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To at least $15 an hour. Enough is enough ... !
From the Economist: Why American cities are raising the minimum wage - excerpt:
From the Economist: Why American cities are raising the minimum wage - excerpt:
In recent years, several American cities have introduced their own minimum-wage increases. In three big ones on the west coast—Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle—the minimum wage is set to rise to $15 over the next few years, and Chicago will be phasing in a floor of $13 by 2019. More modest raises are coming soon to dozens of other municipalities across America. These local efforts to boost the earning power of low-wage workers have come in response to foot-dragging on wage policy in state legislatures. Advocates pitch the ordinances as targeted solutions that take account of the higher cost of living in urban areas and provide a natural laboratory demonstrating the feasibility and economic benefits of minimum-wage increases.
These reforms have not been universally embraced. Opponents say that however well-intentioned they may be, artificial wage increases distort the labour market and give employers an incentive to make do with fewer workers. When firms hire fewer people, the critique goes, poverty is exacerbated, not alleviated. In response, minimum-wage backers point to evidence showing that most business owners support minimum wages and don’t tend to cull their staff in response to rules requiring higher wages. The numbers in Seattle, where the wage floor began rising a year ago, looked encouraging for a while: last August, unemployment was only 3.6%, the lowest figure since 2007.