Comments

1

$10/hr in Spokane goes a lot further than $15/hr in Seattle.

The average person needs to GTFO before all Hades breaks loose.

Look a feature from "The Inlandeer" on Buzz Osborne.

I have no idea who he is...but it sure looks like something Seattle people would love.

http://www.inlander.com/spokane/gone-sol…
2
This discussion is going to be lousy with collectivism sucks, ChefJoe, Andrew Friedman, a human being, and a real live employer. Hopefully Seattleblues has blown his squaw tits for the day and will be out back relaxing by cleaning the barrels of his guns.
3
People petitioning their government for change: bad. Socialism= bad.
Corporations petitioning their government for change: good. Capitalism=good.
4
Don't own any guns. Didn't name the hill. But I am headed out back to relax and BBQ.

Have a great evening doing whatever people like you who want productive folks paying your way in life do. Panhandling, or is that too much like work?
5
So have the actual franchisEES banded together yet for the purpose of renegotiating supply contracts and reducing the fees, licensing and marketing, that they pay their corporate parents?

...No?

So it's really only the franchisORS attacking what they perceive is the most vulnerable target, i.e., LABOR. Got it.
6
Franchises. Either they're one big business or they're many small businesses quasi-legally colluding. Pick one and stick with it.

@4: I went to work at 5 AM this morning and babysat a bunch of inventory specialists while they tallied up everything on our shelves, as we do once a year. Tomorrow it'll be back to the usual "pull heavy stuff off a truck, put stuff on shelves so it looks fetching and appealing, schmooze with customers and help them find stuff" grind.
What did you do today that was productive?
7
@6
He pretended to be older and wiser than you by calling you "junior" or "kid" or something like that.
8
@6

nice to see you have done so much with your life.

Remind us again why those of us who are successful(read: we pay for your ass through society) should listen to someone like you....
9
Yeah... and Tim Eyman is gathering signatures for an initiative for 2015 that would dissolve SeaTac's and Seattle's minimum wage laws and prevent all towns, cities, and municipalities from setting their own minimum wage standards. The minimum wage would have to be uniform across the state and would, therefore, have to be approved at a state level. So all employers - franchises, small shops, Boeing, farmers - would have to abide by the same minimum wage. This, of course, would prevent any raising of the minimum wage, which is the real goal of the initiative. It has the very Orwellian name of Fair and Uniform Minimum Wage.

There's a basically identical initiative being prepared by some SeaTac ex-council man/corporate stooge asshole FOR THIS YEAR. However, it's an open question as to whether they'll gather all the required signatures in time.

If either of these initiatives gets to the ballot, get ready for major corporate millions to pour mysteriously into the state to kill the minimum wage, just like they did GMO labeling. Of course, they'll use scare tactics and emotional appeals of these poor mom-and-pop business that will have to close because of the higher minimum wage and how communities will therefore end up losing jobs.
10
@8: I've done plenty. Did you know that three years ago, I went on a prospecting expedition and helped dig up a shit bunch of Cretaceous-era fossils? I'm talking turtles, crocs, ceratopsians, tyrannosauroids et cetera. That's something that is physically taxing, mentally demanding, highly educational, and generally wicked cool, and it's something that you'll never actually do in your boring little existence. Unless you contribute heavily to the University of Chicago or pay my dad's salary, you really don't have any say over who I am, what work I do, or how I apply my substantial abilities.
So what have you accomplished in your life? Remind me again why those of us who are educated (read as: those of us who think before we speak) should listen to someone like you.
11
"helped dig up a shit bunch of Cretaceous-era fossils? "

I think my 2 year old did that in Thermopolis, Wyoming last year. She got paid with a well-earned cookie.
12
Do you understand the franchise business model? It's a clever construct by which local entrepreneurs bear all the risk while international businesses reap the profits. Who exactly do you think you're kicking here?
13
@12 is correct.

15
@14, the ugly truth is that elitists think that hard work that doesn't require a university education and/or being born into the ownership class isn't worth $15/hr. I think restroom-cleaners are worth more to society than many CEOs, and probably many professors.
17
The ugly truth is that big corporate CEOs and bankers have all the middle class and lower class fighting amongst themselves about minimum wages that don't even cover living expenses while the ultra wealthy horde away their money in tax havens and collect government subsidies given to corporations that don't need them.
18
@17 is correct.
19
If they close up shop, who can blame them? Or maybe that's what you liberals actually want?
21
Dear Gay Dude for Raindrip. I admit Economics class was more than 10 years ago, but isn't the fundamental tenet of capitalism's free market, its ultimate shiny goal - survival of the fittest in all fields; so that the companies/competitors/people that remain in the market ARE the ones who should be there, and the ones who can't compete SHOULD be killed.. er, I mean gone? Good businesses succeed, Bad businesses fail, hallelujah! God's in his heaven, all's right with the world.
If government or society interferes and help the poor weak companies/competitors/people, isn't that (OMG, the HORRORS!), SOCIALISM?
22
It's not just the IFA; it's not just WA. Hapless Dems in GA want to push the state minimum to $10.10. From yesterday's Atlanta Business Journal:

​Georgia Restaurant Association: Minimum wage increase will cost Georgia 21,000 jobs

http://goo.gl/yT1N5Y
(Be certain to check out the GRA's brochure)

Story is featured today in a number of state dailies, and as I listen to GPR, it is the primary discussion on morning radio.
23
@10

LOL...I did shit like that 20 years ago in college...BFD...but I did get some good sack time with one of the female paleontology students....word!

