Florida restaurant shuts down after being left with 4 employees | Hacker News Reader

Florida restaurant shuts down after being left with 4 employees

news.yahoo.com

11 pointsjmartrican20 comments

What the restaurant owner isn't mentioning is that employees likely can't afford to live within commuting distance of their business.

Central Florida is seeing the fastest-rising rents in the nation along with an unprecedented shortage of properties to rent. Rental listings typically gets hundreds of applicants per day. Home purchases aren't faring any better.

ref: https://www.fox13news.com/news/tampa-bay-area-rent-increase-...

Many people are fleeing to Florida for political asylum.

Native Floridian.

They’re coming because there is no state income tax and the most significant taxation hits tourists (hotel, rental cars, property tax on vacation homes, etc.). The winter weather isn’t bad, either. ;)

Property tax is probably the highest tax for a resident who owns a home, and even so, it tends to be much less than many other places.

There’s a misconception Florida is an inexpensive place to live. I hear it all the time from newcomers.

It is becoming increasingly expensive for general cost of living, housing and insurance. Home prices now exceed where they were 15 years ago during the real estate bubble.

Also, the state doesn’t invest in nearly the amount of infrastructure it should for the number people here.

For instance, hurricanes are a threat to the entire state, yet there are numerous counties in the panhandle which have no hurricane shelter, and those which do often have one only rated for a Cat 2 storm. Hurricane Michael hit the region in 2018 as a Cat 5.

Unfortunately, it will probably take a massive environmental disaster (hurricane, red tide, climate change) to convince the all but the most hardened individuals Florida wasn’t a good place to move to.

I should probably have put some sarcasm markers on my initial comment. I have nothing for/against FL, it seems like a nice enough place to visit/live. I suspect almost all of the new arrivals are there for the classic reasons. Same probably goes for any inflow states.

This isn't true in any meaningful sense. The influx are cash-fat transplants from even more expensive areas.

I do applaud the use of Politics and Asylum in the same sentence. FL politics are a whole lot like FL State Mental Institutions.

How many people would have to emigrate to FL because of dissatisfaction with the way their state is run for you to consider it meaningful?

Any amount at all that might result in some anecdotal evidence making itself known.

We've had a number of move-ins over the last few years into our church and our area sister churches. I've personally unloaded many moving trucks. People move here for jobs and dollars.

Zero families moved in to escape ideological persecution or anything like that - and this is a heavily r-wing area.

As elections occur and Florida residents vote less conservative representatives in, would that not provide signal that they moved to Florida for reasons other than dissatisfaction with the policies of the state they relocated from? For example, you can support progressive policies but not want to pay bloated public pension obligations that were locked in decades ago (ie Illinois and New Jersey) or you're looking for more affordable housing (because there's only so much land to go around). Jobs in major metros in Florida are also pulling people into the state.

Also, many who move to Florida are near or at retirement age, and while they likely lean conservative, their duration in the electorate is less than younger voters.

It's a common joke that people wreck their home states voting for progressive policies, then flee the effects to more conservative states, but forget to leave their voting habits behind.

I don't actually agree that you can support progressive policies but not want to pay bloated public pension obligations, at least if you want to be consistent. The essential nature of progressive policies necessitates large state obligations and thereby creates individuals dependent on the state. It's a vicious cycle that centralizes more and more power in the state.

It works both ways. The last 5 years of living in FL have pushed me hard to reverse my 30 years of ~R-Only voting habits.

May I ask why?

Conservatives have reached a place that seems devoid of reason to me.

30 years ago, I felt conservatism could compete well on ideals. Today's voter suppression and anti-protest laws show that even we don't value our ideals well enough to believe they'll win on their own merits. I've personally never been afraid of a healthy and capable opponent and never felt the need to restrain their voice or their vote.

My first strong disagreement with conservatives came before 2016 tho. To me, small gov is small gov. That includes LEO, IC, etc. In the 1990s we reasonably called out FBI's heavy-handed Hostage Rescue division and while we didn't really reject authoritarianism, we didn't lust for it either. After 9/11 we did an about-face and embraced federal authoritarianism in the same way we once criticized the Left for. I still feel like the only conservative on Earth who understands that a surveillance state is the largest possible government.

I held tight to conservatism after that but 2016 was the first time I ever voted for a non-R PotUS. I find Trump to be an abysmal human being who offends my principles. There's no expounding his policies because most of his output is stream-of-consciousness gibberish that can't even coalesce into a talking point. I can find nothing at all to stand by in him.

I want to add that in the years before 2016 I was distressed by the growing vitriol and animosity I got from my libertarian and conservative friends. I have one childhood friend I no longer talk to because our conversations became so corrosive.

Lastly: While voter suppression and anti-protest laws were my last straw, the stolen election delusion cemented it. And then all the anti-health crap showed up during Covid, which was quickly adopted by the Right - which just piled on more cement.

I really haven't changed my positions much since 1990. Instead, the Right went and left me behind.

That's an interesting perspective! IMHO, the Democratic party since the 90s has become the party of the elites. They have abandoned the middle and working class voter and made common cause with the radical academic left and the welfare dependent underclass. I see Trumpism as just the development of the Tea Party, i.e., a populist revolt against the GOP establishment. The elites are authoritarian, period. The Right/Left divide is outmoded. The new split is a class war with the middle class. I'll vote for whichever party represents their interests because I believe a strong middle class is best for the country. In 2021, it's not the Dems.

New Yorkers move to Florida; both states become less conservative.

It's like that old joke about switching parties and the average IQ in both dropping.

> Despite paying more than any restaurant I am aware of, no one wants to work LOL, sure. That's why everyone - 4 left, because you paid more. I wonder if the staff that left is working now in another place that "pay less".

Seems like $10/hr isn't good enough to work in a smokey/greasy/hot kitchen... who knew?

It certainly isn't when your 2021 rent is 40%-120% higher than your 2019 rent.

Those are the lucky folks btw. Beyond them are folks who are competing with hundreds of other rental applicants - likely because their rental was just sold. Folks with cash in the bank are facing homelessness.

ref: C.Fl Renter

There is almost no point in working a job that pays under 20 dollars an hour in Florida. Rent here is skyrocketing and there is practically no public transport. Most restaurants here pay between 10 and 15 dollars an hour which just isn’t even worth it anymore.

> When contacted by Insider, McKinnon wouldn't say exactly how much staff were paid, but said hourly employers were paid "in double digits." Winter Park managers were paid at the level of "high end" restaurants or better, she said.

> Florida stopped paying the benefits, including a $300 weekly payment, in late June. Mark Wilson, CEO of Florida's Chamber of Commerce, said that the decision would "help fill thousands of these vacancies and aid in ending the worker shortage throughout the state."

> Companies in Florida, and other states that cut benefits early, have said that they're still struggling to find staff months later.

I can't figure out why this is downvoted it's exactly what happened.

They thought ending the UI benefits would magically force people back into jobs they hate.

Problem is- when every job pays min wage, people are now looking for ones where they won't be fired/laid off if we have a covid resurgence, as well as the jobs that treat them the least like crap, and have a steady schedule.

These foodservice jobs have always been some of the worst, they are just now getting their comeuppance.

We should have never let them allay the wages of their waitstaff via tips either.

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