News Mar 12, 2014 at 4:00 am

Multinational Chains Like Target and McDonald's Are—but They’re Not Showing Up for the Debate

Conveniently absent at town-hall meetings. Kelly O

Comments

1
The tiny margins that small, local businesses are forced to endure are driven by their competition: large multinationals that can dictate low wages to vast numbers of people, and sales done on-line that don't have the overhead of a physical location and face-to-face contact with customers. Competing on price to stay in business is a race to the bottom, a race that the small players cannot win. We closed our business before the collapse because the prices our wholesale customers were willing to pay could not support the cost of our business location and that of the employees we needed to produce what we sold.

For small businesses to compete on a level playing field, the large ones can't be given tax breaks, special deals on real estate locations, and exemption from rules that apply to the small shops. But because the principle objective of for-profit corporations is to maximize those profits and inflate their stock price, they accomplish these things by hollowing out not only the well-being of their own employees, but that of their customers as well. If they cause harm to their customers, the jurisdictions they do business in, or the planet's environment, they don't care, because such things do not appear on the balance sheet.

Until all of the costs of doing business are exposed, none of this will change, and big businesses will continue to privatize profits while socializing costs.

But what do I know?
2
The effects of the laws of supply and demand happen whether you want them to or not.

The invisible hand of the market cannot be regulated out of existence.

Artificially manipulating the price of labor in Seattle will drive jobs, and the businesses that create them, out of Seattle.

I wonder if it is malicious intent or stupidity behind the 15now campaign. Are the negative effects that WILL happen intended (malicious) or unintended (stupid).
3
Are small businesses the enemy? Let's check with @davidmeinert via twitter.

David Meinert ‏@davidmeinert Mar 10
@ayerspra @FifteenNow @GoodJobsSeattle Ican tell your business acumen is stunning from the many successful businesses you run.

David Meinert ‏@davidmeinert Mar 10
@GoodJobsSeattle when $15Now asks dumb questions we move past being constructive. Par for them. Simplistic, purposefully misleading.

David Meinert ‏@davidmeinert Mar 10
@FifteenNow @GoodJobsSeattle you need to learn math and get past simplistic policy. Maybe you need to leave this one to the smart folks.

David Meinert ‏@davidmeinert Mar 5
@GoodJobsSeattle If you want to work together then do it, stop pretending. Or don't, you're losing cred with your supreme leader so whatevs

David Meinert ‏@davidmeinert Mar 5
@UniteHereLocal8 Most of my non union workers make more. Maybe you should work for a Seattle non-union restaurant and get a raise.

Does he sound friendly to you, Anna?
4
You know what will help wages? Flood the market with low skill, low education illegal immigrant labor!
5
The problem is poverty wages - it doesn't matter if Target or Elliott Bay is paying them. Locally, Dave Meinert and Tim Keck make a hell of a lot more than a manager at Target, and are thus a hell of a lot more exploitative.

If you want to restrict chain stores in seattle, that's a great idea. But exemptions for small businesses so only they can pay poverty wages is NOT AN OPTION. No local lobbyist exemptions.
6
@3,

He dumped the rational, reasonable mask pretty quickly, didn't he?
7
Sure, they're not the enemy. No one is the enemy. $15 an hour is the right thing because that's what this labor is WORTH. It's worth it whether your are working next to 3 or 30 or 300 employees, and it's worth it whether your employer is profitable or NOT, and it's worth it whether your employer is small or large. Got it?

Besides. there is small business with three employees with the business making one million a year, say a dentist, and large business like safeway that makes about o profit this year. SIZE isn't PROFITABILITY. so except only business that's not profitable? what the fuck? again, the value or the labor doesn't change, and btw, you just can't expect government to assess profitability of companies. not after they split into two and pay themselves management fees and hide the profits and whatnot. just can't enforce that standard.
the minimum wage has to be UNIVERSAL. end of discussion. no exceptions. those exceptions become a swiss cheese of lobbyist carving delight btw, just like with the tax code. we don't lower standards for doctors for small doctors, we don't lower housing standards for mom and pop landlords, and we can't lower the min wage for mom and pop businesses.

