About minimum wage

[abaris]

I don't even know what we're talking about until I can see the industry, specifically.  

I can give you a very personal example. Also the reason why I mentioned small corner shops and the secret lying in units being sold. My father used to run a small chain of car supply shops. Starting in 1945 and closing down in 1989. Back in the day when people needed car supplies, such as sporty steering wheels, additional headlights, radios, stuff like that. For about three decades he was very successful. But the margins on these articles lay about 3 to 5 percent. So, not a lot of money to be made by selling one or two pieces. In that kind of climate it wasn't any problem to keep up while having the same employees for decades.

Then a few things happened. The oil crisis of '73 and the big chains opening up in the mid 70ies. They undercut the prices for the same articles my father sold. They were able to do that because they ordered several thousand pieces when my father only ordered a dozen and were given better prices by the importers. My father kept going for another decade because he had a lot of regulars. Among them many Eastern European embassys. But he had to lay off his employees since he was no longer able to afford their wages without ruining us in the process.