California Issues ...
- Thread starter GURPS
- Start date
Clem72
Well-Known Member
This guy isn't as tech savvy as he attempts to portray. Google workforce is not in SF because of undersea backbone cables. That would be a reason to have a data-center nearby (which they do), not office space. Saving 2-3ms of latency on your corporate VPN isn't a reason to place your workforce in a HCOL area. They are in that area because it was historically friendly for tech corporations, because it matches their politics, because there is a local tech savvy workforce.
You don't start or move a big tech company to the sticks because you will need to build all of those things necessary for success from scratch.
California Legalized Drugs. Cartels Took It Over.
While the legal drug business is also collapsing in California, the state is spending a fortune fighting marijuana even as it tries to tax it. Gov. Gavin Newsom paradoxically promised to close the budget deficit with $100 million in drug revenue, meant to be used to fund law enforcement and fight substance abuse. The state seized over $300 million in illegal pot this year and uses satellite imagery and heavily-armed raids to fight untaxed marijuana.
But despite all those efforts, illegal marijuana has won and legal marijuana has lost.
The Los Angeles Times warned two years ago:
Some of the growers are private citizens, but they aren't likely to remain in business for long.
Cartels and gang members dominate the business. And open borders allowed them to bring massive numbers of laborers to boost their ranks. Not only California, but places as far afield as Maine that have large open areas and limited law enforcement resources, have been overrun by drug operations that more closely resemble parts of Latin America and Asia than the USA.
The coasts, from Southern California up to Oregon, are controlled by Mexican cartels which have expanded so much that they're running short of workers even during the Biden open borders boom. Some have taken to brazenly advertising for illegal workers in Europe.
A local California DA described "Mexican cartel groups coming up to grow pot, and people from Bulgaria, France and Russia." The vast exodus across the border has made it possible for cartels to freely bring in any workers they want, even as drug legalization and open borders effectively ended any real penalties for either illegal migration or marijuana.
Asian organized crime may be less on the radar, but it is no less ruthless or violent.
A few years ago, four Chinese people were murdered at an Oklahoma illegal pot farm. Chinese organized crime had "taken over marijuana in Oklahoma and the United States," the head of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs revealed.
Once again, "the mafias set their sights on Oklahoma when the state's voters approved a ballot measure that legalized the cultivation and sale of marijuana for medicinal purposes." Now the Triads run their own compounds "ringed by fences, surveillance cameras and guards with guns and machetes" with 3,000 illegal grows having a value estimated at as high as $44 billion a year.
The Triads are not just in the illegal marijuana business, they traffic in everything from heroin to fentanyl. Legalizing marijuana, however, provided them with a profitable and semi-legal market that gives them a base to expand their efforts trafficking in even more lethal drugs.
Clem72
Well-Known Member
If you read the letter from the owner they say the staff were all offered jobs at their other nearby McDonald's location. So it must be more than JUST the $20 minimum wage, otherwise wouldn't the owner be closing all of their stores in the area?
Does the letter specify the other locations are owned by the same company ?
Clem72
Well-Known Member
So you didn't read the letter, and you didn't read my post? Because my post says "THE OWNER SAYS THEY CAN WORK IN HIS OTHER NEARBY LOCATION". I didn't say "McDonald's says they can work in another location".
Clem72
Well-Known Member
As the letter/owner doesn't state the reason(s) for closing the store, we don't actually know what they are. We can assume that it's likely due to either profitability or liability. Either the location doesn't make money, can't staff appropriately, or they represent a liability (I.E. maybe too much crime making employees at risk).
The article assumes it's a profitability issue do specifically to the minimum wage increase to $20. If that were the major contributing factor then it would seem likely that the owner's other nearby location would have the same issue. But rather than that, it looks like not only are they not closing the nearby location but they have the ability to absorb an entire restaurants worth of personnel at that location (which sounds like they were understaffed).
So if I were a betting man, I would bet that even at $20 this owner/company is unable to keep enough staff to keep operations running smoothly at all of their locations and that the owner chose to close their least profitable store (least profitable doesn't mean unprofitable)