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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:16PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:16PM (#621877)

    A friend of mine recently tried out a temp agency and worked at a food plant for a few days. Apparently they jeep defibrillators on the lines because workers have hear attacks often enough! Now that is fucked up, driving "efficiency" to the point of causing hear attacks.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:00AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:00AM (#622063)

    My office job has one of those next to the bathroom. By your standards of associations my job expects your heart to take a shit while you are.