Seattle city council approves $15/hour minimum wage

[waggy]

This is the person sitting on Seattle city council. Scary, isn't it?

jesus. she is insane.

I gotta say if the city came to me and said "hey! what a pretty house! thanks for building it but we are going to take it to turn it into public houseing" i would burn the fucker down..

 

[BoomerD]

This is just socialistic bullshit to placate the unwashed masses...

The increase to $15 in Seattle will take place over several years based on a scale that considers the size of and benefits offered by an employer. It will apply first to many large businesses in 2017 and then to all businesses by 2021.
The first increase, on April 1, 2015, brings the minimum wage to $10 for some businesses and $11 for others.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/02/news/economy/seattle-minimum-wage

There have been stories in the local news about how this will impact some businesses...especially those who are on the "fringe" of the city limits. In King County, the regular $9.32 hourly wage applies...


Metro Seattle is a ridiculously expensive place to live...for the PNW.

I'm an hour (at least) away and the cost of living here is more than expensive than where we lived in NorCal.
Rent (and real estate) is as high or higher, taxes are higher, (but no income tax...yet) food is considerably higher, gasoline prices fluctuate, but are very similar. Services, (doctor, dentist, etc.) are slightly higher. The only thing I've seen in the past 18 months that's really much cheaper is electric service. That is 1/3 to 1/2 the price (per kW) of what we paid...and since it's much cooler in the summer, we use FAR less electricity to cool our house.
Is it as expensive as SF or some of the other major metropolitan areas? Perhaps not...but it's not too far behind.

 

[SunnyD]

Sawant called for large Seattle companies such as Starbucks and Amazon to be unionized in her most recent campaign.[32] In previous campaigns she has advocated the nationalization of large Washington State corporations such as Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon.com[33] and expressed a desire to see privately owned housing in "Millonaire's Row" in the Capitol Hill neighborhood turned into publically owned shared housing saying, "When things are exquisitely beautiful and rare, they shouldn't be privately owned."[45] During an election victory rally for her City Council campaign Sawant criticized Boeing for saying it would move jobs out of state if it couldn't get wage concessions and tax breaks. She called this "economic terrorism" and said in several speeches if Boeing moved jobs out of state that the workers should take over Boeing facilities and bring them into public ownership.

So I'm assuming she'd have absolutely no problems with me flying in, knocking on the door and staying for a couple weeks out of the blue.

 

[darkewaffle]

The days when those without specialized skills could be assured of making a living wage at some menial task are disappearing, attempts to legislate them back notwithstanding. You can't just ignore these people, because eventually they will fight back. Maybe we're approaching an era when some new model of success and wealth is going to be needed. After all, if our technology could provide for everyone, then where is the need to build a society on competing for a share of it?

Is that idea something that ever really existed though? Maybe it was before my time as I'm Gen Y, but I don't really consider "Anyone, skilled or not, can make a living in America" to be something I really consider a "tenant" or cornerstone of the country. I feel like growing up I was fed more of a "You have to work hard to go far" mentality - it was all about what you could do to excel and, more or less, subsisting was underachieving (unless you were in agriculture).

To me a minimum wage job is a stepping stone or a stopgap. And someone who stays in one long-term would need to adjust their definition/style of "living" to make it a workable living wage.

 

[Colt45]

man, the 'job creators' are gonna be butthurt about this one.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I feel like growing up

When you were growing up we had these things called factories where working class, high school educated laborers could earn the type of wage to raise a family.

That basically no longer exists. Now that same low skilled person is competing with high school kids for a McJob.

If we would stop being old economy Steve and face facts maybe we could come up with better solutions than pay fiefdoms.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Yep. That'll fix everything. :\

 

[rudder]

So what is going to happen to all the people making $15/hour now? They will be expecting some kind of pay bump otherwise it would suck to be them.

 

[SunnyD]

So what is going to happen to all the people making $15/hour now? They will be expecting some kind of pay bump otherwise it would suck to be them.

They get shafted. Imagine that, they're all of a sudden making minimum wage.

A few years later, a massive bump in inflation catches up after wage paying industry adjusts to its new cost of doing business, and the former middle class is now poverty level. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Gotta love it!

 

[MarkXIX]

When you were growing up we had these things called factories where working class, high school educated laborers could earn the type of wage to raise a family.

That basically no longer exists. Now that same low skilled person is competing with high school kids for a McJob.

If we would stop being old economy Steve and face facts maybe we could come up with better solutions than pay fiefdoms.

Has anyone ever done the research to track a rise in profits for investors against the decrease in wages and operational costs from moving those jobs overseas?

I mean, the argument at the time was that doing business in America just cost too much and it was either outsource or lose the business entirely.

Instead it appears that many of these corporations simply moved their money overseas to protect it from the government and from giving hard working Americans a fair chance at a comfortable middle class lifestyle. The other benefit was to people who could afford to invest at the time who have likely seen their fortunes grow exponentially.