Besides again. EVERY small business owner today, paying the wash state min wage, is paying LESS than the fed min wage in 1968 adjusted for inflation. so by definition those employers are underpaying their workers. is that nice? we need to get away from nice not nice hip not hip and all that and put in $15 across the board in a couple of easy steps fairly soon with NO EXCEPTIONS. besides again, draw the line at ten employees and the employer with 12 now has an incentive to fire two! jesus, ever think about THAT? why create rewards for firing people!??!
8
@6 not as quick as you guys.

Look, the guy has been mocked, attacked, and mischaracterized by hundreds of anonymous internet cowards for weeks who don't know shit about running a business in this town or anywhere else. Given that I'd say the above tweets are a bastion of civility.

FSS look at this lunatic Raku above you and tell me how reasonable his critics have been?
9
Ok picking on David is not the issue is it? The issue is the impact of $15 now with no transition. When the new wage becomes $15/hour as the drop for Seattle only... not Washington state. What will happen to all the people depending on the health care credits they are currently eligible for but won't be as of the new increase? Yes they will be off food stamps but will they be able to put food on the table given the inevitable hike in goods? I don't think exempting small businesses is the answer. I do think that a more reasonable base increase with an agreement to increase the rate $1 per year for the next 5 years is. Start at $10 and move up to $15 so that businesses can adjust their models and employees who normally would not get real increases would be guaranteed a yearly raise. I also don't think setting a separate tier for tipped employees is fair either. They earn their tips and it is a big part of what they count on now for wages. What we need is more JOBS. Creating a credit for new hires and training is where the workers and employers benefit. Small businesses are the largest contributors to non-profits and the actual local economy. We don't hear the corporations because it benefits them from the small businesses taking the heat. Great let them go out of business so that the whole city can look like a mini mall.
10
Dave Meinert and Tim Keck make a hell of a lot more than a manager at Target, and are thus a hell of a lot more exploitative.


Nobody is accusing a MANAGER at Target of being exploitative. The CEO's and executives at Target on the other hand. Well.

So your comparison of local business owners to an hourly employee of a massive corporation with hugely exploitative labor practices and unsound, unsustainable global supply chains is fucking moronic.
11
Here we go again with the small businesses. You have to be careful exempting small businesses. Most fast food restaurants are franchises. The actual business that operates them and hires employees is a small business. The big multinational corporation makes it profit by the franchise agreement, not operating the individual restaurants.

In this current climate of corporate personhood, if you try to differentiate between different types of small businesses you create problems that would be the basis of a court challenge. Laws that get too technically clever get overturned in court.

Maybe we need to phase it in over a couple of years. This would give businesses small and large time to adjust for both the higher costs and the higher revenues. Whatever we do, we have to be careful that we create a good law that holds up in court.
12
#11 is exactly right. Target and Walmart are big businesses. The McDonald's and Burger King franchises in this town are not; they are small businesses operated by local owners. By wrongly lumping them in with massive corporations, you are using faulty logic that leads to incorrect conclusions.
13
@8: Read the twitter exchanges that provoked his responses while the latter keeps them up. They were civil. Meinert, not.

I don't understand how raku's post is unreasonable. It's the nature of businesses to exploit their workers - to pay them less than what their labor is worth. That's simply a fact, and that Meinert/Keck are "local" (does either live on Capitol Hill?) is irrelevant when the point is that their workers can't live on the salary that they're paid.
14
@8,

He's the one who came in claiming to be the reasonable and rational voice in this debate. "We" haven't made that claim. His attacks on Twitter make it clear what this is really about to Meinert: protecting Meinert's net worth. Just like his opposition to an income tax.
15
@8,

I also find the "you haven't run a business, so shut up" arguments particularly amusing since the reason why I don't own my own business is because I know how hard it is, and I'm not interested in going deep into debt for it.
16
@15 so what do you do that makes you such an expert?
17
@16,

You're funny.
18
I figured that's what you'd say.
19
could cause Dick’s to cut their famously generous worker benefits and raise prices on food


Well...er...okay...both?

I mean if you raise prices, and people pay them, which with a product like Dick's they probably would (one cheese and a fry just doesn't sit right) then you can simply pay people more.

