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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05 2014, @10:54PM
His 700-page scholarly work shortened into 1 page. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [theguardian.com]
tl;dr: People who make their money from labor (the working class) slip farther behind every day; people who make ALL their money from money (aristocratic capitalists) are the only ones who advance.
Hard work doesn't get you squat.
The elites are just laughing at your puny efforts to "make it".
-- gewg_