Comments

1
Good idea
2
Here are how Capitol Hill business owners are celebrating MLK date: By dishonestly declaring they will go out of business with a $15/hr minimum wage ($30K/yr for full time workers).

If a mandatory $15 an hour wage would kick in we would have to raise prices accordingly, most likely cut our work force, and trim hours of operation, making it even more difficult to be profitable, maybe even close our business.

- Owner of Julia's, who own a $1,357,000 house in Magnolia.

If the $15 minimum wage is enacted, we would go out of business immediately and all our 25 permanent staff (up to 50 seasonally) will be out of a job. It’s that simple.

- Owner of Red Light, who owns a $728,000 house in Greenwood.

Larger business can and probably should increase wages more than small businesses... Raising the minimum wage by 62% will completely eat up profits.

- Dave Meinert, owner of half of Capitol Hill, who owns two houses, including a $790,000 mansion in Burien and a $536,000 house in Burien.

These people absolutely are making their personal finances a political issue by saying they have no option but to close down or raise prices enormously. The clear answer is for you to cut your own wage to something in the range of "upper middle class" instead of "ridiculously wealthy."

I haven't seen ONE of these people mention ANYTHING about how the minimum wage increase would benefit their workers' lives.

If these people keep up their nonstop lobbying to keep their enormous wealth at the expense of their workers, the next step is to protest at their houses. The media will see what their mansions look like compared to their workers, who live in house shares and Apodments, or commute from the furthest suburbs.

Unfortunately, Dave Meinert in particular is a very skilled lobbyist, who is already Ed Murray's right-hand man on the minimum wage increase, and has called for his businesses to be exempt from a $15/hour increase, so that he makes even MORE money compared to big businesses that would need to increase their workers' wages. He successfully lobbied for almost the exact same exemption with the sick leave ordinance.

One more point - these wealthy businesspeople need to stop bringing up tips. It's obvious that you can enact a service fee to replace tips, which is a better system regardless - less discrimination and then tip wages would need to be reported and included in social security and unemployment benefits. If you really want to make this about tips, we'll need to dig into whether you've been paying taxes on tip wages as you're legally required to.
3
I don't know if they are necessarily honoring MLK by asking for more money, though it seems to make since if they asking to be treated like a human and payed like one as well.
4
@2 there's mansions in Burien?
5
@4: I think @2 may have a very skewed notion of what constitutes a "mansion." Not to mention what constitutes "ridiculously wealthy" and "enormous wealth."
6
I live in Burien. My condo cost $105,000. With a view of the Sound, the Olympics, and Vashon.

I shudder to think how obscene Meinert's $790,000 Burien home must be.
7
it's basically true that a min wage without exemptions would punish businesses for labor intensivity, which might not be right given a secular looseness in labor markets

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