Restaurant die-off is first course of California’s $15 minimum wage

[danielpalos]

He would not/could not have raised wages that far if he did not:

1. Have the revenue stream and cash reserves to do so.
2. Have a product he knew had enormous demand. Bill Gates was in a similar situation with the personal computer boom. The truth is, only a few business owners are in the exact right place at the exact right time to capitalize on something like that.

To intimate, as you continually do, that all businesses today could double labor costs overnight with no negative repercussions is disingenuous at the least, outright lying at the worst. Either way, stop it.

Yes, he did; he found an, efficiency to exploit and it merited an efficiency wage. The right wing is simply, clueless and Causeless if they don't believe in capital opportunities at every turn. Why blame the poor, in that case, right wingers.

Since you've been made aware of what you are doing, you cannot avoid lying if you do not stop.

You have no "gospel Truth" at your command; that is why you need a valid argument; clueless and Causeless wonder.

Nonsense.

he's good at that. once he goes into his "Clueless and Causeless" blather it's just an indication that he's run out of wind.

Yes, he did; he found an, efficiency to exploit and it merited an efficiency wage. The right wing is simply, clueless and Causeless if they don't believe in capital opportunities at every turn. Why blame the poor, in that case, right wingers.

 

[danielpalos]

Mar 15, 2016 ... Around 60 percent of new restaurants fail within the first year. And nearly 80 percent shutter before their fifth anniversary. Often, the No. 1 reason is simply location — and the general lack of self-awareness that you have no business actually being in that location.

Correct about new restaurants failing, but everyone who actually read the article knows that isn't the case here.

Are you trying to say the Fresno (or Modesto) Bee is a RW blog?

Joining San Francisco’s restaurant die-off was rising star AQ, which in 2012 was named a James Beard Award finalist for the best new restaurant in America. The restaurant’s profit margins went from a reported 8.5 percent in 2012 to 1.5 percent by 2015. Most restaurants are thought to require margins of 3 and 5 percent.

If what’s happening with one early adopter of the $15 wage progression is any indication, locally famous inland hash houses and burger joints from Calexico to the Cow Counties will disappear as mandated wages climb to $15 statewide. And that will only be the start of things.

The Art of Cookery is not fungible with the Art of making Profit.

As the article proved, there's truth in your statement. A well rated restaurant eeked out a 8.5% profit before the mandated minimum wage rules then closed its doors due to a 1.5% margin whereas a minimum of 3-5% is required to keep restaurants open.

Good Capitalists like Henry Ford, doubled autoworker wages not minimum wages.

Which is why private industry should control it, not government. OTOH, I would support stopping "corporate welfare" or, at least, restricting it to companies who pay wages based on the local economy. Obviously someone in New York or San Francisco needs to make more money to survive than someone in Crestview, FL or Abilene, TX.

Only lousy capitalists complain about wages instead of achieving gains from efficiency.

 

[danielpalos]

Let me just add another example. When I order Papa Johns, I have to pay $10.99 for a cheese pizza, pay the owner's sales tax for him, pay a $3.69 delivery fee, and then tip the driver on top of it (paying the employee's wage for the owner).

$10.99 (pizza) + 0.91 (tax) + $3.69 (delivery fee) + $5.00 (tip) = $20.59 for one fucking pizza. But damn, that pizza shop owner must be poor!!

Solution: Stop ordering fucking pizza. Frozen pizza = $6. Bake it yourself in 30 minutes.

I like my pizza like I like my women; HotnReady.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

Generally, restaurants go out of business because their food and/or service sucks.

Guess why their food and service sucks? They can't afford to have enough workers to make that happen!

 

[Wyatt earp]

Let me just add another example. When I order Papa Johns, I have to pay $10.99 for a cheese pizza, pay the owner's sales tax for him, pay a $3.69 delivery fee, and then tip the driver on top of it (paying the employee's wage for the owner).

$10.99 (pizza) + 0.91 (tax) + $3.69 (delivery fee) + $5.00 (tip) = $20.59 for one fucking pizza. But damn, that pizza shop owner must be poor!!

Solution: Stop ordering fucking pizza. Frozen pizza = $6. Bake it yourself in 30 minutes.

I like my pizza like I like my women; HotnReady.

Your a lesbian?


.