At the bottom of all this is the fact that many, many people who live in Seattle are getting a tremendous free ride. They get all the amenities of city living yet many are paying a pittance in property taxes for full houses. Can you imagine living 10 minutes from Manhattan and having a house and paying not much money at all?

Something has to give or right itself. I'm not for throwing old people out on the street; however, it is a form of welfare to allow someone who hasn't developed the skills to meet the current marketplace to grandfather himself in like that while others are forced to get college degrees, and work their way up and end up with 20% of the real estate the do-nothings have. The best thing would be swift kick in the pants to get them to hi-tail it out to Spokane while they can still sell for a good price.

That's not socialism, that the true Free Market in all its ugly truth.
20
@13 Raku's post is unreasonable because he draws a stupid illogical comparison between Mienert et-all and an hourly store manager at a massive corporation like Target. Which makes no sense.

Target managers don't set policy for the corporation. Store managers don't devise global supply chains that destroy and pollute developing countries.

CEO's do. And local restauranteur like Mienert does not have one one thousand the negative global impact that CEO of Target does.

Basically this is the typical rhetorical cudgel in use by all the fanatics about this wage increase. False comparisons. Guilt by association. Stridency.

Meniert and Kleck support the wage increase. They just want it to be fair.

But it's not good enough. You guys demonize even the very people who've supported the wage increase all along because they are not perfect enough.

I mean, golly, they want to look out after their interests! Ohes noes!
21
Hey small business:

1. Open your books. Nobody believes you.

2. Show us the record. Why haven't small businesses been devastated by minimum wage increases in the past? How come when Washington eliminated the tipped wage exception in the 70s the restaurants didn't all go under? Show your work.

3. Want less than an across the board $15/hr? Offer something in return. Stop negotiating it down without giving up anything. Why? Because 68% of Seattle will vote for $15/hr with no Swiss cheese. You're negotiation from a position of weakness, which means you got to give something up to get what you want. (Hint: if you wanna offer some sweet concessions on behalf of McDonald's and Target, that'll do. They won't speak for themselves so let Dave Meinert put words in their mouth.)
22
@18,

What else should I have said? I implicitly told you not to try that shit with me, so you tried that shit with me. You are a joke.

Meniert and Kleck support the wage increase. They just want it to be fair.


Translation: They want exemptions for themselves.
23
Stores like Target and Walmart recognize that their position is more attractive when represented by local business interests, so why would they show up to the table?
24
@20: raku was talking about local impact, not global impact, and given the numbers of employees that Meinert claimed he has for Lost Lake alone, he might just match the downtown Target. He certainly finagled a seat on the Mayor's super special non-pleb commission and Target didn't, so that's another argument in raku's favor.

And I should remind you that Meinert's first public comment on the minimum wage hike was that $15/hr would "kill the culture of the Hill" according to CHSblog. Never mind that he doesn't live on the Hill, and never mind that he's sure as fucking shit responsible for killing the culture of the Hill.

What's fair about exempting his businesses from paying workers a wage they can live on? Nothing. What's fair about counting an employee's benefits against their wages? That's even less fair than things are now.
25
Make no mistake; "Big" business is mostly silent on a minimum wage increase (sometimes even supports it) because it hurts their small competitors more than it hurts them. Their larger scale and efficiency makes it easier to absorb, and in many cases they have less distance to the new normal than their lower paying, smaller competitors. When the dust settles they will have a larger market share with fewer little guys nipping at their heels.
I'm not saying that's a good reason not to support a better living wage so desperately needed and deserved. But doing it this way will only accelerate the consolidation and take-over by large corporations by driving more independents out of the market. And it frankly makes no difference if it's "phased-in" or dropped all at once. The destination is the same and we'll find fewer small employers when we get there.
26
@21 Here's our counter offer:

If you raise the MW, we'll just leave. And we'll take the tax base with us. Then welcome to Detroit v2.0
27
Meinert and Keck don't represent all independent businesses in Seattle. It's important to keep that in mind. Keck owns the damn paper, and Meinert apparently has enough time on his hands to fight people on the internet at will (which really makes a good case for paying your people more Dave, unless you're paying them to dick around on the internet too). There are voices we should be hearing that we are not, due to lack of time and access.
28
@26

Ah, Detroit.