China's wages are increasing and the costs of doing the "dirty business" that's ruining their land and their air will catch up. Then what? Move the business back to the USA where people have been conditioned to work for minimum wage fast food jobs?

 

[Colt45]

They get shafted. Imagine that, they're all of a sudden making minimum wage.

A few years later, a massive bump in inflation catches up after wage paying industry adjusts to its new cost of doing business, and the former middle class is now poverty level. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Gotta love it!

$15/hr is already poverty level in Seattle. Certainly not 'middle class'.

 

[Hacp]

This will be an interesting experiment. At the rate of 15 dollars an hour, I wonder if that will encourage more companies to automate everything. I understand that in Japan, there are already fast food joints that automate everything. There is just one worker in the entire store to make sure nothing goes wrong. I understand that in Europe, automated convenience stores are more popular.

Perhaps we can finally get rid of all the menial jobs and move forward in our quest for the ultimate goal: no jobs for anyone since everything is automated and done for us by robots.

 

[biostud]

So basically those with lowest income now have more money to spend, which will drive demands up and start economical growth.

Also fun how it's always a good idea to give high income jobs even higher income to increase productivity, but it for some reason doesn't work for low income groups.

 

[SSSnail]

Democracy, as it turns out, is very dangerous.

 

[Ns1]

Perhaps we can finally get rid of all the menial jobs and move forward in our quest for the ultimate goal: no jobs for anyone since everything is automated and done for us by robots.

Until they can invent a roomba that climbs up walls, someone's gotta dust the machines.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Democracy, as it turns out, is very dangerous.

“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’

‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.” ~R.A.H.

 

[hanoverphist]

So if restaurant workers are getting paid more, does that mean we don't have to tip anymore because they're getting a better paycheck to live on?

im sure they will come up with some reason why we should still tip. all thisreally does is devalue my salary i earned by going to school and training in my career for the last 18 years.

but my daughters best friend will be happy, she just moved to seattle last year and works minimum wage.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Then what?

Onward to the next place to exploit. It is already happening.

 

[DrunkenSano]

They get shafted. Imagine that, they're all of a sudden making minimum wage.

A few years later, a massive bump in inflation catches up after wage paying industry adjusts to its new cost of doing business, and the former middle class is now poverty level. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Gotta love it!

They won't get shafted because they will still have jobs. What should happen is that the previous minimum wage workers will get laid off, because financially the business will have to do an analysis of their business model with the new cost factored in. It should result in either more outsourcing or robot replacements.

 

[CrimsonWolf]

Sawant called for large Seattle companies such as Starbucks and Amazon to be unionized in her most recent campaign.[32] In previous campaigns she has advocated the nationalization of large Washington State corporations such as Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon.com[33] and expressed a desire to see privately owned housing in "Millonaire's Row" in the Capitol Hill neighborhood turned into publically owned shared housing saying, "When things are exquisitely beautiful and rare, they shouldn't be privately owned."[45] During an election victory rally for her City Council campaign Sawant criticized Boeing for saying it would move jobs out of state if it couldn't get wage concessions and tax breaks. She called this "economic terrorism" and said in several speeches if Boeing moved jobs out of state that the workers should take over Boeing facilities and bring them into public ownership.

Wow, that lady is fucking crazy.

 

[crashtestdummy]

“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’



‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.” ~R.A.H.

I find the amount of doomsday predictions amusing. This is an experiment being carried out by a single city. Will it work? Probably not to the extent that the proponents are hoping. But I really have nothing to base that conjecture on except my instincts and vague bits of economic theory. If in five years it becomes clear that this law was a huge benefit, then you'll see a lot more places pick it up. If, on the other hand, it ends up discouraging business to an unacceptable level, then it'll remain what it is now: a radical experiment by a city that can frankly afford to take a few risks.

 

[AMDZen]

jesus. she is insane.

Wow, that lady is fucking crazy.

I would be downright scared of that bitch if I lived in Washington. Talk about radical views. Sheesh.

 

[TechBoyJK]

What I really want to see are outright stock grants given to rank and file employees, similar to what the CEO receives.

fuck that.. min wage employees dont risk shit and dont deserve equity.

 

[shortylickens]

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023753163_wagevotexml.html

Wow. I'm not sure what to say. That's great for the workers, but their cost of living is going to go up anyways so this is not going to put them much further ahead (or much less behind.)

Moral to the story, if you're working in Seattle earning minimum wage and still living at home...score!

When it all falls apart they will find some white heterosexual male not on welfare to blame. Then they'll find a way to tax him to fix everyone elses problems.
That wont work either, but it will keep the general populace of Seattle voting Liberal for a few more years, which is really all this is about.

 

[Ns1]

fuck that.. min wage employees dont risk shit and dont deserve equity.

they risk their lives every day bro. do you know how much a grease burn hurts?