(c) by Mark Dempsey
I just bought some sandwiches for a trip at Noah's Bagels.
Noah's sandwiches were previously delicious, as were their side dishes. And don't get me wrong, the bagels still are still delicious, but the filling and side dishes were second-rate.
After a little Googling, I discovered that Noah's chain first went public and was later sold to what appears to be a private equity firm. You can practically hear the bean counters crunching the numbers and eliminating the delicious side dishes (cole slaw, potato salad). But ya can't eat money! Now you can eat stale potato chips.
This is going around, too. Rubio's closed its California restaurants, blaming the higher ($20/hr) minimum wage. Actually, its private equity owners took on so much debt that it couldn't afford to pay its workers in California.
There's further evidence that homebuilders are colluding to keep land in short supply, even as rents rise faster than wages, and the US has the biggest homeless population since the Great Depression.
Almighty profit blesses such collusion, and even conspires to make sandwiches worse. This is one of the genuine limitations of capitalism.
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