Are you even aware that the minimum wage in Detroit is $7.40 per hour? Fifteen cents above the Federal minimum? The fact that we pay $9.32/hr is precisely one of the reasons we're not like Detroit. And we would be smart to go on being less and less like Detroit in any way we can.

History furnishes you guys with no good examples so you have to resort to fantasy. The doom you prophecy is unprecedented. That's your problem right there. Reality isn't on your side.
29
@26 Get real. This isn't going to create a mass exodus, or any at all. Most low-wage manufacturing and distribution is already located outside the city limits anyway. The Seattle tax base will stay the same, maybe increase slightly when costs trickle-up to gross sales in mostly retail and service sectors - that aren't about to leave a thriving, affluent Northwest.
The effective change will be fewer small retail operators that give Seattle what diminishing character and diversity it still has left, replaced by a commensurate expansion of already dominate corporate mega-chains that can spread the cost increase out over their huge national platforms.
Big business doesn't want to pay these higher wages. But they want more the additional market share they can gain with this de-facto predation - stealing customers from small operators who can't afford the new normal without spending an additional dime on advertising or marketing.
30
@29

No local character? All corporate? Do you think Washington has no local character because we pay $9.32/hr? Does Portland have no local character? No quirky small business? All corporate chains there? The wage in Oregon is $9.10/hr, almost as high as Washington.

You know where main street is a monolith of all chain stores? Out in flyover country, and the South, where it's $7.25 an hour as far as the eye can see.

Nice theory though. If only the facts liked it.
31
I'm confused. Based on Meinert, the culture of the hill doesn't believe in paying wages that would allow you to live on the hill, unless you are sharing a one bedroom apt with 3 other people. As for Elliot Bay Books, they have always been notorious for the low wages they pay compared to the level of education and expertise they require in an employee. I'm torn though.
32
@31 Live in Tukwilla and take the train in. Why do you have to live on Cap Hill?
33
We built the systemic imbalance between wages and cost of living and productivity very consistently and slowly over at least 3 decades. And we did so at the national level. The thought that a single municipality can change this now fundamental characteristic of out economy in anything less than 5 years and only locally is absurd. Agree the reality of poverty wages must change. Agree someone needs to do something tangible to move the conversation forward. But if that tangible move is a single, liberal city falling on its sword and alienating small businesses, we will set the real solution back, not move it forward.
34
@21, they are opening their books. Did you read the piece about Stowell? She offered to open her books.
35
Also, anyone else fears that the min-wage raise will just be eaten by other costs? What's preventing local apartments from raising all rent 10% or more next year, if they know people can pay it. The system is kind of fucked up (We need reasonable rent control like they have in Ontario, with a charter of renter's rights). We also need an city income tax.
36
Taking shots at successful entrepreneurs shows weakness. If you need others to "take care of you", thank them for for all they do so that you can survive this cruel place.
37
Want to hit Big Bad Business that markets cheap shit and treats 99% of its employees like cheap shit where it truly hurt$ Big Bad Business?
B-O-Y-C-O-T-T.

I don't eat at McDonald's or shop at Wal*Mart.

Cottage industry and /or self employment, anyone?

38
I've wanted to build and sell airliners out of a small storefront for some time and would gladly support a $15 minimum wage if only we could eliminate the tax credits that make it impossible for me to compete with Boeing.
39
Is seattle maintaining its "character" more important than its citizens earning a living wage?
40
The more exceptions you put into the law the more toothless the law will become.

The problem seems to be rooted in the definition of being a successful business. If it means you have to exploit your employees by paying poor wages (I don't care if you're a food truck or Target) then you are a fucking horrid business owner. Sorry to say it but you are.

And let's look at other countries who DO pay a much higher minimum wage. They seem to have thriving small businesses and the employees a living wage (or very close to it).

But Anna I get your post: Tim has laid down the law on this issue at The Stranger and you've got to tow the paper's line. You can do the same thing at the Seattle Times though and probably get paid a better wage.
41
Amazing to see how quickly the dog pulls when Keck yanks the leash.

