Californian Comic Shop announces it pays $ 16.30 minimum wage, goes viral

Yesterday, comic book merchant Ryan higgins of Comics Conspiracy of Sunnyvale, California posted the following tweet, adding to the debate over minimum wage levels in the United States. He wrote;

Want to see a store with a minimum wage of $ 16.30? This is my store. Get the hell out of here that billionaire corporations can’t afford $ 15.

With the following photo from the comic book store.

Public relations photo of Ryan Higgins’ comic book conspiracy in Sunnyvale, California

And it exploded online. So far, he has 170.50 likes (he increased by 4,000 just by typing that), 19,400 retweets. By the time you read it, it will be even higher.

With some people saying companies couldn’t pay for this without going bankrupt, despite Ryan doing just that. But it was not a charitable effort on his part, he continued, saying

Guess that’s when I have to say, yes we do sell comics online at http://comicsconspiracy.biz! Plus, $ 16.30 is @CityofSunnyvale’s current minimum wage, so yes, don’t forget to vote in local elections.

To add,

I did nothing other than pay my employees the bare minimum! (We’ve always been above minimum wage, but we went down to $ 15 a year earlier and then just hit the minimum increases every year thereafter, currently at $ 16.30 for Sunnyvale).

When asked if he had reduced his income, he replied

Honestly, not really. We knew $ 15 an hour was going to arrive a few years ago, and I had slowly increased our hourly wage to $ 15 before it was the minimum. We’ve always tried to be a little above the minimum anyway.

But even with the new orders pouring in from the publicity, enough was enough for Ryan. He posted;