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>Many business owners — and restaurant owners in particular — have been dreading the change, which is poised to ban separate surcharges that restaurateurs have
by snakeyjake 2y ago
>Many business owners — and restaurant owners in particular — have been dreading the change, which is poised to ban separate surcharges that restaurateurs have increasingly relied on to pay higher wages to staff, and to absorb discrete costs such as San Francisco's mandatory health care payments for workers.
How can a meal in a restaurant near the University of Basel in Basel, Switzerland cost roughly the same as one in San Francisco when Basel's cost of living makes San Francisco look like an economically depressed suburb of Detroit?
- gruez 2y agoCan you provide sources for all the figures in your comment? Absent that, my guess would be real estate costs (ie. rent), which san francisco is infamous for.
- shagie 2y agohttps://www.sfgate.com/local/article/mini-chameleon-darryl-dea-stairway-to-nowhere-19410127.php https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/mini-chameleon-darryl-d... $900 per month for 75 sqft is apparently a reasonable deal. https://web.archive.org/web/20231018182445/https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/off/d/san-francisco-doorway-opportunity-on/7677021859.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231018182445/https://sfbay.cra...
- simonsarris 2y agoI don't know what figures you're seeing, and I suspect restrictions and taxes Switzerland imposes on its labor relative to SF are very different. But in addition, Basel is like 2-3 miles wide and well connected. It should be highly possible for lower wage workers (from 3 possible countries! It borders France and Germany) to commute there. Mulhouse average salary is ~50% of Basel and right next door and has very cheap rental prices. The SF Peninsula has slightly higher difficulties importing cheap labor.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoWe could choose a Swiss city like Lausanne that borders Evian only after an expensive boat ride across the lake, or Bern. Prices are all similar. When I moved to Lausanne from the Bay Area (San Carlos) 20 years ago I definitely experienced sticker shock, although the prices were all honest. No idea where it’s at now, but I’m sure the 10.5 CHF Big Mac meal at McDonald’s back then is alot more expensive now.
- paulmd 2y agoAmerica is simultaneously too big or too small to ever have nice things, according to some.