This is for you Minnesotans out there.
I was digging through the Minnesota DEED site and browsing through the unemployment data. Since they were nice enough to provide monthly year-over-year data with industry breakdowns, it made finding trends pretty easy.
Here’s the data in question… The state-wide smoking ban went into effect in October of 2007 (for those who aren’t familiar, October is actually the beginning of the government’s fiscal year) which gave us a full quarter worth of data to look at.
Fourth quarter 2007 saw an overall drop in year-over-year unemployment claims. October was 15.4% drop, November was 12.9% and December was 6.5%. Additionally, January saw a drop of 13.4% year-over-year.
Conversely, those same periods for the food and beverage industry saw increases of 11%, 9.4%, 12.4% and 14.3% year-over-year.
So here’s the question that needs to be answered… Prior to the ban, the food and beverage industry showed similar movement trends as the state as a whole, which forces us to ask why it is that post-ban the industry sharply diverged from the overall state trend?
Filed under: Ban Damage, Minnesota Ban News, economic impact, reality check | Tagged: ban economics, industry unemployment, minnesota smoking ban, smoking bans
It’s a stupid question. The obvious answer is that the smoking ban is bad for business. I’m willing to bet that if you break down the data further to seperate bars from the rest of the food and beverage industry, the numbers would be even worse. Let’s face facts people: the anti-smoking movement is a cultural war with the intent of cultural genocide. Bars going out of business? People losing their jobs? People losing their social life? It’s not that the enemy doesn’t care; it’s that this is the enemy’s goal.
I believe you’re right, Mr. Blues. I’ve stated before that this is part of th “Re-branding of Wisconsin” effort. It’s also why Gov. Doyle doesn’t give any acknowlegment to the tavern industry when he makes statements about the ban. All we hear is this “Ashtray of the Midwest” garbage.
Taverns don’t fit in to this re-branding effort.
http://www.madison.com/tct/business/276569
Ugh, you couldn’t help but to bring up that garbage, could you?
I saw that article and threw up a little bit in the back of my throat.
What a joke.
Ugh is right! Sometimes clicking a link to what passes for newspapers in Madison is like clicking a link to the WRONG porn site – except that the porn site has an excuse. Among other things, they keep trying to paint this as a matter of the Evil & Powerful Tavern League versus the forces of health and goodness. Well, I’m not a member of the Tavern League and I no longer own a tavern, but I am opposed to the raping of my personal liberty. This is not simply a matter of tavern owners having the temerity to want to keep their livelihoods; it is also a matter of citizens who demand our inalienable human rights.