5 ms·

It's one thing to be unfair when the government is footing the bill, like basic income or tax brackets. It's a good incentive to balance out rising cost of livi

It's one thing to be unfair when the government is footing the bill, like basic income or tax brackets. It's a good incentive to balance out rising cost of living. It's another when it's small businesses footing the bill. There's a very painful lag time between being required to pay employees more and when employees have more spending power. Typically all that happens is local business don't have the finances to cover that lag, but national businesses do, and the latter survives and dominates.

Klinky 6y ago
Then we should advocate for government footing the bill, either UBI or subsidized minimum wage. Someone is paying the cost in the end, and probably shouldn't end up on the small business owner, and definitely shouldn't end up on the laborer being unable to make ends meet.
dylz 6y ago
I don't have an opinion on this in either direction, but i'm curious: how do you define a small business, and do inefficient/wasteful small businesses get selectively 'bailed out' compared to national ones? Why should small businesses not have to foot the bill while large ones do? Just because they are small, they don't have to be competitive or efficient - do not-profitable hobby businesses get propped up for no reason other than they are small? Many chains and non-small businesses have also been known to split off (for example, an incorporation per chain location, franchise location, or per physical building) - then that one national fast food chain or REIT building is now a "small business" with only a few employees?
- leetcrew 6y ago
  locally owned businesses are arguably better for a community because the owner is more likely to recirculate their profits back through the local economy. the profits from a walmart location are ultimately captured by the shareholders, who may be disproportionately concentrated in some far-away place. of course, this can be outweighed if the large corporation serves the community much more efficiently than the smaller competition. subjectively, I find it a lot more pleasant to deal with local businesses. on the rare occasion I go to starbucks, I grab my coffee and leave immediately, but I would be happy to spend a few hours reading in any of the nearby independent coffee shops.
  - dylz 6y ago
    > I would be happy to spend a few hours reading in any of the nearby independent coffee shops. Would this not be worse for independent coffee shops since you're taking up a seat to read, while the people that work employed by Starbucks couldn't possibly care less what you were doing? To me it seems like it would be a bit 50/50 based on industry vertical. I'm happy to support a reasonable independent restaurant over a fast food chain any time, but things like computer/parts shops, any independent one I see has markups well into the hundreds of percents at times, all seem incredibly shady, etc. Same with 'authorized retailer' phone shops that try to charge you $50-60 for a SIM.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      > Would this not be worse for independent coffee shops since you're taking up a seat to read, while the people that work employed by Starbucks couldn't possibly care less what you were doing? this was just the first example I could think of for a type of business where the independently owned ones are more pleasant, but good question. my guess is that independent coffee places understand that being a pleasant place to hang out is a large part of their value-add and price it in appropriately, but who knows? I certainly agree there are some types of businesses where I don't really care. if I want to buy a stick of RAM in person, I want it today and I want to pay a competitive price. unless the employees are outright rude, there's not much they can do to improve or harm my experience.
clairity 6y ago
small businesses don't foot the bill, at least not to any painful level if they're anything approaching a reasonably run business. their customers might, and having it be a blanket policy means that small businesses are not disadvantaged or penalized for not having the leverage of big businesses to distribute costs onto the rest of society (e.g., walmart and welfare). at most, on the margin, a small business might give employees 1-2 fewer hours per week. that actually puts selective pressure on small businesses to be more efficient, and therefore more competitive with big business. this also counters the other oft-cited rebuttal that people will lose jobs due to the minimum wage - no, they may lose an hour or two on the margin, but whole swaths of jobs aren't at stake, and their take-home will likely stay roughly the same even with fewer hours per week. economic lag isn't particularly relevant either, because folks making minimum wage turn around immediately and spend that money. there's virtually no lag there.
- HPsquared 6y ago
  Only a small portion of the increase in wages would find its way back to local businesses. Rents will increase for example, as people will have more money to bid up the prices.
  - clairity 6y ago
    although rents do tend to absorb surpluses in our plutocratic form of capitalism, landlords are still largely local and rental markets fragmented (although those are changing with the financializing of real estate), so that money still tends to circulate locally. a small portion does get captured as wealth by landlords, which doesn’t tend to circulate locally.

