Comments

1
Fantagraphics like so many businesses owners who are getting lost in their own singular perspective, namely how do we maintain status quo and raise wages to $15, have made a common error in thinking.

They haven't even taken a moment to consider this reality from the perspective of the workers. They've not even done the basic reflection of "walking a mile in their shoes."

Instead, like spoiled, self-centered children they are demanding the world conform to their perspective and their experience. Why should they have to change - the current system works for them. Why are the workers being such assholes and making their lives as owners so difficult. In fact, they've managed to leap over the beam in their own failed perspective to glare at the perceived speck in their workers' view of the world.

How dare these workers demand higher wages when others are exploiting their workers so much more than ME. Don't they know how this change is going to affect ME and MY business. They are making MY life so difficult. What about MY needs, MY plans, MY dreams, MY future...What about MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

If you start here...

Me.
Now.

...you'll get nowhere.

The questions that they and others should be asking themselves as business owners and investors is how could we be so myopic, so clueless in our view of the world that we somehow managed to miss the glaringly obvious reality that our business governance and its earnings are not fairly shared with those whose lives, work and talents make it all possible.

If you've ever wondered how people who participated in the exploitation of indentured servants and slaves could become blind to the evils of such a system, well, it's because it was commonplace. It was the way things had always been in their lifetime. It was familiar. It worked. Everybody did it.

The current system of exploitation by the owner and investor class of the worker class is at its core no different.

Just because it's the way you've always done it and just because everyone does it that way doesn't make it right, doesn't make it just.

Stop.
Think.
Reflect.

The movement for the $15 minimum wage is essentially about fairness and sharing. If these businesses sincerely understood these concepts, they would immediately understand their moral and social obligation to share the business earnings and ownership with the people whose lives, work and talents actually make it all possible.

Share.

Be fair.

It really is that simple, kids.
2
It's pretty significant that while Fangraphics is worried about what to do if the minimum wage goes to $15, they are also confident that they will figure it out. There's no talk of leaving town, no talk of firing people, no talk of going out of business.
3
@2 including potentially recalibrating some positions in the office. is code for reduced hours and could well include not retaining some people.
4
@1 Dude. Lighten up. Fantagraphics said that they will consider their options. Every business owner needs to do that from time to time. It's a fact that some business models just won't work with a $15 wage. It's called reality, and people make calls like that all the time when evaluating whether or not to start a business, to buy or a business, take out a loan, or make other business-related decisions. Fantagraphics basically said, if wages change, we will take a look at our business model and see what other changes we need to make to survive in that revised context. I certainly hope that they do that, because I would rather see them stay in business by making appropriate adjustments rather than ignoring this significant change and going on as if nothing had happened, leading to their eventual demise due to their lack of business savvy.
5
As a longtime employee of Fantagraphics, I thought Reynolds' measured response was precisely what I would expect from our politically progressive small enterprise. A far cry from the histrionics we've all been hearing from far more profitable restaurant owners.
6
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is ALA's third-most-frequently-banned book of 2013.

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