$15 Minimum Wage Supporters Ok with Restaurant Failures, Says Report

Now that Seattle is becoming familiar with more restaurants and businesses closing due to the looming $15 minimum wage issue, a number of liberal bloggers and supporters of the idea are blithely tossing closures off as if they were nothing.

The Washington Policy Center's Paul Guppy this week wrote an excellent report about how the tone in Seattle is changing to "it's ok for restaurants or businesses to fail" because opening a business or running one is risky.In fact, one blogger, who writes for the Civic Skunks Works website in Seattle, says "but restaurants close all the time..."  This writer claims examples of some in Nebraska that went under, where the minimum wage is far lower.

But this writer and others ignore the fact that  in San Francisco, where they've already had the wage longer than Seattle,  several dozen restaurants and grocery stores have or are already closing due to the wage demands.

Guppy, in his WPC piece, points out that the $15 minimum wage is yet another roadblock that doesn't help smaller businesses stay afloat. Many of them already face challenges, why add to it?  From his piece addressing the Skunk Works article:

  "The minimum wage is government-set price control. Setting an artificially high wage shuts younger and lower-skilled workers out of the workforce, or forces them into the black-market workforce where, without civil-rights and workplace protections, they are more likely to be exploited."

Guppy goes on to very accurately say, referring to the Skunk Works writer and others, that they might not be so blase' about business cutting jobs due to the minimum wage if THEY were to be one of the folks who lose their job over it.

Guppy says supporters of the $15Now (as it's called) movement ignore the stories of restaurants and other businesses closing - not just in Seattle - or relocating to other areas because it doesn't fit their narrative.