Will a Higher Minimum Wage Close a Beloved Bookstore?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
It is still sad when small businesses have to close because they can't afford to operate without subsidized labor.
"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."
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.