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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the warning-earworm-ahead dept.

You probably remember Subway's famous "five-dollar footlong" promotion as much for the obnoxiously catchy jingle as for the sandwiches themselves. (Sorry for getting that stuck in your head all day.)

The sandwich chain recently resurrected the promotion in a national advertising campaign promising foot-long subs for just $4.99—but the special deal won't fly at one Subway restaurant in Seattle, where owner David Jones posted a sign this week giving customers the bad news.

Sadly, the consequences of high minimum wages, excessive taxation, and mandate-happy public policy are not limited to the death of cheap sandwiches. The cost of doing business in Seattle is higher than the Space Needle, and the unintended consequences of those policies are piling up too.

The biggest cost driver, as Jones' sign mentions, is Seattle's highest-in-the-nation minimum wage. It went from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015, then to $13 per hour in 2016, with a further increase to $15 per hour planned.

The result? According to researchers at the University of Washington's School of Public Policy and Governance, the number of hours worked in low-wage jobs has declined by around 9 percent since the start of 2016 "while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent." The net outcome: In 2016, the "higher" minimum wage actually lowered low-wage workers' earnings by an average of $125 a month.

And now those same employees will have to pay more for sandwiches from Subway—and everything else too.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:48PM (#621847)

    let's pay americans.. american wages! instead of trying to act like these people are outsourced to india and china with wages to match, we can pay them like they lived in america!

    christ if people have a problem with american prices, then that subway owner can go fucking move to china and make the subs at a low manufacturing cost and sell it to people that live there. he's just angry that he sees all those rich people send manufacturing to another country while living in fancy houses on the west coast, and he fucking can't because he is paying people that live here to make sandwiches that have to be sold in america in order to maintain his own lifestyle.

    boo fucking hoo

    even by me it is industrious Indian families that mostly own the subways and they seem to hire their own family members. very rarely there's a disaffected college student behind the counter who acts like they cant stand the place. and that kid isn't in college so he can do that job; hes in college so he doesnt have to keep that job.

    i cant even provide a violin for a shopkeeper who is upset that the cost of living has increased to the extent that he has to pay his employees what it is to maintain a living. if he wanted all college students then he should just get stippers and demand they only get paid in tips. i am sure there is a footlong promotion waiting for that restaurant theme.

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