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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, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday June 05 2014, @03:31PM
How wrong I was when I didn't believe them telling me America is an alien planet.
I guess a single counterexample [theatlantic.com] would suffice?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3) by khallow on Thursday June 05 2014, @11:04PM
Ok, where is that single counterexample? I note that there are numerous reasons why your link is not an actual counterexample. First, it has nothing to do with minumum wage, but rather the equally dubious idea of paying people to work less (maybe same wage per unit hour but greater non-wage benefits per hour). Second, it hasn't actually been implemented. This idea still has to sneak past the people with common sense. Third, even if it is ever implemented, we'll have to run the experiment for a few years at least in order to see how badly it fails. And fourth, by then, you'll have completely forgotten about your "counterexample".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06 2014, @04:18AM
How is it that the "counterexample" gets modded up to +5 when even a cursory glance at the link shows that it is not an example at all?
Please mod parent up.