David Bonior gets a lesson in reality

[whell]

David Bonior used to be a huge local dyed-in-the-wool lefty congressman, labor advocate, and a "raise the minimum wage" guy. Now that he has actually gone out an worked for a living, he's gotten a taste of how tough if really is to make a buck running a business.

“The biggest surprise is how you have to hustle,” he said. “It was an eye-opener. I always heard this when I was in Congress. ‘You should try and own a business someday, Bonior.’ So I own two small businesses with my stepson and daughter-in-law. It’s tough to make it, in terms of profit margins. But somehow you get by and you figure it out.”

Now that he's in business for himself, his employees not only earn the minimum wage, but most don't get health care from their employer and they don't currently have a retirement plan.

Zest is profitable. Agua 301, which is modern Mexican cuisine, doesn’t lose money, he said.

To make the numbers work, he pays his 50 or so employees — who are not union members — what he calls “the tip wage,” which is $2.36 an hour. He said that when he was in Congress, he worked hard to increase the “tip wage,” but it was a casualty from the successful effort to increase the minimum wage.

His employees get paid vacations of at least two weeks a year. Most employees who were on the restaurants’ health plans have signed up for coverage via the Affordable Care Act. Bonior’s restaurants do not have retirement plans, although he says he plans to institute them in the future.

Your mileage may vary, but based on what I've seen, the exchange plans do not compare favorably to the value provided by an employer group health plan even when the employer pays not more than 1/2 the employee-only premium.

I'm glad that reality as - at least in part - reformed at least on liberal. Now if we could just find a way to spread it around....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...2ea_story.html