On Monday the Vanguard reported on the closure of Common Grounds. In the Oakshade Town Center, Common Grounds had been such a popular hangout for the last 12 years that often it was difficult to find seating.
However, when they could not reach agreement with the Florida-based property management company, Regency Centers, it closed on last Sunday night at 6 pm.
The residents of Davis are not taking this lying down, however. While there is a limited amount the city of Davis can officially do, Sarah Perrault, a resident of Davis, posted a petition on the online social action website, Change.org.
“Regency Centers: Please allow Common Grounds Coffee to stay in its location,” reads the petition addressed specifically to the leasing agent at Regency Centers, Ranfie Ancelovici.
The petition has already been signed by 628 supporters. The goal is 1000.
“For 13 years Common Grounds Coffee has been in its current location in Oak Shade Shopping Center, serving drinks, providing a community space, and paying its rent on time,” the petition reads. “Yesterday the owners of Common Grounds Coffee, Michelle and Sun, were notified that their lease will end as of April 4, 2013. We, the undersigned, ask that their landlord, Regency Centers, allow Common Grounds Coffee to stay in its present location and continue serving the South Davis community.”
The online petition is not the only call to action. The closure also triggered a number of letters in the local paper.
One writer noted, “I am disappointed – disgusted, actually – that Regency Centers, a very large corporation, won’t offer a new lease to Son Chong and his wife, Michelle Kim, to keep their successful mom-and-pop store in the Oakshade Town Center.”
“The company’s take-no-prisoners attitude jeopardizes the livelihood of the proprietors of an independently owned small business,” the writer charges, “I hope Regency Centers will reconsider its decision and start negotiating at this eleventh hour on a new lease for Common Grounds. Not only will this be a sound business move, it will earn Regency Centers the goodwill of a large segment of the Davis population.”
“For many in our town, Common Grounds has been a destination coffee shop for more than a dozen years. The shop, under Chong and Kim, has attracted a very diverse group of loyal customers – neighborhood residents, business executives and UC Davis students, educators and administrators.”
Another writer said, “I read with considerable sadness and anger that a remote, faceless real estate company owned in the state of Florida is evicting Common Grounds Coffee House from Oakshade Town Center. Common Grounds, in my view, is the best coffee house in town and the owners are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met.
“If you are a patron of Common Grounds and feel similarly, please do as I already have done and write an email note to Regency Centers Inc. Let’s let them know we are a community, not faceless consumers.”
Finally, one called it a takeover by corporatocracy in Davis, writing, “I am dismayed to read of the sudden closing of Common Grounds Coffee House. The closing resulted from the property owner’s unwillingness to renew the lease. How sad for Davis that one more local business is being forced out as a result of corporate greed. Another example of corporatocracy taking over Davis.”
While the location of Common Grounds is likely to change, the owners have vowed to open a store at a new location.
Originally it was reported that the Starbucks would be opening a kiosk in the shopping center. However, city officials have told the Vanguard that those rumors now appear to be untrue.
The owners had been negotiating with the company, Regency Centers, which bought Oakshade back in 2011 from Paul Petrovich.
Co-owner Michelle Kim told the Enterprise this weekend that they only have seven days’ notice to leave.
“We’ve paid our rent on time for 12 years. We haven’t done anything wrong,” she told the local paper. “They only gave us seven days’ notice. We’ve paid over $1 million (cumulatively) in rent since we set up the store. Our store and Dos Coyotes (restaurant) are the ones that have survived in this part of the shopping center over the years.
“I had to give our employees two weeks’ notice, that’s 10 good kids who will be out of work.”
Is this now becoming a trend in Davis? A locally-owned commercial enterprise being forced out of their lease by an out-of-town landlord?
It was just a few months ago that the Wash Mill Laundromat was forced to vacate their East Davis Manor location, where they had resided for nearly 40 years.
The sign on the door read, “To all of my friends that have used my Laundromat for 40 years, I would like to thank you. The landlord has given me 30 days.”
Last week, the city made a move signaling the sincerity of its desire to help develop economically, with high tech and other research spin-offs in the community.
