OT: Seattle approves highest US minimum wage, $15/hour
The Seattle City Council on Monday unanimously approved a $15 hourly minimum wage - the highest in the nation.
The ordinance, which phases in the increase over time, passed a committee last week with a few changes. It would take effect next April and allow a sub-minimum wage for teens.
The ordinance was drafted by an advisory group of labor, business and nonprofit representatives convened by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray. It would phase in wage increases over three to seven years, depending on the size of the business and employee benefits.
The City Council voted 9-0 in front of a sometimes raucous audience that frequently interjected cheers, applause and shouts of "Shame on you!" as the council debated several changes to the measure.
Read MoreSeattle City Council panel OKs $15 minimum wage
Seattle's higher minimum wage would surpass San Francisco's minimum of $10.74 an hour.
Washington state also has the highest state minimum wage, at $9.32 an hour.
Some small business owners worry that a higher minimum wage could put them out of business.
Meanwhile, a group called 15 Now led by Socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant is collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would create an immediate wage hike for large businesses and a three-year phase-in for small business.
"Our victory is not complete, but we have fought until the last day, the last hour, against all the loopholes demanded by business," Sawant said before the council vote. "$15 in Seattle is just the beginning."
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last commentWell, they got to do something with all that extra inflationary money Obama has spent the last six years printing up. I think that place has signed it's death certificate though.
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I am happy they raised the minimum wage - its about time!
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Bag boy james will pack up his shit and be right there
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With everyone making at least $15 an hour, a fast food hamburger might need to be $5 for a small size and $10 for something bigger. Don't worry, the two guys left still working will get to you, maybe, if no one else is in line. Of course if the customers don't buy it, profits become losses and businesses shut up. Maybe these worries are overblown, with the way the democrats are spending money, our currency has been plummeting in value.
Even now you keep hearing corporate America saying they can't find skilled workers at the wages they want to keep paying everyone. I face the same issue, I keep facing a shortage of skilled dancers willing to dance at $5 a lap dance. If I was corporate America, I would be saying there is a shortage of thousands of skilled dancers.
Fast food may copy corporate America. Pay everyone a salary and then tell them they have to work overtime for no extra pay.
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Damn liberals! Stop trying to turn Seattle into BC!!!
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So a single mom working at McDonald's for $15/hr will have to pay her baby sitter $15/hr?
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deogol: " I think that place has signed it's death certificate though."
We're a fairly wealthy city. I'm sure we'll survive through it. Costs will be passed onto consumers who can afford it.
And it will be funny to see how the ultra right reacts when things go on pretty much as before.
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Don't look for every job to start paying that rate. Some businesses have already relocated to the suburbs to avoid the higher pay scale. Others will lay off employees. Still more will go out of business. Those that stay will likely raise prices. All kinds of results from this action are being anticipated.
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Should go without saying, but with some people earning more some businesses will see increased revenue due to the raise in the minimum wage. One of the reason I doubt the effects will be as apocalyptical as some are expecting.
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Think about this. A $15/hr minimum wage is an annual income of just $31,200.
How many of you, my fellow tusclers, are at that income level, or lower?
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The real crime about the "minimum wage and income inequality" hype is how few people we are talking about. In a country of somewhere between 320 and 350 Million people, less than a tenth of ONE percent are adults (over 25) supporting themselves with their minimum wage. This figure is about as factual as you can get. It is based on reports from BLS.gov, US Census Bureau, SBA and the Social Security Admin.
Only 3.5 million workers are not paid significantly (at least 30%) more than the minimum wage. Over two thirds (71%) of these minimum wage workers are under 25 (mostly under 18) leaving only about One Million adult minimum wage workers. Most of this 1 Million are 2nd or 3rd income workers in households with over $50,000 in income. Supposedly "self supporting adults" earning Minimum wage total 300,000 or fewer workers - a tenth of 1% of the population.
The real question is why the extreme left wants to push this "wage inequality" lie so hard? I don't have any answers.
In Seattle, the cost of living is so high that $15 an hour isn't really a living wage - if the worker is the only breadwinner for a family - but it does create a create an inflationary issue for businesses in town. Will Seattle's fast food shops disappear or will hamburgers cost $10? Will the hundred or so Seattle adult "happy workers" joyfully join the teenagers who got a windfall raise and share their 6 PM soundbites on the network news?
Distraction? Distortion? Feel-good fallacy? I don't get it!
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There is a long phase-in period for this, depending on the size of the business:
blog.seattlepi.com
Maybe if the prophets of hyper-inflationary doom are right it will not make much of a difference by then?
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Liberals are the biggest fucktards on earth and the more liberal they are the more fucked up they are. This is how business works: each year the partners here sit down and create a budget. We budget a certain amount for staff pay. If we budget 150k for paralegals and they all make 30 we have 5 people doing the work. If they all make 50, we have three and two are unemployed. Minimum wage increases are job killers. Just the way it is
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Fuckin' fuck you, you do, Duke!
You have called people "fagz" before, and it's impossible that anyone who calls someone else a "fag" could make that much. Why? Because then they would make over 8 times my janitor's salary which would be unfair.
I'll hurdle my bile and false accusations at all kinds of people, especially when I'm jealous, but I don't call them "fags" so I deserve to make more than them. That's how the world ought to work.
So I'll believe that they are lying rather than think about the injustice of it all and get even more depressed than I already am.
Maybe if I gone into something different than art history... Fuckin' fuck everything!
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My question for you guys in the Seattle area is how did that Marxist get elected to the city council?
She comes to the US to escape the extreme poverty in India and her husband earns hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in salary and stock options from his engineering job Microsoft yet she wants to bite the hand that feeds her.
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As that billionaire who owns the clippers (or did, who knows) was such a fine and upstanding member of america's upper class, I too find it hard to believe anyone making that kind of money would have an immoral bone in their body.
I think that examples rebound in recent history of corps controlling their costs by escaping cities - even countries. Cars and retail goods are pretty much gone compared to the good ole days of the 60's. These days they are hauling in guest workers for computers (I dare you to find someplace large with an all American corp of IT workers.) And they are hard at it expanding the labor pool trying to make 30,000,000 illegal aliens into citizens (just think what that will make the unemployment rate look like!)
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@ motor: She campaigned heavily with that goal as her platform. All registered voters within the Seattle city limits who now earn less than $15./hr. probably voted for her. (Personally, I think she's a train wreck waiting to happen.)
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Next thing you know they will impose minimum lap dance prices to help single moms. Fucking liberals.
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Wow...this has disaster written all over it...thanks NOBAMA
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Just another Detroit in the making. This will probably fall faster, although Detroit government was/is racist against whites so that is in the mix.
"In 1960, Detroit had the highest per capita income in the United States; today, it is the poorest large city in the United States, with a poverty rate more than 20 percent higher than that of Cleveland, the third-poorest city, and half again as much as that of Philadelphia, the tenth-poorest city." -- www.nationalreview.com
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Oh noes! It's all over! It's all over!
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Anyone who supports the $15 wage should be required to show why $150 would not be better. I guess this helps me decide not to go to Seattle for convention this fall.
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The minimum wage is one of those ideas which in theory sounds nice, but in practice is not generally beneficial to business or people. Seattle must apparently want the richest poor people on earth.
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Huh? Who would even say the theory makes sense?
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