Klinky 6y ago

Then we should advocate for government footing the bill, either UBI or subsidized minimum wage. Someone is paying the cost in the end, and probably shouldn't end up on the small business owner, and definitely shouldn't end up on the laborer being unable to make ends meet.

dylz 6y ago

I don't have an opinion on this in either direction, but i'm curious: how do you define a small business, and do inefficient/wasteful small businesses get selectively 'bailed out' compared to national ones? Why should small businesses not have to foot the bill while large ones do? Just because they are small, they don't have to be competitive or efficient - do not-profitable hobby businesses get propped up for no reason other than they are small? Many chains and non-small businesses have also been known to split off (for example, an incorporation per chain location, franchise location, or per physical building) - then that one national fast food chain or REIT building is now a "small business" with only a few employees?

leetcrew 6y ago
locally owned businesses are arguably better for a community because the owner is more likely to recirculate their profits back through the local economy. the profits from a walmart location are ultimately captured by the shareholders, who may be disproportionately concentrated in some far-away place. of course, this can be outweighed if the large corporation serves the community much more efficiently than the smaller competition. subjectively, I find it a lot more pleasant to deal with local businesses. on the rare occasion I go to starbucks, I grab my coffee and leave immediately, but I would be happy to spend a few hours reading in any of the nearby independent coffee shops.
- dylz 6y ago
  > I would be happy to spend a few hours reading in any of the nearby independent coffee shops. Would this not be worse for independent coffee shops since you're taking up a seat to read, while the people that work employed by Starbucks couldn't possibly care less what you were doing? To me it seems like it would be a bit 50/50 based on industry vertical. I'm happy to support a reasonable independent restaurant over a fast food chain any time, but things like computer/parts shops, any independent one I see has markups well into the hundreds of percents at times, all seem incredibly shady, etc. Same with 'authorized retailer' phone shops that try to charge you $50-60 for a SIM.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > Would this not be worse for independent coffee shops since you're taking up a seat to read, while the people that work employed by Starbucks couldn't possibly care less what you were doing? this was just the first example I could think of for a type of business where the independently owned ones are more pleasant, but good question. my guess is that independent coffee places understand that being a pleasant place to hang out is a large part of their value-add and price it in appropriately, but who knows? I certainly agree there are some types of businesses where I don't really care. if I want to buy a stick of RAM in person, I want it today and I want to pay a competitive price. unless the employees are outright rude, there's not much they can do to improve or harm my experience.

clairity 6y ago

small businesses don't foot the bill, at least not to any painful level if they're anything approaching a reasonably run business. their customers might, and having it be a blanket policy means that small businesses are not disadvantaged or penalized for not having the leverage of big businesses to distribute costs onto the rest of society (e.g., walmart and welfare). at most, on the margin, a small business might give employees 1-2 fewer hours per week. that actually puts selective pressure on small businesses to be more efficient, and therefore more competitive with big business. this also counters the other oft-cited rebuttal that people will lose jobs due to the minimum wage - no, they may lose an hour or two on the margin, but whole swaths of jobs aren't at stake, and their take-home will likely stay roughly the same even with fewer hours per week. economic lag isn't particularly relevant either, because folks making minimum wage turn around immediately and spend that money. there's virtually no lag there.

HPsquared 6y ago
Only a small portion of the increase in wages would find its way back to local businesses. Rents will increase for example, as people will have more money to bid up the prices.
- clairity 6y ago
  although rents do tend to absorb surpluses in our plutocratic form of capitalism, landlords are still largely local and rental markets fragmented (although those are changing with the financializing of real estate), so that money still tends to circulate locally. a small portion does get captured as wealth by landlords, which doesn’t tend to circulate locally.