While some of that effort will necessarily focus on spin-offs, a number of officials have noted that the strategy must be systemic. There is hope that, by helping to develop local business opportunities, the community can develop the type of capital resources so that outside property management companies are no longer the norm.
The hope would be that local business would be sensitive, not just to the business climate and the bottom line, but to the overall needs of the community.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
I hope that Common Grounds will be able to relocate in South Davis (SODA) but doubt as the only other shopping center is El Macero and they have Mocha Joes, nice place but not as homey or set up for casual meeting space as Common Grounds…..
Davis already has three pet/feed stores, including the very nice new one (Western Feed & Pet, 407 G Street), and Target likely carries much of the same pet stuff. This doesn’t seem like the most prudent decision in a neighborhood surrounded by apartments — booting out a successful, long-term tenant, creating considerable ill-will, to replace it with a specialty store in a market that’s probably saturated.
By the way, there doesn’t appear to be any such person as Ranfie Ancelovicki, at least not according to Google.
I just went by the petition, I did not spend time verifying that information. Interesting.
Looks like it’s Ranfie Ancelovici — no ‘k’. [url]http://www.regencycenters.com/ranfieancelovici/#.UV8Ajr-5fFI[/url]
The store is empty as of yesterday evening. That ship has sailed. Best thing might be to boycott any new uses at the center, to send a message to corporate.
Thanks Don.
HPIERCE: I tend to believe you are correct, but they are planning to open in another location, so they would have to move into a new building.
It’s sad that this corporation won’t work with Common Grounds to allow them to stay in their “home.” I wish them all the best in re-locating.
The sad truth of the matter is, though, that even though people are all up in arms about this now, how many will fall into laziness and go to the new Starbuck’s location (if one ends up opening)?
I know many of my former co-workers would choose the Starbucks kiosk over Common Grounds (for some stupid reason) when they would take their morning coffee breaks.
If people living in Davis just flat out did -not- go to Starbucks, the locations would more than likely close down. There are enough independents in town that there is really no need to ever go to Starbucks. It certainly (IMHO) doesn’t have a higher-quality product than many of the local places.
I’m a huge espresso addict, and several years ago pretty much frequented the coffee kiosks on the UCD campus, or Common Grounds (occasionally Caffino). I have since switched to a high-end home espresso machine to cut out the expense, and only about three or four times a year do I now purchase espresso drinks–and it’s certainly not at Starbucks.
So, Starbucks’ presence in town is, in part, due to the residents’ own purchasing power. Walk the walk and don’t just talk the talk: If you want them out, don’t buy from them.
For some stupid reason I happen to love Starbucks.
There’s nothing wrong with that. I think the issues here are: (1) different people have different tastes in coffee; (2) Common Grounds provided a location that was conducive for community interaction; (3) a fairness issue.
David’s right. There is nothing wrong with it. And even though I won’t buy there 99.99% of the time, there are aspects of the company that I could get behind: they pay a living wage and benefits to their workers (including part-timers), and they appear to have some policies that are environmentally-friendly.
I, however, detest their expansion strategy, which is very aggressive and does put independents out of business. Their strategy is based on market saturation (“cluster bombing”) and cannibalizing their own sales just to keep those dollars from going to anyone else.
So, they will completely saturate an area, put independents out of business, and then start to close down their own locations. This strategy is very similar to what Wal-Mart does.
I read an article several years ago where one of Starbucks’ marketing VPs (or some higher-up) said something like: We are into aggressive expansion. If this means we open up a Starbucks down the street from a Starbucks that is across the street from another Starbucks, that’s what we’ll do. (This was in an article discussing how the chain did precisely this on one two-block section of downtown Seattle–to “save” people the “hassle” of having to cross the street).
And David totally hits on something important: people have different tastes in coffee. The aggressive expansion tactics of corporate chains leads to uniformity, homogenization, and lack of choice.
