. They’re the crudest form of establishment propaganda and they’re directed to man-childs.