Originally posted by ThinkOfOne
So you'd be all for a minimum wage that pays a living wage or better, so long as "small operations" are given relief if they can show that they are unable to achieve a modest profit?
Who wouldn't?
Because of my professional experience, I would shy away from any business which must operate on a low/high model: turn over is the bane of all businesses with respect to consistency, quality and daily operations and nothing screams turn over louder than minimum wage.
But some operators have a long-term business model which accounts for that chaos and they make their plans accordingly, meaning, they're really not about overall integrity as they are intent on financial stability.
Those types of businesses are notoriously easy to enter and maintain and are therefore in a perpetual rise and fall existence.
Without some type of unimaginable and (to my perspective) unattainable regulation, there is no end to their position as an employer source in the national economy.
A good tangential example of this phenomenon is Walmart.
The size of this scorched-earth behemoth is more than enough for them to break free of the low/high model completely, but they have opted to retain portions of it in two critical areas.
For one, they force their vendors to act on a global pricing scale even when the vendor is capable of only behaving (at best) nationally, but typically regionally.
Secondly, they force the local and federal benefit sources to subsidize their employees by paying them crap wages and either offering no health benefits or equally dismal benefits at substantial premiums.
And what does the adoring public do about such chicanery?
They buy the stock and support the effort by taking their business to them at every chance.
I think the answer is somewhere in a simplified formula which considers gross and net for each business, bracketed and balanced.
Unlike the joke that is non-profit organizations, each portion of a business' accounting/balance sheet is weighted, thereby determining how much relief--- in any--- a business can realize in assisting their wage subsidies.
If a company profits more than certain levels commensurate with their actual costs... no soup for you!
But, as you can imagine, very administrative-heavy to enforce.
Yet another layer of government oversight!