The line I believe from Demolition Man was: In the future, all coffee is Starbucks…
So who will be the final arbritator of what stores will be allowed or not allowed in our town? What if one is an avid pet owner and loves the idea of a new local pet store in South davis? Would their wants lose out to coffee drinkers who wanted to keep their coveted local coffee shop or would the pet lovers in the area have final say? Just a question, I honestly don’t care either way. But if you start dictating to propert owners what businesses have to be leased to I believe it’s a very slippery slope.
I’m not sure anyone is suggesting there be an arbiter for what stores are allowed. People are expressing concern that a store that they like is being force to move.
As a small business owner the overall trend of the government making it harder and harder (and more and more expensive) to start (and run) a business bums me out as I see more and more of them close and be replaced by corporate run business.
I was recently talking to some UCD kids that will be graduating in one more quarter about the bleak job prospects right now and I asked if anyone had thought about starting their own business (like Don and many others did after graduating years ago). All of them laughed like I was joking and after talking a little more is seems like starting a business is a concept that few UCD kids even talk about (compared to the more common “get your parents to pay for grad school and wait for the economy to improve”)…
With that said, it is important to let the owners of the center do what they think is best (just like K. Smith should let her co-workers drink the coffee they like best) even if we don’t like the decision. We should also remember that boycotting the new business at the center will hurt the new business (and/or new business employees) more than it will hurt the FL based shopping center owners…
[quote]So who will be the final arbritator of what stores will be allowed or not allowed in our town?[/quote]
I agree with David that I have not heard anyone advocate for a single arbiter of what stores should be allowed.
However, I think that both of these comments ignore the well demonstrated fact that there is a final arbiter, namely the corporate owner. It is also apparent that that arbiter does not give a damn about the local community. Providing extremely short notice such as was given is a clear signal that no public input whether from those desiring the coffee house to remain, or from those favoring a pet store was of any consequence to them at all. I am sure that there are some of our “free marketer” advocates who feel that this is how it should be and that all will sort itself out. This is certainly true, but at what cost ? Do we really want all of our mom and pop operations to be run out of business by chains, regardless of the quality and/or cost of their products, or
might not some diversity be beneficial to the community as well as to the small business owners ?
SOD
[quote]As a small business owner the overall trend of the government making it harder and harder (and more and more expensive) to start (and run) a business bums me out as I see more and more of them close and be replaced by corporate run business. [/quote]
I think that your comment was in part valid, but only identifies one culprit, namely the government.
Could it not also be that potential future small business owners are intimidated not only by government regulation, but also by the ability of large corporations to drive small businesses out of a market if that is their desire. I do not believe that the government is either forcing, or encouraging a business such as Starbucks to supersaturate the market. This is a decision of the private business not the government.
SOD:
I, of course, do not prevent my co-workers from buying whatever coffee they wish. I merely commented that IMHO it was dumb to go there, when CG was right across the parking lot. Who knows–the co-workers may prefer the taste of Starbucks.
I have never heard of the right to give less than 30 days notice for terminating a lease, what gives?
As for a new business there since the landlord apparently has the right to discontinue the lease, we know where the power lies, with the consumer. That is how it will all shake down.
If/since they were very successful in that area of town, I hope they find a comparable space for their customers, I however don’t drink coffee.
So many people do not care about predatory business practices like Starbucks’, at lease they treat their workers reasonably (from what I understand)
SOD hits it out of the park here. medwoman uses to common deflection point we see from folks that tend to support big regulatory government that big business is the problem.
Big business is not the problem in most cases.
I have a couple of related stories:
I have a (very) small second home in a small mountain community that had a bowling alley. The owner of the property (lives in San Diego) decided he didn’t like dealing with the problems running a bowling alley and shut it down to replace it with a Dollar General store. The impact to the town is pretty big since the bowling alley gave the local kids something to do and adults too.
I have made the rounds talking to a number of town leaders and residents about the prospects for reviving the bowling alley at another location.
The problem in a nutshell is the high cost of complying with all state and county regulations and codes, and the lack of suitable real estate.
Just the changes to the building fire codes alone make a new bowling alley financially impossible. But hey then, all those mountain people will be safer from fire because of benevolent government. (And get ready for the argument from those big government supporters that I am advocating building fires.)
