Dori: Progressive politics hurt Seattle restaurants — and their workers

There was an incredibly compelling op-ed in the Wall Street Journal recently about how the minimum wage is killing Seattle restaurants.

Seattle restaurateur Ethan Stowell recently announced that he is closing several of his restaurants. Tom Douglas has had to do the same with some of his restaurants.

The person who wrote this op-ed, Simone Barron, is an insider. He works for one of Tom Douglas’ restaurants, sits on the Board of Directors of the Restaurant Workers of America, and founded the Full Service Workers Alliance of Seattle. He noted that on Jan. 1, in just a couple of weeks, Seattle’s minimum wage will go up to $16.39 per hour. However, this is not going to help him out.

Instead of receiving a bigger paycheck, I’m left without any pay at all due to the policy change. That’s because the restaurant where I’ve worked for six years is closing as a consequence of the city’s harmful minimum-wage experiment.

Now, Barron said, without the loss of his livelihood, he will have trouble feeding his family. He wanted to go back to Sitka and Spruce, the Matt Dillon restaurant in Capitol Hill where he had once worked, but that restaurant is closing after New Year’s Eve.

Dori: New council regulations will send Seattle restaurants packing

Barron said that he is “struggling because of a policy meant to help him,” and noted that while he is a Progressive, he thinks “Progressives should reconsider minimum-wage laws that hurt the very workers they’re trying to protect.”

The only thing that is disappointing in this op-ed is that this guy says he is still a Progressive. You see, Progressives hurt a free-market economy and workers a million times more than they help them.

Seattle is going to be a financial bloodbath when we get hit with the inevitable economic downturn that is coming, and it is all because of all the burdens and regulations placed on employers. Who knows how long we can keep this economic bubble floating?

The University of Washington study a couple of years ago proved that the rising minimum wage lowered take-home pay. Do you realize that progressive politics are why we have such a drug and crime problem? The most progressive cities in America — Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles — are the ones that have the biggest problems with drugs, crime, and people living on the streets. These cities are different geographically, they are different in climate — what do they have in common? The one common thread between these cities is politics.

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