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Originally Posted by joey2665
I believe you are missing the issue. Yes they absolutely have the right to charge what they want as does Ben and Jerrys but the issue here is a specific surcharge for them to pay their employees the 15.00 per hour. Ben and jerrys do not have a surcharge because they want to save a rain forest. They take their profit and do with it as the see fit whether keeping the funds or contributing to social causes.
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The point is that Hermit Woods was transparent as to why they are raising their prices. If you disagree with the policy and price, don't shop there. B&J does it in the background by building their "social program" costs into the base price. Purchasers of either product are still paying for these programs whether you know about it or not. B&J's customers might want to put their heads in the sand about it and B&J's helps them do that by not breaking out the costs as an add-on charge. If B&J's has bumped their prices 5% to cover the cost of supporting their causes, isn't the effect the same?
For that matter, most banks, insurance companies, and other large businesses support music, plays, and lots of other local activities. Many are truly altruistic but if they don't they are not considered to be "good neighbors". They use a portion of the money I pay them to do this. I don't have a choice about it. What's the difference?
In addition, if I am a stockholder of one of these businesses, the management is taking some of the money that I should have received as returned profit and diverting it to other uses.
In short, businesses of all kinds are taking more money from us than they actually need to provide their products and using the surplus in ways they see fit. I agree that Hermit Woods doing it in such a obvious way can bug some people but the actual practice is typical for business.