The demands of Davis residents are in conflict just like they are for the residents of my mountain community. Davisites largely don’t support new development. They support government layering on copious taxes, fees and rules for how private property can be used and how it has to be developed. The end result is that more business types and venues become unviable. My guess is that Common Grounds was not a terrific money-maker and there are limits to finding a location that will work.
My second story is that I just put a job opening for a part-time, 20-hour per week office assistant at $10-12 per hour on the Aggie job board, and in three days I had 30 resumes from 30 over-qualified UCD students and graduates.
I wish I had the time and money to open a couple of business ideas I have in my pocket so that I could offer more jobs to these eager and smart young people. However, the amount of time and money I would need to start either business has been inflated beyond my means by the extreme layering of regulations and codes, the lack of available commercial real estate, and the mess of taxes and fees. This state sucks for starting and retaining business. Our city sucks even more.
Common grounds should have a number of alternative locations. I know of only one or two and I understand there is a bidding war for those locations.
So, you coffee drinkers lamenting the loss of Common Grounds… probably most of you have a part in it by demanding no growth and supporting big government politics.
So, a business owner makes a stupid decision, and it’s my fault?
Ok, I’ll bite: where would you propose that Davis grow that would allow Common Grounds to open and serve me? And in what way is ‘big government’ inhibiting Common Grounds if a pet store or Starbucks, or something else, will be opening in the same spot?
[i]”I have never heard of the right to give less than 30 days notice for terminating a lease, what gives?”
[/i]
The negotiations had been going on for quite a while. My impression from conversations with the owner is that the property owner hadn’t really been negotiating in good faith. Very erratic. But while the letter to vacate was a shocker, I don’t think it came as a complete surprise.
medwoman wrote:
> I think that your comment was in part valid, but only
> identifies one culprit, namely the government.
> Could it not also be that potential future small
> business owners are intimidated not only by government
> regulation, but also by the ability of large
> corporations to drive small businesses out of a
> market if that is their desire.
I’m not defending big corporations, and more often than not it is big corporate lobbyists that actually write the laws (that they give to elected officials with “bribe” aka “perfectly legal campaign contribution” money) that make it hard for small business to open and compete with them.
A small low overhead business will almost always be able to deliver a better product at a lower price than a big corporation, so big corporations work with government to increase the cost of doing business for the little guy making them pay fees, get multiple licenses and certificates and do a laundry list of other things not related to selling their product or service.
P.S. I believe medwoman has mentioned that she works for a large corporate healthcare provider. I’m sure she must know some MDs who run small independent practices like I do and if she contacts them I’m sure that they will tell her the same thing that that my MD friends tell me that “government” makes it harder to do business than “corporate competition”…
Frankly
[quote] have a (very) small second home in a small mountain community that had a bowling alley. The owner of the property (lives in San Diego) decided he didn’t like dealing with the problems running a bowling alley and shut it down to replace it with a Dollar General store. The impact to the town is pretty big since the bowling alley gave the local kids something to do and adults too.
[/quote]
My take home lesson from this story is different from yours. The government clearly did no force the owner to shut down the bowling alley and convert to a Dollar Store. This was clearly his choice. And he clearly did not care about the well being of the community when he made the decision. Some alternatives that come to mind for me would have been to hire someone to handle the management for him or to seek someone else to buy the bowling alley and open a Dollar Store in a different venue. To me, this is not a story about the evil government but rather about a business owner who simply did not care about what his distant business meant to the community.
SOD
What my friends in private practice tell me is that they cannot wait to join with a large group practice. For many, it is not the government that has been their problem, but the hoops that they are forced to jump through by insurance companies. Time and money are wasted to get approval for procedures that I can do on the spot because I am not limited by fee for service which is dictated by the insurers, not by what the patient and I decide is in her best interest. Within the past couple of years, my department has hired at least four people out of fee for service and not one of them has said they are leaving private practice because of the government.
Frankly
You and I share a belief that protection of Americans is a valid function of the government. You seem to believe that it should be limited to military and criminal protection where as I see a broader role.
