Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowTalking heads and politicians are notoriously bad at math. Morton Marcus [Jan. 9 Forefront] acts as if paying higher wages equates to something like 30 cents per diner. I think this is disingenuous.
Let’s take a more realistic approach; in other words, how an actual entrepreneur who risked his or her own capital to start a business [would] analyze the increased operating cost.
If a restaurant is open 360 days a year for 12 hours a day, there are 4,320 labor hours in a year (assuming one server or tip-based employee during business hours). Increasing the minimum wage $2.87 per hour increases the cost to ownership $12,398 per server needed (before tax burden). A restaurant averaging six servers incurs additional annual operating cost of $74,390.
I don’t know what ivory tower Marcus lives in, but where I come from $75,000 is meaningful. If it is chump change, could Marcus pick up the tab?
____________
Ryan Bonnell
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.