Anyway, The question one has to ask when discussing "small business" exemptions is: "how big must a company be before it matters how they treat their employees, and how big must a company be before it's workers deserve decent wages?"

If you can not draw a line marking where a business is small enough so its employees do not matter and can be freely taken advantage of, you can not begin to discuss exemptions for certain businesses.
42
Simple question for all of you small business owners: "Why do you not want to pay your employees a wage that allows them to live a life that's barely enough to get by? Why do you insist they live in squalor? Why do you hate your employees so much?"

The ability to run a successful business should include not only a enjoyable and profitable venture but also the ability to pay employees a wage that allows them to get by with a certain level of comfort in the city where the business exists.

I'm a little shocked how many of our small business owners would be right at home in the boardroom of Walmart. I guess Seattle is liberal as long as it's free.
43
@34

OK. Where are they?
44
Why the fuck am I having to pay for the government subsidies that go to employees who are paid to little?

Explain that one to me, oh powerful job creators and culture deciders.
45
I'm dead serious here. Why the fuck am I paying for WIC/SNAP/etc just because you're a "precious small business owner" that is too selfish or too ignorant to pay their employees well? What gives you the right to demand the rest of us chip in for your business costs?
46
Right on Solk512. I have no pity for businesses (large or small) who depend on poverty wages. If they can't pay fair, livable wages, their business is insoluble and should just close. Then new, innovative businesses will open up who are able to pay their workers a fair wage. As a taxpayer I'm tired of picking up the slack of businesses who fail their employees.
47
This should be a state and national issue. Many, if not most, minimum wage employees aren't even Seattle residents. Why should Seattle residents be forced to pay more so someone in Burien or Bellevue gets paid more. And if costs get passed along, as expected, then Seattle becomes less affordable for low income people to live in... bad policy all around!
48
Folks like Meinert and Keck are the enemy in the same way that weak Democrats like Maria Cantwell and John Kerry were enemies during the Iraq War debate.

We know Walmart and Target and Bush and Rumsfeld are truly evil, but those on "our side" who enable this evil simply provide them cover.

I'll never vote for Maria Cantwell, and after 20+ years of going to the Five Point, I haven't stepped foot in there for awhile.
49
@12

In regards to your statement about McDonald's and other fast food restaurants being franchises that are owned by small, local businesses, you are either woefully misinformed or a really bad liar.

Huge regional, national and international investment and management companies own the overwhelming majority of the franchise licenses for major fast food restaurants like McDonald's.
50
"Did you see someone from Target get up at that town hall meeting and chat about how much they love their employees but don’t mind if they have to live in subsidized housing because, shucks, there’s just no other way to make the business work?"

Why should big business show up? Anyone familiar with living wage campaigns knows its campaign 101 that Big business finds small business messengers to deliver their policy points. Even the National Restaurant Association makes the claim that its the advocacy arm of 'small business'. This is strategically sensible for obvious reasons (and you can see the purchase of these tactics in the way the once stridently progressive Slog staff has buckled at the first objections from their favorite trendy drinking holes).

Yes Seattle has lots of liberally minded small businesses most denizens would like to preserve. It also has a grinding inequality problem. The Slog is advocating for a minimum wage that doesn't impact the bulk of low wage workers in the city. Think of the major neighborhoods - Capital Hill, Ballard, the U District, Columbia City ~ What percentage of Seattle's working poor is employed by Target & Walmart? If only the big box retailers & fast food franchises had to raise their wages to $15 then only a tiny minority of low wage workers in the city would benefit. It'd be a fig leaf minimum wage.

Big business has used small business messengers to successfully shift the conversation from poverty and wage inequality to hypothetical analysis of small business balance sheets. We are asked to empathize with frustrated accountants rather than the working poor. Spin doctors have obviously bullied the Slog into spreading this message. As a long time reader this disappoints me deeply.
51
The $15 minimum wage should apply to ALL businesses.

Being exempt from paying the $ 15 MW does not mean you will be exempt from the impact on the wage you must pay to hire and keep good employees.