 

[danielpalos]

The right wing prefers to "blame the poor". Those Firms would have probably failed anyway.

No one is blaming the poor, we just can't seem to get it across to those not in business that artificially increasing the costs on a business has consequences. Not every job can support a family of 4. And raising labor costs by 43% in 2 years is not a small burden.

Why should we care; social services cost around fourteen dollars an hour anyway.

Again, do the math. Social services are based on taxes. If there are no businesses to tax, where do you expect the money to come from?

Don't believe in being legal to the laws of demand and supply, right winger.

Why don't you believe in the laws of supply and demand? I'm not going to roll in the mud with you. If you want to call names because you don't have an intelligent reply, that's on you. The fact remains it is in the best interests of any community that business thrives and provides jobs. It's also important that those jobs allow workers to not only sustain themselves, but advance. Hint: Flipping burgers at McDonald's is not a career job. It's an entry level job or a second job. Same goes for being a waiter/waitress.

so what; social services cost around fourteen dollars an hour, anyway. You have no rebuttal.

 

[danielpalos]

I so doubt that this is due to the wage increase, shame on them for paying min wage in the state to begin with. The cost of living is high in San Diego, and that is all they make. There comes a time when the worker just needs to say hell with it when the business owners want to get rich off their backs. I bet they do not even cost share health insurance. Self serve, well we all know waitresses do not make min wage.

You've obviously never been associated with a restaurant. It's a brutal business with very low margins and extreme swings in business climate. Plus there are very few businesses that I know of that could handle a 43% increase in labor costs over 2 years. I know it would put my business down, of course if I saw it coming I wouldn't wait, I'd get out immediately.

Henry Ford doubled autoworker wages not minimum wages.

Because he could afford to do so and because he was producing a product with extremely high demand.

I've told you all this before, but it seems that you didn't learn it very well, did you?

Higher wages still allowed Henry Ford to achieve gains from efficiency; an efficiency wage; what a concept.

He had so much competition?

He doubled autoworker wages, not minimum wage; that is how much competition, he had.

 

[danielpalos]

Let me just add another example. When I order Papa Johns, I have to pay $10.99 for a cheese pizza, pay the owner's sales tax for him, pay a $3.69 delivery fee, and then tip the driver on top of it (paying the employee's wage for the owner).

$10.99 (pizza) + 0.91 (tax) + $3.69 (delivery fee) + $5.00 (tip) = $20.59 for one fucking pizza. But damn, that pizza shop owner must be poor!!

Solution: Stop ordering fucking pizza. Frozen pizza = $6. Bake it yourself in 30 minutes.

I like my pizza like I like my women; HotnReady.

Your a lesbian?


.

You wish; I have a happy camper policy.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

Let me just add another example. When I order Papa Johns, I have to pay $10.99 for a cheese pizza, pay the owner's sales tax for him, pay a $3.69 delivery fee, and then tip the driver on top of it (paying the employee's wage for the owner).

$10.99 (pizza) + 0.91 (tax) + $3.69 (delivery fee) + $5.00 (tip) = $20.59 for one fucking pizza. But damn, that pizza shop owner must be poor!!

Why is there a $3.69 delivery fee? We don't pay that here.

I paid $65.00 minus the tip in a suburb of Tacoma, WA last week for three pizzas while visiting my son.

That's the most expensive pizza I ever ate!

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

Maybe they should not pass the wage increase on to the consumer. Sooner or later these business owners need to take the hit.

There it is folks, exactly how the left views business owners. They have this bizarre idea that all business owners just need to write bigger checks, and their own personal wealth will cover things.

Fucking amazing.

They will when people stop going to their restaurant because the prices are too expensive. Capitalism isn't a left sided mindset.

Proving how stupid you really are?



.

How do you get "top poster of the month" with the stupid shit you post?

Raise the prices enough and people will stop going and will start eating at home.

How will the employees buy their food to eat at home if they are unemployed?

Food stamps!

 

[Wry Catcher]

Restaurant die-off is first course of California’s $15 minimum wage

In a pair of affluent coastal California counties, the canary in the mineshaft has gotten splayed, spatchcocked and plated over a bed of unintended consequences, garnished with sprigs of locally sourced economic distortion and non-GMO, “What the heck were they thinking?”

