Galt's Gulch

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    Posted by conscious1978 10 years, 5 months ago
    Kudos to the cafe owner for covering his increased costs in a novel way. He exposed the disconnect that many people have regarding how costs are passed along. I hope his business continues to grow.
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  • Posted by $ KahnQuest 10 years, 5 months ago
    Nice exposition of the minimum-wage hypocrisy. Of course they're mad; they wanted higher minimum wages for the workers, but they didn't want it coming out of their pockets! Or maybe they're mad because they can now see just how their minimum wage hike means nothing.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 10 years, 5 months ago
    I applaud the cafe owner. From the ignorant reaction, I can see too many people never took Economics 101. I'm a senior citizen who never was a businessman, but I could grasp the cause and effect of a rising cost as an immature teenager. Oh, well, I live in the country that voted in Obama twice. Hope and change and Candy Mountain.
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  • Posted by mckenziecalhoun 10 years, 5 months ago
    Every year I'd watch the apartment dwellers in my neighborhood vote for bond after bond after bond, saying, "Stick it to the property owners - they can afford it and it's for a good cause".
    Then they noticed the prices going up, rent going up, gas going up, and wondered, "What the heck is happening?"

    Are our people so utterly BLIND that they do not realize how these things work?
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  • Posted by Esceptico 10 years, 5 months ago
    Airlines add the “fuel” surcharge when prices go up. I love this idea of adding the Minimum Wage Surcharge. We should do it with everything so those unfamiliar with doing business get the picture. I can see it now, Water Surcharge, Electric Surcharge, and best of all, the Etcetera Surcharge.
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    • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 5 months ago
      I really go back and forth on this. While I applaud the intent - to inform customers of the true impact of such foolishness - it has been used in several industries merely to hide the true costs in what I consider a "bait and switch." For example, I travel a lot. I usually get a rental car. The quoted price is meaningless anymore, as the tacked on "taxes and fees" now comprises fully 1/3 of the total charge incurred. It has gotten so bad that there are fees for tire replacement, battery recycling and replacement, license plate fees, etc. These are costs of doing business, but by separating them out, they can claim to have an $X/day cost when it really is 1.33 X.
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  • Posted by JAL64 10 years, 5 months ago
    It never ceases to amaze:
    “We believe that the industry is overreacting,” Wade Luneburg of the MN State Council of UNITE HERE Unions told the Star Tribune this week. “Putting (minimum wage) fees on tickets and passing the cost on to consumers directly is strange at best, and creates an ‘us against them’ mentality while ordering dinner.”