If medium and large corporations are required to pay $15, small businesses will have to match that wage somehow or risk losing their best employees to better paying jobs down the street.

If you want to reduce the burden of transition on the minority of small, local businesses that would honestly, not theoretically be unable to pay the minimum wage and maintain their current number of workers, offer to reduce their tax burden until their business income grows to handle the increased cost of paying the $15 MW and maintaining their employee headcount.
52
Given recent claims about the national incidence of minimum wage labor (more than half of people live in households that earn at least 200% of the poverty level), I have to wonder...how many Stranger readers really live and work in Seattle on less than $15/hour after accounting for tips, the EITC, or support from a spouse and/or mom and dad?
53
P.S. I used to do accounting for restaurants and can confirm that the profit margin for most restaurants (even the expensive ones) and coffee shops is pretty close to 0. The industry owes a lot to the fact that many restaurateurs are a least a little delusional when it comes to expected profits.
54
@52

You've never been poor, have you?

How many people are living in your rented house or apartment without appearing on the lease? The struggling working class are accustomed to having roommates that bounce from friend's couch to friend's couch and having family members that show up at our door several times each year with no place to stay.

We know what it's like to be that friend or family member.

We know what it's like to have the cost of housing be driven up, up, up until you find yourself taking multiple buses to commute every day and sitting in the cold, rain at bus stops for an hour or two or more just to get to those one or two or three low wage jobs without benefits.

The obvious assumptions and smugness in your question reveal your ignorance of the reality of living on minimum and low wages in this city.

Your silence would at least make you seem less of a privileged asshole.
55
Watching the about face of the stranger, the ousting of goldy, and crumbling logic of 15now, all under its own weight, has been entertaining as hell.
$15 was check mated the moment the state started speaking about a phased $12.50. Big business never had to rear its head. Simply dictated the terms behind closed doors. Poorly run campaign, but if not for the 15now people we would not even get the 12.50 that will be settled for in the end.
and , for the record: suck it goldy, wherever you are.
56
@55

Goldy is at HorsesAss.org

So, who shit down your throat this morning? I'm betting it was you.
57
@48 let's take it a step further and fully support businesses that are proud to support a $15.00 an hour minimum wage. Make posters like they did during the New Deal for the National Recovery Administration that they can place in their windows.

58
At the town hall meeting, I was listening to some of the "small business owners" talk about how they owned multiple "small businesses" in the area and this will cause them to downsize. I have a question.

How many small businesses do you need to own before you stop being a "small business owner"?
59
Also, there is a trend among "small businesses" in Seattle where they'll divide essentially the same company into different "corporations" at different locations so they can get out of doing things like providing health care.

These people are not as innocent and "good-hearted" as most folks would let on. They're business owners. When you run a business, it's for a profit. If there's a loophole to exploit, they'll probably exploit it. I'm not saying they're necessarily evil, but let's not glorify what they're doing too much.
60
@59 good point!

This is something that's been missing from the small business echochamber the Slog is building. Small business just like any business has as its raison d'ĂŞtre making money for the owner. Obviously any increase in wages would infringe upon that. As much as both sides would like to sell the cozy narrative of wage policy that 'work for everyone', the reality is promoting workers rights and raising standards DOES cost the employer (big or small) money. For the immense majority of low wage workers to make a gain a small minority of small business owners might have to take it on the chin.

And any employer big and evil, or small and friendly would be stupid to not resist,obstruct,redefine,divert an impending increase in their payroll expenses. It just so happens that in Seattle the best way to resist the increase is to play the progressive small business card and attest that 'while I support your values I think this is too far too fast.'

This is why the Slog's pleading that Seattle small businesses are just oh so progressive and obviously down with high wages if only we'd 'listen to them'falls flat with me. They are amplifying talking points developed by big business strategic consultants. The small business community is playing the 'sky will fall' card to divide support for raising wages and shift the focus from poverty wages to 'struggling businesses'. And its working.
61
What's missing from the entire "conversation" is any meaningful discussion about what real estate developers are doing to the cost of living and doing business in Seattle.