The result of one early experiment in a citywide $15 minimum wage is an ominous sign for the state’s poorer inland counties as the statewide wage floor creeps toward the mark.

Consider San Francisco, an early adopter of the $15 wage. It’s now experiencing a restaurant die-off, minting jobless hash-slingers, cashiers, busboys, scullery engineers and line cooks as they get pink-slipped in increasing numbers. And the wage there hasn’t yet hit $15.

As the East Bay Times reported in January, at least 60 restaurants around the Bay Area had closed since September alone.

A recent study by Michael Luca at Harvard Business School and Dara Lee Luca at Mathematica Policy Research found that every $1 hike in the minimum wage brings a 14 percent increase in the likelihood of a 3.5-star restaurant on Yelp! closing.

Another telltale is San Diego, where voters approved increasing the city’s minimum wage to $11.50 per hour from $10.50, this after the minimum wage was increased from $8 an hour in 2015 – meaning hourly costs have risen 43 percent in two years.

The cost increases have pushed San Diego restaurants to the brink, Stephen Zolezzi, president of the Food and Beverage Association of San Diego County, told the San Diego Business Journal. Watch for the next mass die-off there...

Luckily, I live in the central coast area between L.A. and San Francisco, so this area hasn't gone as extreme left as those parts of California.

RUN........

Run to a GOP state, like Texas or WI really any in the eastern south if you want to eat out, I bet their food is the same price.

Owning one in GOP Ohio, I think qualifies me to weigh in on the subject. No, the prices are not as high, and the plates are fuller. And the gas it takes to get here, is less expensive. Sorry.
There is a reason why there is a mass exodus from California. They can't get anything right. Oh, and your gas is going to be taxed some more, again... because your cows fart.

I haven't notice a mass exodus from CA. Every month our home appreciates, and homes marketed at over 7 figures in my zip code are routinely sold for more than the asking price.

Every day we get notices in the mall from realtors asking us to list our home, the market here is hot and our equity continues to grow.

 

[Divine Wind]

Correct about new restaurants failing, but everyone who actually read the article knows that isn't the case here.

Are you trying to say the Fresno (or Modesto) Bee is a RW blog?

Joining San Francisco’s restaurant die-off was rising star AQ, which in 2012 was named a James Beard Award finalist for the best new restaurant in America. The restaurant’s profit margins went from a reported 8.5 percent in 2012 to 1.5 percent by 2015. Most restaurants are thought to require margins of 3 and 5 percent.

If what’s happening with one early adopter of the $15 wage progression is any indication, locally famous inland hash houses and burger joints from Calexico to the Cow Counties will disappear as mandated wages climb to $15 statewide. And that will only be the start of things.

The Art of Cookery is not fungible with the Art of making Profit.

As the article proved, there's truth in your statement. A well rated restaurant eeked out a 8.5% profit before the mandated minimum wage rules then closed its doors due to a 1.5% margin whereas a minimum of 3-5% is required to keep restaurants open.

Good Capitalists like Henry Ford, doubled autoworker wages not minimum wages.

Which is why private industry should control it, not government. OTOH, I would support stopping "corporate welfare" or, at least, restricting it to companies who pay wages based on the local economy. Obviously someone in New York or San Francisco needs to make more money to survive than someone in Crestview, FL or Abilene, TX.

Only lousy capitalists complain about wages instead of achieving gains from efficiency.

Efficiency for a business is maximizing profit. This can be done through either increased production, cutting costs or a combination of both. Unfortunately, since the early 1970s, corporations offer the illusion of cutting costs by cutting employees and making the remaining employees work harder for the same pay. This hurts moral and the company can enter a death spiral resulting in bankruptcy. Bankruptcy laws allow restructuring and there's been a trend to make people work harder for less money while major investors and senior management see their pay increase. Mandating minimum wage doesn't fix this and anyone who thinks it does is fooling themselves. Sometimes it's more profitable for a company to simply cash in by dissolving itself completely or moving to another state. I think we'll start to see that in California. Again, governments run on taxes, but if there is no one to tax, where will they get their money?

 

[Wyatt earp]

Let me just add another example. When I order Papa Johns, I have to pay $10.99 for a cheese pizza, pay the owner's sales tax for him, pay a $3.69 delivery fee, and then tip the driver on top of it (paying the employee's wage for the owner).