The 241 people killed in the recent night club fire in Brazil would probably have been grateful for a little more
protection from the “nanny state” in a situation which as described by a prosecuting attorney,
““The owners of the nightclub and the members of the band were fully aware of the danger the public faced and could have foreseen the result, but they took no action or were indifferent to the risks,” Medina said. “Fireworks were used in a place that was completely inappropriate for any kind of flame. There was wood, curtain and unfortunately a lot of people.”
Unfortunately, there will always be those who will put their own financial best interest above the welfare of their customers or workers. There will be those who simply do not care enough to provide the proper equipment and insist that every employee is properly trained as in the recent case of the two teenagers killed in a grain silo while sent in to “walk down the grain” without harnesses. Or the gluers in the furniture manufacturing plants that were not provided with masks by their employer even though the risks of disabling nerve injury have been well documented and the manager even made the statement “when they get too sick to work, we let them go and hire more”. These cavalier attitudes towards the lives of others clearly indicate to me that there is a role for government in the protection of workers lives from their own employers just as there is for the protection of Americans from terrorists.
[i]What my friends in private practice tell me is that they cannot wait to join with a large group practice. For many, it is not the government that has been their problem, but the hoops that they are forced to jump through by insurance companies. Time and money are wasted to get approval for procedures that I can do on the spot because I am not limited by fee for service which is dictated by the insurers, not by what the patient and I decide is in her best interest. Within the past couple of years, my department has hired at least four people out of fee for service and not one of them has said they are leaving private practice because of the government.[/i]
Any of these doctors could decide to go to business providing direct service to consumers of health care. There are no laws or regulations preventing healthcare providers providing a different business model than the insurance middleman. So, how can you blame the insurance industry? Do auto manufacturers and auto dealers blame the auto insurance industry? Do home builders and realtors complain about the property insurance industry? The answer of course is no. There are two differences here: one – the extreme government involvement in the healthcare and health insurance industry (relative to its involvement in the other two insurance industries), and two – the hyper inflation of medical costs. For the hyper inflation of medical costs, there are three reasons. New drugs and new medical technology that cost a lot to develop; medical labor costs that have skyrocketed, and malpractice insurance costs. Health insurance providers have actually helped to keep costs from spiraling higher. How many procedures would malpractice-harassed doctors order if it wasn’t for insurance company approval?
“For the hyper inflation of medical costs, there are three reasons. New drugs and new medical technology that cost a lot to develop; medical labor costs that have skyrocketed, and malpractice insurance costs.”
Wrong. See below:
[url]http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/what-makes-health-care-so-expensive/[/url]
South of Davis,
Good to see your comments re: laws and regulations that work to favor the corporate chains over the small independents. I don’t think the general public is aware of the extent to which the playing field has shifted over the past few decades. I’m not a small business owner myself and haven’t followed the details; but if the army of lobbyists sent to Washington by the big boys are not being paid to help them increase market share (which largely entails gaining it from competitors); what the heck are they doing?
Re: crippling government regulations: I don’t dispute that dealing with regulations and permits is a huge hurdle in starting out a business (more easily dealt with by the corporations than the small independents). But business owners can just as well blame the less scrupulous among them (e.g. medwoman’s example of the nightclub fire), who profit at the expense and safety of their own employees and the general public and the environment, for driving the need for more regulations to help prevent such abuses; otherwise the least scrupulous winds up with a competitive advantage. That said, there is no doubt that regulations and the permitting process could be streamlined; however this would benefit the small independents more than the big chains; the big boys are unlikely to encourage lawmakers to make reforms that partially roll back their competitive advantage.
Frankly
[quote]Any of these doctors could decide to go to business providing direct service to consumers of health care[/quote]
Not if they wanted to make a living at it. Given the prices of health care as graphically illustrated in the article provided by CI, only a handful of doctors ( those having successfully established concierge services for the 1% for example) will be able to find enough patients able to pay the exorbitant fees associated with even very simple medical care.
