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NEW YORK (MainStreet) — While President Obama has urged a hike in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $10.10, one city is looking to more than double it, to $15 an hour.
I don't give a fck I will never pay more than 1 dollar for a mccdonalds burger if it was 7 dollars for one burger I wouldn't buy it. Besides the ones at the top make so much damn money off those burgers so they would just be dispersing it more evenly.
In a city like NYC, 15 an hour is equal to 9-10 else where. My friend makes about 65k in the big apple but where I'm at its the same standard of living as 40k Philly metro.
Yes. And after everyone moves there it will be harder to get a min wage job because of all the people trying to get them, therefore hurting the people it was trying to help. Places will also raise their prices lowering demand for their products and services causing more unemployment.
This will hurt the most marginal members of the workforce, those who can't produce enough to justify that kind of wage and will have to be canned.
It will also make work a lot more difficult for those that are kept on to do the work of the newly fired staff as well as their own, promote automation for entry level jobs and be a burden to line supervisors who will be charged to make sure that the company is getting their money's worth from the staff.
The minimum wage in Washington state is $9.23/hr. For reference, please note that tipped staff ALSO makes $9.23/hr as a base wage with tips supplementing that wage; therefore, the average tipped employee in Seattle is making $13-$15/hr already.
There are no Wal-Marts in the city of Seattle; Costco pays well above $15/hr here, and I see the wage conversation as essentially telling some of the lower-paying employers to stay out. However, keep in mind that Seattle does not have a lot of manufacturing to begin with. There are a lot of smaller companies, but many of them are getting priced out by other inflationary pressures (competition with developers over limited space, etc). The smaller companies have options; they can choose to leave if they wish.
Another thing to note: Seattle's unemployment rate has been hovering around 5% for around 1 year. Simply put, the labor market is tight already, and if $15/hr wasn't going to come about from legislation then the labor market certainly would have put some pressure in that direction. When I look at the local want ads, I see many employers paying $11-13/hr already due to competition for a limited labor force.
Because Seattle is so expensive (the average cost of a house here is over $400k), it frankly makes more economic sense NOT to work in Seattle and just work in a suburb where the cost of housing is 1/3rd to 1/2 of the cost in Seattle. I see the conversation about $15/hr coming out of two main forces:
(a) the mayor is trying to raise the issue of income inequality in a city that is rapidly changing from a blue-collar, middle-class town to a white-collar techie paradise, and
(b) if the mayor didn't address this issue directly, there is currently a socialist on the City Council who has made it her mission to make $15/hr happen in Seattle. If she succeeds in putting the vote on the ballot (a threat that is still available as of this writing), then it will almost certainly pass and businesses will not have 5-7 years to gradually hit $15/hr ... they will have to start paying immediately.
As you can see, there are a lot of unique pressures that put Seattle in a category by itself (and possibly San Francisco) on this issue. Most cities would not have to deal with all of these issues at once.
That depends upon the cost of living. If the cost of living in an area is insanely high, one cannot expect people to work for wages so low that they cannot hope to survive on them.
Seattle is not a cheap, but $15 an hour does seem to be pushing it. That seems more appropriate for DC, New York City, and a handful of other places where the cost of living is off the charts.
Something around $11 to $12 might have worked better for Seattle, but we'll see what happens.
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