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The NYT reports that in a unanimous vote, the Seattle City Council went where no big-city lawmakers have gone before, raising the local minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than double the federal minimum, and pushing Seattle to the forefront of urban efforts to address income inequality. "Even before the Great Recession a lot of us have started to have doubt and concern about the basic economic promise that underpins economic life in the United States," says Council Member Sally J. Clark. "Today Seattle answers that challenge." High-tech, fast-growing Seattle, population 634,535, is home to Amazon.com, Zillow, and Starbucks. It also has more than 100,000 workers whose incomes are insufficient to support their families, according to city figures and around 14% of Seattle's population lives below the poverty level. Some business owners have questioned the proposal saying that the city's booming economy is creating an illusion of permanence. "We're living in this bubble of Amazon, but that's not going to go on," says businessman Tom Douglas. "There's going to be some terrific price inflation."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by starcraftsicko on Thursday June 05 2014, @12:57PM
That's an overstatement.
The nature of inflation is that asset prices increase along with everything else. Admittedly some increase or change at different rates than others, but that's true regardless of minimum wage policy.
If you have your savings invested in cash (in a mattress), or in cash equivalents, or in fixed rate debt instruments, you'll take a hit. But inflation is not an overnight phenomenon in the US, so you'll have time to make adjustments as long as you can remember where you buried the money.
This post was created with recycled electrons.