It seems to be a de facto policy of both the Seattle and King County government to relocate the "poor" (as in anyone who doesn't work in application development for Amazon, Microsoft, Google, or some other tech firm) out of the metropolitan area -- the sooner the better.

There's also a major fallacy at work here -- that only small business owners and retailers are paying low wages. Wrong, many companies not even mentioned in the debate are paying well below $15.00 an hour for skilled jobs that aren't in tech development (a way to subsidize the high wages of those tech workers).

The issue is much larger than your local independent barista's wages or those of the checkout associate at Wal-Mart. But many of Seattle's major corporations want you to believe otherwise.

62
Seattle is going to end up like Detroit if things keep going a certain way, everyone gets mad and acts quickly rather than properly. The citys low wage workers should be looking at ways to quit giving so much money to the federal government first, then addressing the fact that you think choosing a career in fast food is somehow worthy of $15 an hour. Much like a puppy wanting chocolate the people that want this are too short sighted to see its effects, maybe learn some basic economic principles instead of just repeating what sounds good would help but there is a reason these people work in the fields they do, not putting down the ones that use low skill jobs as a stepping stone but if you stay in your low skill position you will continue to stay low skill and low value.
63
@62

Once again, you need to get informed about what the minimum wage is in Detroit before you try to claim that raising the minimum wage will make is into Detroit.

Letting wages collapse is why Detroit collapsed. If you think low wages with no benefits and powerless workers is a good business environment, then you know where you need to go? You know who follows your so-called "basic economic principles"?

Detroit.
65
National chains aren't likely to show up as they have national and shareholder-based concerns. E.g., Target operates about 1800 stores in the US, so their Northgate store may account for only about 1/20 of 1% of their revenue and profits. At the national level that store is little more than a blip of numbers on a spreadsheet. If the Northgate store begins to fail to reach its numbers (for any reason, not just MW-related), Target HQ could easily shut down the now underperforming store, tolerate the lower profit margins to maintain a market presence, or perhaps relocate it to Shoreline. National chains just don't get emotionally invested in any one location.

For the small business owners, however, they've got everything on the line, and they don't have the options that national chains do.
67
The author: "All the Targets and Walmarts have to do right now to avoid getting the stink of a difficult conversation on them is to stay the hell out of the way—which lets them off the hook way too easily."

Because I don't recall having ever seen a Walmart in Seattle, I checked their store finder. It lists 20 Walmarts in the region, but none in Seattle itself.

If true, then Walmart is probably not participating in the "difficult conversation" for reasons that have little to do with stink.

Heck, Walmart might actually benefit if Seattle businesses have to raise their prices to accommodate wage increases.
68
It never fails to amaze me--a girl from Detroit and Camden (double trouble) and grateful every day of my life to have survived both--that Seattle, which has the smartest, most agnostic/atheist, and most literate and book reading population in the US, constantly comes up with such simplistic, kneejerk, Baby Boomer Church Lady answers to intractable, complex problems.

Inflating the minimum wage is the Harrison Bergeron solution. It demands fiscal handicapping of the competent, intelligent, and successful so that lower IQ hangers-on, who cannot adapt, can live in our midst...and whine that it's still hard.

Over the years I've worked on several minimum wage campaigns--Madison, Ithaca, Berkeley, Austin--and a bunch of "local currency" ones. That was back when I was the daughter of Baby Boomer Church Ladies who thought Democracy Now was news and Noam Chomsky was an intellect.

Since then I've started applying reason, not emotion, to these issues based on my witnessing not to their ideology but my own experience. In my experience owning several small light industrial businesses, the problem isn't that wages are too low. The problem is a proliferation of people who can't adapt. The problem is that a small cadre of loudmouths are demanding that everyone's productivity be tapped to enable the maladaptive to proliferate.

For those of you commenting on my hometown of Detroit, the problem wasn't offshoring, it was an increasingly incompetent workforce. My father was a union man, and he was very frustrated by the increasing number of low-IQ, low skill set, low work ethic people who came to the union expecting a free ride, and more all the time for taking it. They turned the union from a bargaining force for the workers to balance corporate power and rein in speculative capitalism to a welfare office that drove the productive elsewhere.

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