Fibbing about the Obamacare increase in pizza costs
The founder of Papa John's Pizza is kind of having a meltdown. Not a deliciously cheesy, saucy meltdown either - more of a "Republican rage" sort of meltdown.
"Papa" John Schnatter has announced that it will cost the company a small fortune in order to comply with the new "Obamacare" statutes. He has dramatically wailed that he will have to slash the workforce and cut back hours for employees in order to not have to pay them health care. All in the name of saving you, the consumer, a whopping 11 cents per pizza.
Now mind you, that is the amount that Papa John's says they will need to tack on to each pizza in order to cover these SHOCKINGLY EXPENSIVE AND UNREASONABLE GOVERNMENT MANDATES. How mad are you about an extra eleven cents per pizza? Probably not very mad, right?
But it gets better: an expert from Forbes has crunched the numbers and decided that Papa John's would only need to raise their costs by about four cents per pie. Four cents! That's not a price increase; that's a rounding error. And that furthermore, the costs are less than that of one Papa John's pizza giveaway per year.
Regardless of how you feel about the new health care regulations, I think we can all agree that even the worst case scenario, eleven cents is just not that big a deal. I doubt anyone is going to be all, "Wait - this pizza costs nineteen dollars AND ELEVEN CENTS? Forget it!" Like you're going to go up the street to the pizza place where it's eleven cents cheaper. Come ON.
This is clearly just an example of another billionaire CEO using their personal politics as leverage on the public. Like, "Oh no, if we don't vote Republican, THE PIZZA INDUSTRY WILL COLLAPSE." Furthermore, I feel like Papa John is using the election results as an excuse to jack up prices and cut worker hours in order to line his own pockets.
The real losers in this intersection of food and politics is the Papa John's employees. It must sting to work at a company that is so vehemently against providing you with health care. Meanwhile, Papa John is kicking back in his 40,000 square foot mansion, probably wearing a monocle and lighting his cigars with $100 bills.
Eleven cents my butt. But hey, I guess you don't become a billionaire by passing up an opportunity to raise costs, right?