

Will a Higher Minimum Wage Close a Beloved Bookstore? - ajaymehta
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/minimum-wage-dilemma-san-francisco

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chrisbennet
Paying a less than living wage tends to externalize the true cost of hiring
someone - someone else picks up the tab for health care, food stamps and such.

It is still sad when small businesses have to close because they can't afford
to operate without subsidized labor.

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smt88
No. People buying books at other places will close a beloved bookstore.

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dottrap
Nope. Laid out clearly in the article.

"Beatts ran the numbers on the minimum-wage increase early last year, when
people started talking about putting it on the citywide ballot. In November,
the measure passed overwhelmingly, but Beatts kept quiet about how it would
impact his store; with the holiday season approaching, he didn’t want
potential customers to get confused and think that the store had already
closed. Then, in January, the first phase of the minimum-wage hike went into
effect, raising wages to more than eleven dollars an hour. Beatts had
considered some options for staying open—taking donations, selling memberships
that would include special benefits, finding benefactors to buy real estate
where Borderlands could operate rent-free—but found none of them to be
workable. Nor could he raise book prices, the way a restaurant might hike menu
prices or a clothing store might raise the prices of dresses; people expect to
pay the price that is printed on a book cover, and, while he could charge
more, he didn’t think that would go over well. And he didn’t want to continue
on in the knowledge that the store wouldn’t be viable once the minimum wage
had risen beyond a certain point. So, on Sunday, he announced his plan to
close, and the reason for it."

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smt88
Bookstores are closing all over the country, with or without a minimum wage
hike. The problem is that no one buys books at mom-and-pop stores anymore.
They buy them, generally speaking, at Amazon.

So while the last straw might have been a few bucks an hour, the root of the
problem is that his industry is dying end to end (writers, publishers,
retailers). A healthy industry can easily pay more than minimum wage to every
worker and still be profitable -- look at Starbucks at its peak for an
example.

