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: 1, Flamebait) by jasassin on Thursday June 05 2014, @08:54PM
I know, right. How dare he not want cancer to bankrupt someone AND kill them? How dare the government care for it's citizens and ensure they don't get financially crippled when, through no fault of their own, they get an illness of some sort? How dare the president of the USA do this thing?
OK smartass I'll bite. So you believe fining people who make less than 11.5 thousand a year is the answer to a monetary deficiency? If that's what you truly believe, you are just as fucked as Obama. Dumb fuckhead.
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