Everything that even vaguely or tangentially is associated with the word “medical” in this country is grossly inflated in cost. One small example. I was shopping for a teaching model to be used to instruct patients in self exam and students and residents in clinical breast exam. The least expensive model was $74 and the top of the line was $250. All for a piece of soft plastic with three smaller, firmer pieces of plastic encased within. The same amount of plastic that in a gag gift from Spencers or the like would have cost under ten. Multiple this by the overcharging on everything from cotton swabs, gauze sponges, exam gowns, sharps containers….. and you have a situation in which a private doctor attempting to practice fee for service without accepting insurance
can only practice if they cater to the very rich or choose to live “off the grid” and serve rurally sometimes accepting payment in produce or services as a couple of my colleagues have done. The latter strategy however involves huge personal risk since not enough can be raised in this fashion to cover medical insurance, so they simply tell their patients that they don’t carry malpractice insurance thus informing them that if they have a bad outcome, they are essentially on their own. This, needless to say further decreases the number of patients capable of paying who will utilize their services.
Frankly
[quote]Or the gluers in the furniture manufacturing plants that were not provided with masks by their employer even though the risks of disabling nerve injury have been well documented and the manager even made the statement “when they get too sick to work, we let them go and hire more”. These cavalier attitudes towards the lives of others clearly indicate to me that there is a role for government in the protection of workers lives from their own employers just as there is for the protection of Americans from terrorists.[/quote]
These furniture manufacturers with this “easy come, easy go” attitude towards their human resources were not located in China, or some third world country. This quote is from a plant manager in North Carolina in the present time, not back in the days of Upton Sinclair. This is the unregulated, free market capitalism that you appear to be advocating in which humans are, to those hiring, supervising and firing them nothing but another commodity to obtained at the lowest possible cost, used until no longer functional and then discarded in favor of a fresh batch. These are not my words, but those of their manager.
Now of course, I am not equating the situation of Common Grounds with the plight of these workers. However, I do feel that we have gone much too far towards maximizing personal gain as our ideal when we give no consideration to the well being of other individuals or to the community in which our homes or our businesses are located. A previous poster on this blog had once posted that one should
promote their own well being as long as it did not cause material harm to another. To greater and lesser degrees, from the Common Ground situation to that of the two boys killed in the grain silo, or the neurologic damage to furniture makers what has been completely forgotten in our “free market place” is the part about doing “no material harm to others” in our quest for individual and corporate profit.
Civil Discourse:
Thanks for that link explaining the high cost of US healthcare. I need to spend some more time on it, but at first glance it does not debunk my opinion for the high costs.
Drug costs are higher in the US because the US drug companies invent and develop most new drugs. The FDA (i.e., government) requirements for getting a new drug to market result in a multi-hundreds of millions of dollar investment in clinical trials and other testing protocols. Just like the false comparison to US and global defense spending, the comparison of US and global consumer spending on drugs does not factor the global benefit that the US provides. These other countries basically sponge off the advances of the US and we pay for it. Until and unless we can charge these other countries a fairer share of our inventions and protections, or until they step up to much greater contribution, or unless we are willing to stop inventing and protecting then and ourselves, we will continue to pay the premium.
Hospitals and insurance companies are making profit, and this gets back to my point about compensation levels in the medical professions. I have worked for a large local HMO, and many of the senior managers and executives in that company were trained nurses and doctors. They really had to be to have the knowledge required to do their jobs. The medical profession likes to point at insurance companies as the cost boogieman, but they are all really one-and-the-same. I am old enough to remember the healthcare cost scares of the past, and it was HMOs that came to the rescue driving costs downward and stabilizing them for a time. US nurses and lab technicians are the highest paid in the industrial world. They also work the fewest hours. The cost of labor is the biggest line item for any health provider (insurance and law suit mitigation is a close second).
Next we have the trial lawyer and malpractice problem. The inflated cost of drugs in this country is in part because of the risk drug companies carry for being sued by all the sleazy ambulance-chasing attorneys that routinely contribute to the Democrat party. Without significant tort reform we will never succeed in lowering the costs of health care.