$10.99 (pizza) + 0.91 (tax) + $3.69 (delivery fee) + $5.00 (tip) = $20.59 for one fucking pizza. But damn, that pizza shop owner must be poor!!

Why is there a $3.69 delivery fee? We don't pay that here.

I paid $65.00 minus the tip in a suburb of Tacoma, WA last week.

That's the most expensive pizza I ever ate!

For one pizza?



.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

The restaurant industry will become so expensive that the low end will be completely automated. Everything will be by machine.

There will still be restaurants with human chefs and servers. These will be highly trained professionals who have gone to school to develop food service careers. They will be highly paid and these restaurants will have prices to match.

The "top poster of the month" doesn't understand that the restaurant industry will become way too expensive; thus, people will stop eating out because it'll break their budget. It already costs a pair of people $30 to go out to eat at a restaurant on a weekend night. For a person making $15 an hour, that's an okay price, but add another $10 and it comes to the point where I can just buy groceries instead.

You should have studied harder and gotten a job making more money!

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

The excessive cost of eating out and eating badly at that has largely disappeared behind the brand new wall of boxed fine dining. Exact ingredients, step by step instructions and it's a restaurant meal at home. It seems like only a few months ago only Plated and Blue Apron were serving up meals by mail. Now there are dozens.

I just read an article the other day about how that fad is dying. Those companies' profits are falling and many will go out of business soon.

 

[Divine Wind]

I haven't notice a mass exodus from CA. Every month our home appreciates, and homes marketed at over 7 figures in my zip code are routinely sold for more than the asking price.

Every day we get notices in the mall from realators asking us to list our home, the market here is hot and our equity continues to grow.

You must be young because I remember at least two in the past 40 years. The last one was after the Cold War ended. Both Colorado and Texas have benefited from businesses and employers fleeing the PRC.

Californians Moving to Texas Hits Highest Level in Nine Years



BY: Ali Meyer
March 31, 2016 3:15 pm

The number of Californians leaving the state and moving to Texas is at its highest level in nearly a decade, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service.

According to IRS migration data, which uses individual income tax returns to record year-to-year address changes, over 250,000 California residents moved out of the state between 2013 and 2014, the latest period for which data was available. The tax returns reported more than $21 billion in adjusted gross income to the IRS.

Of the returns, 33,626 reported address changes from California to Texas, which has been the top destination for individuals leaving California since 2007. Californians who moved to Texas between 2013 and 2014 reported $2.19 billion in adjusted gross income.

The number of returns showing address changes from California to Texas hasn’t been this high since the period 2006-07. During that period, 34,078 returns were filed showing address changes to Texas.

Fewer Texans moved to California during the 2013-14 period. The IRS reported 21,391 returns with address changes from Texas to California. The returns reported $1.56 billion in adjusted gross income.

"California’s taxes and regulations are crushing businesses, and there are more opportunities in Texas for people to start new companies, get good jobs, and create better lives for their families," said Nathan Nascimento, the director of state initiatives at Freedom Partners. "When tax and regulatory climates are bad, people will move to better economic environments—this phenomenon isn’t a mystery, it’s how marketplaces work. Not only should other state governments take note of this, but so should the federal government."

According to Tom Gray of the Manhattan Institute, people may be leaving California for the employment opportunities, tax breaks, or less crowded living arrangements that other states offer.

"States with low unemployment rates, such as Texas, are drawing people from California, whose rate is above the national average," Gray wrote. "Taxation also appears to be a factor, especially as it contributes to the business climate and, in turn, jobs."

"Most of the destination states favored by Californians have lower taxes," Gray wrote. "States that have gained the most at California’s expense are rated as having better business climates. The data suggest that may cost drivers—taxes, regulations, the high price of housing and commercial real estate, costly electricity, union power, and high labor costs—are prompting businesses to locate outside California, thus helping to drive the exodus."

California’s skyrocketing housing costs, taxes prompt exodus of residents – The Mercury News
Living in San Jose, Kathleen Eaton seemingly had it all: a well-paying job, a home in a gated community, even the Bay Area’s temperate weather.

But enduring a daily grind that made her feel like a “gerbil on a wheel,” Eaton reached her limit.

