Bookstore Owner Under Fire for Criticizing "Living Wage" Law

Remember the proprietor of a San Francisco bookstore who closed his doors because of that city’s “living wage” law?  Well, that poor man is under fire for speaking truth to power.  The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

San Francisco’s Borderlands Books will be forced to close as the city increases its minimum wage, and its owner Alan Beatts is tired of being criticized for talking about it.

“Most critics say ‘how dare you blame the minimum wage increase for you closing,’” he told the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s bullshit.”

“They’re either calling me a liar or chastising me for telling the truth.”

Borderlands is a specialty bookstore that has been able to carve out a niche in San Francisco for the past 18 years. It has been able to support a staff of five, most of whom have been working together for more than a decade.

Beatts said he made a mere $28,000 in gross salary last year.

With the added labor costs the city’s new minimum wage will eventually impose on the business, and the fact that books come pre-priced leaving no room for price increases, Mr. Beatts sees no way it can survive.

“At this point the business is doing fine but I look down the road and the business is losing $25,000 a year,” he said. “It’s going to put me out of work.”

He is more concerned about how the store’s closing will affect his employees though. “We’re all friends,” he said. “In some ways this is harder on the employees than me.”

Yet, according to Democrats, this business owner is nothing more than a greedy, fat cat oppressing his workers.  Now he’ll sail off to some comfy, vacation home in the islands without a care in the world while his former employees eat dog food. 

Source:

http://freebeacon.com/issues/san-francisco-bookstore-closing-due-to-minimum-wage-increase/

San Francisco Bookstore Falls Prey to "Living Wage"

San Francisco bookstores are closing their doors because they can’t afford to pay entry level workers a “living wage.”  Borderlands Books, along with other small businesses, have fallen prey to liberal, economic policies.

 

Borderlands is closing.

In 18 years of business, Borderlands has faced a number of challenges. The first and clearest was in 2000, when our landlord increased our rent by 100% and we had to move to our current location on Valencia Street. The steady movement towards online shopping, mostly with Amazon, has taken a steady toll on bookstores throughout the world and Borderlands was no exception. After that and related to it, has been the shift towards ebooks and electronic reading devices. And finally the Great Recession of 2009 hit us very hard, especially since we had just opened a new aspect to the business in the form of our cafe.

But, through all those challenges, we’ve managed to find a way forward and 2014 was the best year we’ve ever had. Overall, Borderlands has managed to defeat every problem that has come our way. At the beginning of 2014, the future of the business looked, if not rosy, at least stable and very positive. We were not in debt, sales were meeting expenses and even allowing a small profit, and, perhaps most importantly, the staff and procedures at both the bookstore and the cafe were well established and working smoothly.

So it fills us with sorrow and horror to say that we will be closing very soon.

In November, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly passed a measure that will increase the minimum wage within the city to $15 per hour by 2018. Although all of us at Borderlands support the concept of a living wage in principal and we believe that it’s possible that the new law will be good for San Francisco — Borderlands Books as it exists is not a financially viable business if subject to that minimum wage. Consequently we will be closing our doors no later than March 31st.

Remember, the “living wage” is part of the Democratic Party’s middle class economics platform.  Enjoy!

Source:

http://www.aei.org/publication/minimum-wage-maximum-sorrow-san-francisco-bookstores/