    Why don't these boobs just call for FREE food and be done with it. They simply cannot come to grips with the TRUTH that businesses are not in business to provide employment and wages. Businesses are in business to STAY in business. Any increase in the COST of doing business has to be borne by someone, otherwise the business goes out of business or moves away.
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    • Posted by LetsShrug 10 years, 5 months ago
      It IS us against them... most people just don't know it. If they have to find out over dinner then so be it. Wake up calls are never easy no matter when the slap across the face happens.
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    • Posted by $ KahnQuest 10 years, 5 months ago
      That statement amused me as well. I think what he meant was, "The owner shouldn't be passing the cost on to customers, he should be taking a hit to his bottom line."
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      • Posted by JAL64 10 years, 5 months ago
        What he really meant is implied by the word "directly". He doesn't give a rats ass about passing the cost on to customers, he just doesn't want the customer to know why.
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  • Posted by Snoogoo 10 years, 5 months ago
    Good for him. Do the idiots protesting him ever stop to think that without that fee he would have had to let go at least one person? He saved someone from losing their job and that makes him evil, go figure.
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    • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 5 months ago
      He could conduct a social experiment in which he posts a photo of an employee with the caption, "This person will be eliminated due to increased wage costs unless you voluntarily donate to cover his wages." I bet he'd get little or no donations.
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      • Posted by Snoogoo 10 years, 5 months ago
        That is a great idea, he should stage a sad puppy and a crying baby next to them too. I think it's great liberals have so much sympathy for the central american illegal immigrant kids, but when people like this business owner show actual concern for other human beings they are *evil* and morally bankrupt. (sarcasm intended). As a Minnesota resident, I am going to drive all the way to Stillwater to eat there, at least I'll know he didn't skimp on the food quality due to the wage hike.
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  • Posted by evlwhtguy 10 years, 5 months ago
    "Putting (minimum wage) fees on tickets and passing the cost on to consumers directly is strange at best,..." Huh...???!!! Wade...where the he'll do you think an additional cost like this is going to come from dumbass? Good Lord, it is astonishing what passes for intelligence these days. However I think Wade here is nothing more than a commie and expects to give out other people's money without anyone being able to see where it comes from.
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  • Posted by RevJay4 10 years, 5 months ago
    I luv it when the libs are slapped with reality of their actions. My bet is that most of those who bitched about the fee being listed on their tab are lefties who thought it was a great idea to increase the minimum wage.
    This business owner has the right idea, show the folks why prices go up.
    The union guy? He's clueless, that's why he collects his paycheck from the clueless union members. He couldn't do anything else in life that didn't involve mooching from other folks. Typical union organizer, sorta like O.
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  • Posted by NoMoreObama 10 years, 5 months ago
    Hmmm. Charge a fee or fire workers. Seems fair to me. Actions have consequences and I don't see anything wrong informing customers of the reason behind the action.
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  • Posted by salta 10 years, 5 months ago
    This debate going viral will, I hope, bring more customers to the restaurant. Some others will boycott, but I think only a few. The only choice the boycott would create is to select another restaurant which is HIDING the increase in the menu.
    This one restaurant's action has made all the other restaurants' hidden increases visible. Kudos!
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  • Posted by wiggys 10 years, 5 months ago
    DAMN RIGHT YOU RAISE YOUR PRICES. if your costs go up the price of what ever product or service you offer gets more expensive. that is just the way it is. hell with the wage going up the taxes go up as well. as for the comment from the union guy; he's as much an idiot as 0.
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  • Posted by Temlakos 10 years, 5 months ago
    What would people think if they saw an itemized list of a private business' overhead? And how much of an end-user's price accounted for it? That's all this cafe owner wanted to show.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 10 years, 5 months ago
    I see no reason for anyone to complain about the fee. They can just go somewhere else. I'm glad they're getting free publicity, even though it's for something dumb.
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    • Posted by edweaver 10 years, 5 months ago
      I'm confused. Are you saying the minimum wage hike is dumb or the fee.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 10 years, 5 months ago
        Are you saying the minimum wage hike is dumb or the fee"
        People getting angry at a private business's fee is dumb.
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        • 12
          Posted by strugatsky 10 years, 5 months ago
          Actually, this is not really a private business' fee. It is a government tax. The government often gets upset when it's taxes, which are often intended to be hidden, are exposed. I have a business which the state taxes (additional to a multitude of other taxes) with what it calls a "meals fee." It is calculated as a percentage of sales. I call it an additional sales tax. The county people got very upset when I called it that since they didn't want the county residents to even be aware of it. It is supposed to be hidden and the higher product price (inevitably) can then be blamed on greedy capitalists.
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          • Posted by Solver 10 years, 5 months ago
            This is the method they use to blame the free-market after the enviable negative consequences of their additional taxes. And it works! Of course they want to hide it.
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 10 years, 5 months ago
            "Actually, this is not really a private business' fee. It is a government tax."
            I understand people reacting to the gov't tax. I don't understand why they're mad at this one business owner for itemizing it out.
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            • Posted by strugatsky 10 years, 5 months ago
              Here's a politically incorrect answer - they are mad because they are stupid. Million and millions of morons think, - no, that's a wrong word - believe, that government just gives them something for nothing, never realizing that the government only steals from some to give to others and the former compensate by raising prices. Bottom line - stupid.
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  • Posted by edwardkilmer 10 years, 5 months ago
    2 things: 1) Kudos to the cafe ownership for finding an inventive way to cover the cost offset. Cafe could have probably just raised the price of every item by .5 to .10 and no one would have noticed this. I like that they made it blatant. 2) The article stated it was a thirty-five-cent fee to meal tabs.....If you cant afford or are the enraged by a mere .35 about 1/3 of a dollar, then you probably shouldn't be eating out in the first place. This is not cause to flame the cafe and encourage people to boycott the establishment
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  • Posted by Snoogoo 10 years, 5 months ago
    I bet the idiots who are complaining are bad tippers, they are complaining about 35 cents? I bet the waitresses at that place do more work in a day than Mr. Council for UNITE HERE unions does in an entire year.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 10 years, 5 months ago
    Why complain? We are conditioned to see the separate charge for sales tax on our restaurant bill, but not any other additional tax, such as federal. I wonder if modern registers can be programmed to print, "Federal minimum wage surcharge?"
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  • Posted by richkinley 10 years, 5 months ago
    The owner should have titled it "Directive 10-289 Fee/Tax". 99+% of the yay-hoos would never get it.
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    • Posted by wiggys 10 years, 5 months ago
      you are right about that. however, he just should have raised his prices and that would have been that. he was probably concerned that customers would stay away. if that happened so be it. or maybe he preferred the notoriety.
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      • Posted by $ winterwind 10 years, 5 months ago
        oh, please, wiggys.
        He did EXACTLY as he should have done. The people who vote for such "invisible" increases in costs should see in right in front of them on a plate.
        We are here because there has been too much silence, too much going along, too much "it's only a small amount". It all counts, it's all wrong, and if we go along with it quietly we will deserve what we get.

        "The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." - John Galt
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        • Posted by wiggys 10 years, 5 months ago
          winterwind,
          no matter how you do it the cost of product in the establishment is up. therefore the easiest way to deal with it is to increase the cost of the product. when I told my secretary of this situation her immediate response since it has made the national news, not on galt's gultch was the same as mine. I am sure the greater majority of companies who have to deal with this situation did just that raise their prices without fan fare.
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          • Posted by $ winterwind 10 years, 5 months ago
            wiggys-You are correct - the cost of the product went up. Where you begin to lose the point, though, is in looking for "the easiest way to deal with it". Looking for the easiest way to go along with things that are wrong IS wrong - silence implies consent! and the same for every company that went along, trying not to make a fuss. Just because one might be the only voice protesting a destructive injustice does not make it wrong to protest.
            If the restaurant owner had held a press conference and publicized his action, I might have said tsk, tsk, tacky. But he didn't do the publicizing - he's just trying to run his business the best way he knows how, and passing on a mandated cost in a way that the diners knew why their meals cost more was informative.

            You certainly don't have to answer this question here and now, but at what point, when someone has the power to destroy your livelihood [and put a number of people out of work] would YOU speak up against it? Where is your tipping point?
            We are, in today's America, choosing up sides: looters, collaborators, destroyers, creators,vultures, rabble-rousers, those who feels that's something's wrong, rebels. Hey, guys, speak up if I missed somebody. Which side will you choose, and will you be able to face yourself in the mirror every day after you choose it?
            That's really the same question as Who is your Hero? and why?

            a minor point: Sorry, I don't understand the exchange with your secretary. Her response was the same as yours because the story had made the national news? I'm missing something there.

            Who IS your hero?
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