Skyrocketing costs for housing, food and gasoline, along with the area’s insufferable gridlock, prompted the four-decade Bay Area resident to seek greener pastures — 2,000 miles away in Ohio.

“It was a struggle in California,” Eaton said. “It was a very difficult place to live. … It’s a vicious circle.”

Eaton is far from alone.

A growing number of Bay Area residents — besieged by home prices, worsening traffic, high taxes and a generally more expensive cost of living — believe life would be better just about anywhere else but here.

During the 12 months ending June 30, the number of people leaving California for another state exceeded by 61,100 the number who moved here from elsewhere in the U.S., according to state Finance Department statistics. The so-called “net outward migration” was the largest since 2011, when 63,300 more people fled California than entered.

“The main factors are housing costs in many parts of the state, including coastal regions of California such as the Bay Area,” said Dan Hamilton, director of economics with the Economic Forecasting Center at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

“California has seen negative outward migration to other states for 22 of the last 25 years.”

A recent poll revealed that an unsettling sense of yearning has descended on people in the Bay Area: About one-third of those surveyed by the Bay Area Council say they would like to exit the nine-county region sometime soon.

“They are tired of the expense of living here. They are tired of the state of California and the endless taxes here,” said Scott McElfresh, a certified moving consultant. “People are getting soaked every time they turn around.”

The area’s sizzling job market and robust economy have created a domino effect: income spikes for highly trained workers, more people packing the area’s roads, red-hot demand for housing.

What’s more, the technology boom has unleashed a hiring spree that has intensified the desire for homes anywhere near the job hubs of Santa Clara County, the East Bay and San Francisco. The South Bay job market has hit an all-time high after a 5,800-position surge in May, fueling an overall gain of 3,400 jobs for the Bay Area, according to a state labor report released Friday.

The region’s soaring housing prices are a key factor driving dissatisfied residents toward the exit door. Several people who have departed, or soon will leave, say they potentially could have hundreds of thousands of dollars left over even after buying a house in their new locations.

“They’re taking advantage of the housing bubble right now,” McElfresh said. “The majority of the people we are seeing are moving to states that don’t have state income taxes.”

Thomas Norman, of San Francisco, said he and his wife, Patricia, are seriously considering leaving the Bay Area. They have actively scouted for houses in the Rocky Mountains region, including a trip to Colorado to look for prospective homes.

“The inconvenience of the Bay Area is a major factor,” said Thomas Norman, a lifelong Bay Area resident burdened by a two-hour round-trip commute to an East Bay optometry practice. “The traffic is very bad. It is becoming more congested with all the housing that is being added here.”

Eaton, who left the South Bay to relocate near Dayton, Ohio, cited the high cost of living as a major factor driving her decision. The struggle to make ends meet became too much.

“You can’t get ahead,” Eaton said. “It’s more than the cost of living; it’s the high taxes.”

Eaton and her sister had a $724,000 house in The Villages in South San Jose that they sold before moving to Ohio. Their mortgage payments were $2,200 a month, plus $1,000 for association fees in the gated community. They were able to pay $300,000 in cash for their new home in Ohio.

Priya Govindarajan, a San Francisco resident, is planning to leave the Bay Area at the end of June and head with her husband, Ajay Patel, to North Carolina.

Govindarajan, who works in the consumer packaged goods industry, and her husband, who is in the medical profession, determined that their wages aren’t going far enough to cover their living expenses.

Living in UC San Francisco housing, the couple pays $2,100 a month in rent. And they have to cough up $1,900 a month for child care.

“My husband’s salary would be in the six figures, but six figures is not enough to cover the rent, day care (and) food prices,” Govindarajan said. “It all starts to add up.”

Govindarajan said she figures they can put down 20 percent on a nice house in North Carolina and have a monthly payment of $1,800 — which would include the mortgage, property taxes and insurance.

“I get why people want to live in the Bay Area, I really do,” Govindarajan said. “But it is so difficult to live here, especially for people coming here for the first time.”

Some experts believe the boom in the Bay Area has exacerbated the problem of income inequality and the resentment that can accompany that economic reality.

“There is a declining middle class in the Bay Area,” said Christopher Hoene, executive director of the California Budget & Policy Center, a research group that recently completed a study about income inequality in Silicon Valley. “Widening income inequality can create polarization socially and economically.”