It is a deflection of reality and possible solution to point at the profits of these providers of various health care products and services as the cause of high costs. We do not have a free market healthcare system. The free market potential is locked up in all the extreme government control and meddling. If consumers of health care had REAL free market choice, the providers would have no choice but to compete on value and price.
But then that one person that received a botched procedure would get media attention and the Democrat politicians would march out to demand reforms to exert more control and regulation on the industry as a bunch of sleazy trail lawyers sued any deep pocket they could find to “help” the family of the “victim”… and we get back to where we are today.
[i]the US drug companies invent and develop most new drugs.[/i]
I doubt that is still true.
List of top pharma companies:
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pharmaceutical_companies[/url]
Six of the 12 are not US companies.
[i]it was HMOs that came to the rescue driving costs downward and stabilizing them for a time.[/i]
Yes, particularly the not-for-profit ones.
[i]You and I share a belief that protection of Americans is a valid function of the government. You seem to believe that it should be limited to military and criminal protection where as I see a broader role. [/i]
medwoman, I don’t limit protections to military and criminal. I support civil protections to. I am also not anti-regulation. Certainly a working free economy requires a framework of regulations and laws that provide the population a level of protection.
However, we are missing the macro calculation of cost-benefit.
Have you read about the recent dismal jobs reports? The unemployment situation in this country is far worse than your government is reporting. The only real job growth and job safety in this country is public sector. Isn’t it ironic that those people tend to vote Democrat?
We had a false gravy train for the last 20 years and we piled on regulations and grew government and layered on fat pay and benefits to public sector workers. The train crashed and the private sector was decimated. The left succeeded in deflecting any ownership of the problem by using a partnering and complicit media to brainwash the population that the 1% and corporations were the cause of their financial misery. Now here we are with cities and states going bankrupt, the federal government printing money by the truckload and piling on billions of new debt every day. The unemployment rate for young people nears 20%. Millions of people have dropped out of the search for employment. Their skills have disappeared and they reluctantly have joined a swelling population of takers. Food stamps, welfare and disability payments have exploded.
Meanwhile it keeps getting more difficult and more expensive to start and maintain a business. It keeps getting more difficult and more expensive to hire employees. Have you checked out what attorneys and the government has done relative to labor code and HR requirements? It is a sue happy nightmare out there. Discipline an employee for clear performance issues and forget to dot one I or cross one T and you will be fined by government and sued by trial lawyers. But then you will argue that all of these laws and regulations are required so that some employee does not get unfairly treated.
It is madness. As I wrote recently, I just posted a $10 part-time job and in three days I got 30 resumes from young people with a top-end UCD education. But you go on and defend our government economic and labor policy and practice as going a great job keeping these young people protected.
What we need is a collaboration with business and government to clean house of job-killing fees, taxes, laws and regulations. We also need an economic development approach in this city and state that openly attracts and romances new business and the commercial real estate development it requires to expand and remain healthy.
Frankly, so you want the government to pass some more laws and regulations to burden and prohibit free-enterprise, small-business, job-producing, start-up law firms from bringing suits against giant drug companies which produce drugs benefiting from US government R&D money and government patent protections that allow massive overcharges (but which pay little or no federal taxes) and then engage in negligent practices that kill patients?
[i]”…and the commercial real estate development it requires to expand and remain healthy.”
[/i]
Again: where?
Frankly
[quote]Drug costs are higher in the US because the US drug companies invent and develop most new drugs.[/quote]
This is not true on several counts. First as Don correctly pointed out, we have no monopoly on drug and device development. There is another factor however. In the hospital, the price of something as simple as a Tylenol, many, many years past its time of development is charged according to an arbitrarily set cost many times higher than one would pay making the purchase at any drug store. Indeed the cost of one tablet of many medications is higher than one might pay for 30 of the tablets in a drug store. This is compounded by the fact that many hospitals will not allow patients to bring their own medications from home. This clearly is not because if hospitals did not charge this way, no new medicines would be developed. It is quite simply a money making scheme that everyone buys into, including the patients who are largely unaware.