Don't you have some boxes to go stack? and what kind of education does it take to be a box stacker?

run along now - leave the adult stuff to the adults

...and not to worry - I will work a little harder today so you can have some more free stuff.
24
BTW, there is a ballot initiative gathering signatures to repeal/delay the $15/hr. minimum wage law. they need 16,000 to make the ballot this fall. please tell them to fuck right off.

the minimum wage needs to be set where that worker won't have to draw on federal or state supplements to get above the poverty line, i.e. food stamps, ADC, subsidized housing, etc. if that's $15, fine, raise the cost of that 99 cent burger to $1.25.

you may be the hardest working franchise owner on the planet, but I shouldn't have to subsidize your workers with my taxes.
25
@21 That is certainly a final solution for all the people not well suited to the shrinking pool of jobs that we value that actually require a person to perform.

Arguably, we need to keep a good share of the genetic variation to protect against disease and other population killers, and having a large base of raw numbers would be useful for establishing colonies beyond Earth, but what do we do we these people until we find a use for them?
26
@16 The modern economy is responsible for turning those jobs into something other than what they were made for. The recession destroyed so many better-paying, living wage jobs, that have not been recovered. The low-paying sector, however, continues to grow faster than any other sector of the jobs economy.

The push for a higher minimum wage is the product of facing this new reality. Adults supporting families by flipping burgers is the new normal. You're right, it was never "intended" to be that way, but that's how it's turned out. THAT'S your ugly truth.
27
"intended" -- what, do corporations do central planning, now? i'm confused!
28
All this whole IFA campaign is really showing that apparently unionization is good enough for the owners but not for the workers.

Organize!
29
@11: The fact that you wrote "in Thermopolis" shows that you don't know what prospecting is. Your child may be a precocious little urchin but there's several worlds of difference between badlands prospecting and pulling casts out of a sandbox.
@23: I BET you did. You couldn't tell the difference between gravel that used to be bone and gravel that has always just been rock if your life depended on it.

If you're actually that curious, I'm not afraid to do work that is "beneath me" or whatever. I'm a very cerebral sort of person; I've forgotten more about the life and earth sciences than you've probably ever learned, I can work out elegant solutions to problems of logic or math without breaking a figurative sweat, and I feel perfectly at home in a laboratory, but I'm lacking in other skills. For example, I don't function very well under pressure in real-world situations where I must act on the fly, I'm not very good at dealing with people, and I'm unintuitive when it comes to entirely open-ended problem solving. My current job is demanding in those regards, and I've enjoyed challenging myself. And what have the results been? I'm not only a reliable member of the team, but also the guy who has an eye for detail and can spot trouble brewing and formulate a counteraction before it's an urgent issue, and also the guy who's really good with customers.
My conclusion is that I can be excellent at just about anything, even things that I'm comparatively bad at. So go ahead and hate on me because I have capabilities you can barely imagine. Go ahead and pretend that I owe you things so that you feel some way superior. I spend every day challenging myself to learn new things, to improve and fine-tune my approach in everything I do, and to fight vigilantly against the side effects of my intellect.
You are neither my father, my mother, nor any significant contributor to the University which so generously provided me with financial aid. I have received nothing as the result of your work, whatever it may be.
30
We live in a distressed economy where workers dont get a fair wage. Government has been making some pretty bad decisions allowing the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. They increased their bad decisions 10 fold when the economy went in the dumps in 2007. And continue to do so.

(Like high rent, for instance. Fed policy allows ultra wealthy to invest in property which has negative consequences to Seattlites. Raising wages dont address this problem. Actually it will probably make their property investments all the more attractive.)

Small Businesses have to exist pretty much at par with workers in the distressed economy.

So many bad decisions have been made to create an unfair income inequality situation; create a distressed economy, by bad policy and crony government. Yet, we are supposed to believe that the small business are to blame for not giving workers a fair wage? As if they were the problem all along?

Im not drinking the cool-aid on that one. 15now is punishing the wrong people.

I will support any effort to repeal the Seattle minimum wage fiasco. Fuck that.
.
31
@30: So you're against government meddling in free markets...and you're against government allowing big businesses to invest in real estate...and McDonald's franchises are small businesses in your book? Fucking ideological consistency, how does it work?
32
@31
I am FOR things that work to benefit people, especially people that struggle to make their way in this town. If your interpretation on that is that I am 'against' things, you miss the point.

Putting a bandaid over a festering wound may make it look better, but in the end you still have a festering wound. Blaming small business for not paying people enough to live, may sound rosy, but does nothing to the real criminals that screw the workers and small business alike.
33
You idiots fighting decent wage laws have backwards reasoning: that labor should only be paid relative to the cost/value of the skill asked of the worker, no consideration of the value of their labor's output, or the intrinsic value of asking a live human to spend their time on behalf of the employer... By that logic gas should be $.10 per gallon because its not really that complicated to poke a hole in the ground and collect the oil that oozes out.

Please wait...

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