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The most recent occurrence of this phenomena happened last week in Long Beach, Kalifornistan. The city government decided that they best knew how to run private businesses and mandated an extra $4\/hour pay increase for the employees of grocery store and supermarkets. They claimed this was a \u201cReward\u201d for their \u201cHeroic\u201d work of doing their jobs. Well, dozens of these workers, instead of getting an additional $4\/hr pay hike, are getting nothing. The stores have announced that they can\u2019t afford to stay in business and are now closing. Here are the details from FEE<\/b><\/a>:<\/p>\n A new \u201cHero Pay\u201d mandate in Long Beach, California has inadvertently cost some frontline grocery workers their jobs.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cRalphs and Food 4 Less, both owned by the parent company Kroger, announced Monday that they will be closing 25% of their stores in Long Beach after the city council passed an ordinance requiring companies with over 300 employees nationwide to pay employees an extra $4 per hour,\u201d local news outlet Fox 11 reports<\/a>. Two stores in the area will be shut down.<\/b><\/p>\n Insert see this coming surprised<\/p>\n A company spokesperson directly cited the city council\u2019s ordinance mandating higher wages as the reason they are closing down.<\/b><\/p>\n “The irreparable harm that will come to employees and local citizens as a direct result of the City of Long Beach\u2019s attempt to pick winners and losers, is deeply unfortunate,” the spokesperson said<\/a>. “We are truly saddened that our associates and customers will ultimately be the real victims of the city council\u2019s actions.”<\/b><\/p>\n And once again, one of the two greatest British Prime Ministers of the 20th<\/sup> Century has been proven correct.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.\u201d The new ordinance was passed by the nitwits on the city council with the idea that people who were doing their jobs during the Great Panicdemic of 2020 should be rewarded. Of course, these are the very same idiots who forced thousand of other people on to the unemployment rolls, bankrupted and forced to close hundreds of small businesses and generally made life miserable for everyone. But hey, making a big corporation pay people for showing up makes them feel good.<\/p>\n The ordinance was passed with the stated intention of rewarding hard-working grocery store employees who have kept a vital service running throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia was a key proponent of the measure and signed it into law. He argues it is justified because grocery store workers \u201chave been on the frontlines of this pandemic and deserve this support.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n I looked up Mayor Moonbat Garcia. As I expected, there is no indication<\/a> that he\u2019s ever worked a day in the Dreaded Private Sector. He has no idea how businesses actually work and sees them as nothing more then a giant piggy bank he can raid so he can play Robin Hood, (The fictional character, not the investment app), and make himself feel really good. Of course, he doesn\u2019t understand that his feeling good actually hurts hundreds of other people who now have no income at all. Instead, they blame the companies for looking at their bottom line and deciding that they can\u2019t afford to stay in business.<\/p>\n Similarly, Garcia and other supporters of the mandated wage hike argue that companies are just being selfish by closing down rather than paying their workers more. They point to the fact that Kroger has seen high levels of profit this year. <\/b><\/p>\n Those profits are overall, not specific to a single location. It\u2019s probable that those two stores were barely in the black, and forcing this pay hike on them pushed them over the edge into the red. They were left with no other option but to close them down. Unlike the Government, Private businesses can\u2019t print money. (Or steal it from the citizens under the guise of taxation)<\/p>\n In any case, this wage hike was passed by a bunch of fools who thought that it would be a great idea to spend other people’s money money and claim credit for being \u201cEver so caring about the less fortunate.\u201d Instead, because they never understood the law of unintended consequences, they have cost a number of people their jobs, and considering this is Kalifornistan, they may never find new ones.<\/p>\n The minimum wage in Long Beach is already $14 per hour<\/a> for employers with 26 or more employees. A $4 increase would therefore be $18 an hour, a nearly 30 percent raise for every employee. This amounts to an enormous spike in a grocery store\u2019s labor costs, which are already one of the biggest expenses an enterprise usually faces.<\/b><\/p>\n It isn\u2019t just $14\/hour either. It\u2019s closer to $30 and hour or more. There are a lot of expenses for employers thanks to the ever so caring government mandates. Social Security taxes, regulations and reporting requirements they have to follow, and other mandated costs. If a business didn\u2019t have to deal with all that garbage, then they might be able to pay $18 an hour and make money. Try explaining that to a Progressive Liberal CommuNazi. It will fly miles over their heads.<\/p>\n This specific instance of wage mandates backfiring is just one example of a much broader trend. On the national level, the \u201cFight for $15\u201d movement demanding a $15 federal minimum wage ostensibly seeks to help workers. In reality, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects<\/a> that this policy would eliminate 1.3 to 3.7 million jobs. A wealth of economic research<\/a> similarly shows that minimum wage hikes cause unemployment.<\/b><\/p>\n
\n– Margaret Thatcher <\/b><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n