If you think most restaurant owners are making millions you are very very much mistaken.
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One of my favorite jokes: how do you make a small fortune in the restaurant business? Start with a large fortune.
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Over however many decades he was in business?
Making a million dollars over decades is firmly middle class and not rich.
A few million over a few decades in Baltimore is not middle class.
If someone makes two million dollars over a thirty-year span, what is their average annual income?
Whether or not they are middle class depends on how many millions and how many decades.
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So much this. My father and brother are in the restaurant business. It’s insanely difficult and only crazy people want to do it. Mega long gruelling hours, tons of risk and relatively low pay.
It’s the furthest thing from a money machine there is.
A vanishingly tiny fraction of restaurant owners make anything more than a middle class income.
On another note…
I’m also getting a little uncomfortable with so many us saying “fuck those guys, if they just closed it would be ok” given as best as I can tell the majority of us have been working right through this whole thing and suffered comparatively little economic harm.
We are insanely privileged and should be cautious mocking those who are less fortunate.
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The privileged part is really what gets me.
My experience with people in business is that most of the people who appear to be making a lot of money really aren’t. A few people are for sure, but when you start counting someone else’s income and expenses it often looks a lot better than it really is.
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For sure. I don’t know the actual statistic but I’d guess less than 10% of people who own a business of any kind make more than a middle class income.
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I think the thing folks are taking exception to is not that this guy went out of business and good for him, but more his misdirected anger. The “I have to close my business and it’s everybody except Trump’s fault” is the issue. If the guy had said “This administration could have done more to contain the virus, but they fucked up and I fucked up when I voted Trump” I think he’d have a lot of sympathy here.
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For a few years I had about a $500k payroll and made about $25k.
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Exactly. A couple of years at my last company I had 40 employees and made the least amount. One year I took home zero and injected $150k of my retirement money.
The most I ever took home was 3x my lowest paid employee (not including when I sold obviously).
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Yep, I’ve been the lowest paid person a bunch of the time and maybe never the highest when I had employees. I don’t like the employee/employer relationship and have always tried to turn people into partners or just work on my own and that’s part of why I’ll never have employees again, but also, I make more money without employees. That’s partly because I’m not good at business, but that’s the way it is.
And it’s not just me. I’ve gotten to know other businesses well enough to a few times find out that businesses that look like they are bringing in a ton of money are not doing nearly as well as it looked.
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Not to complain too much because there are obviously huge upsides to owning a business.
- three sources of income, paycheck, dividends and equity when you sell,
- significant tax incentives,
- writing off things like cars, and
- being own boss.
So many small businesses in our area haven’t been sold. Especially restaurants. They jus close and then someone buys used equipment to start a new place. Lots of people don’t get that equity for their retirement they were counting on.
My sons father-in-law got out just in time. small town and he owned a building supply store. Big company came in and bought him out at a great price and gave him a nice salary to stay on a sales guy/local ambassador for five years. Got his cake and got to eat it too.
I bet if had not sold it then he’d be left holding a stinking pile of shit right now.
We live in a democracy and that fuck voted for the leaders that are the reason we are in the problem we are in. That fucking asshole is absolutely the problem.
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Yeah I’d be surprised if they made less than six figures a year net, though. If they did they should be in a position to start over after the pandemic, assuming they made good decisions.
If not, let them get in line behind the laid off minimum wage workers for help.
I’ve been losing money for three months. Can I say fuck those guys?
Not only that, he thinks if we just didn’t shut down at all things would be fine. They’d be even worse.
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More people dead. But his bottom line might be better!