In 1989, the middle class accounted for 56 percent of all households in Silicon Valley, but by 2013, that share had slipped to 45.7 percent, the study found.

“The region’s middle class has shrunk, while the numbers of lower-income and higher-income households has grown,” the report stated. Silicon Valley, for the purposes of the study, consists of Santa Clara County, San Mateo County and San Francisco.

Lower-income residents accounted for 30.3 percent of Silicon Valley’s households in 1989, and that number grew to 34.8 percent in 2013. Upper-income residents had 13.7 percent of the share of households in 1989, and that figure swelled to 19.5 percent in 2013, the study found.

“A lot of middle-class jobs have vaporized,” said Russell Hancock, president of San Jose-based Joint Venture Silicon Valley. “The support positions, the assembly line positions, the jobs that paid the middle class — a lot of those have gone away.”

A big chunk of the jobs that are being created in the Bay Area are in the high-tech sector, which requires specialized skill sets to fill them. When jobs that would cater to the middle class wane, that can force people to relocate — in many cases, out of the Bay Area entirely.

“This summer, I have booked more business than in any of the other 27 years that I’ve been working,” said McElfresh, the moving consultant. “People are packing up and leaving.”

Eaton, while happy to have escaped the high cost of living and traffic, recently found herself longing for one Bay Area staple — its mild weather.

“There’s a huge thunderstorm overhead,” Eaton said while talking to a reporter. “Got to get used to that, I guess.”

 

[Syriusly]

Just pointing out that the article in the OP doesn't provide any evidence that raising the minimum wage is the reason why any restaurants are closing in the Bay Area.

In my own neighborhood the repeated reason why long time restaurants close is simple- their lease runs out and the owner wants to triple or quadruple the rent- and they can't afford the new rent.

Why can landlords do this?

Because there is huge demand for real estate.

Why is there huge demand for real estate?

Because people want to live here more than they want to live other places. And tech business's want to be located here- more than other places.

 

[Divine Wind]

The excessive cost of eating out and eating badly at that has largely disappeared behind the brand new wall of boxed fine dining. Exact ingredients, step by step instructions and it's a restaurant meal at home. It seems like only a few months ago only Plated and Blue Apron were serving up meals by mail. Now there are dozens.

I just read an article the other day about how that fad is dying. Those companies' profits are falling and many will go out of business soon.

I'd rather eat at home; cheaper, better ingredients and I know what's in my food.

 

[Syriusly]

I haven't notice a mass exodus from CA. Every month our home appreciates, and homes marketed at over 7 figures in my zip code are routinely sold for more than the asking price.

Every day we get notices in the mall from realators asking us to list our home, the market here is hot and our equity continues to grow.

You must be young because I remember at least two in the past 40 years. The last one was after the Cold War ended. Both Colorado and Texas have benefited from businesses and employers fleeing the PRC.

Californians Moving to Texas Hits Highest Level in Nine Years

There are Californians leaving California- and others coming here- more coming than leaving.

Which is why real estate prices are sky rocketing. Increased demand- higher prices.

Good for those of us who have lived here for a long time- hard on those whose housing isn't stable.

 

[Divine Wind]

No one is blaming the poor, we just can't seem to get it across to those not in business that artificially increasing the costs on a business has consequences. Not every job can support a family of 4. And raising labor costs by 43% in 2 years is not a small burden.

Why should we care; social services cost around fourteen dollars an hour anyway.

Again, do the math. Social services are based on taxes. If there are no businesses to tax, where do you expect the money to come from?

Don't believe in being legal to the laws of demand and supply, right winger.

Why don't you believe in the laws of supply and demand? I'm not going to roll in the mud with you. If you want to call names because you don't have an intelligent reply, that's on you. The fact remains it is in the best interests of any community that business thrives and provides jobs. It's also important that those jobs allow workers to not only sustain themselves, but advance. Hint: Flipping burgers at McDonald's is not a career job. It's an entry level job or a second job. Same goes for being a waiter/waitress.

so what; social services cost around fourteen dollars an hour, anyway. You have no rebuttal.

I'm not following your point....or more probably, you are following mine. Where do you think those social services "fourteen dollars an hour" come from? Magic beans? The Money Fairy? Or Tax payers. If there are no tax payers, then what do you do? Tax them anyway? LOL