Seattle just passed a $15 minimum wage...

Good move on the part of Seattle.

They even automated prostitution

Coming to a TV near you, RACE TO THE BOTTOM!

The Australians seem to have figured it out.

Regarding the police dispatcher, s/he should be paid for the value of the work, not as some arbitrary multiple of another position's wage rate. The theory behind raising the minimum wage is that the janitor is currently paid less than the work's value. If this is also true for the dispatcher, then by all means, let's fix it, but that is a separate evaluation.

Right. It's much better to have the government subsidize all the people who now won't be hired because employers can't afford them.

Well, that's great news! We'll just have to adjust this continent to be Australia's size and shape, staht speakin' Ust-rile-yin, and, y'know, be Australia.

Gotta love lib'rulz. They don't believe in universal anything... unless they do.

None of that has anything to do with anything except American Exceptionalism...in this case, exceptional stupidity.

Geographically and culturally, Australia is probably a closer match to the U.S. than anywhere else.

On the other hand, so, apparently, have the Swiss.

However, the value of work is not determined in a vacuum. The skilled communication work of a 911 dispatcher with a high level of stress and responsibility isn't worth $22 an hour because there's something magic about $22. Its value is determined partly by the fact that in order to take a job with those stress and responsibility levels, a person with the required skills is going to want a higher standard of living than what they could get by doing something less demanding.

Which totally doesn't exist, of course. We're just exactly like everybody else. /sarcasm

Except when we make excuses for failing to master the rudiments of the minimum wage and healthcare and...the way every other industrialized nation does...

Riiiight. We should put even more power in the hands of government. Because that's working out so well so far.

Collective bargaining agreements are much more common in Switzerland, that means most of the country is effectively covered by a minimum wage while it isn't nationally enforced by the government.

that's only because Australia and Switzerland are near duplicate geographies and cultures.

Apparently you don't think The Market is capable of figuring it out...

There are plenty of low stress* $15 an hour jobs available now, why is the dispatcher not taking it?

*not sure if fast food qualifies as low stress.

Just b/c they border each other doesn't mean they are near duplicates. They US borders Mexico, you wouldn't say we were near duplicate geographies and cultures.

Don't know about where you live or what you make, but as someone who makes around what the dispatcher does I can tell you that $7 an hour raise around here makes for a SIGNIFICANT higher standard of living. Give me that and not only are we able to contribute more to savings but we get to the place where we start doing the math on Anne only working part time.

Now TAKE AWAY seven bucks an hour and that has even more effect, significant lifestyle changes. Renting out rooms, etc.

Somebody else want to tell Anc the difference between Australia and Austria?

Fast food (or any type of food service)isn't exactly candyland. Take it from someone who once did it, it's a VERY stressful job. Most of the people you deal with during rush hour are inconsiderate assholes who want it their way and they want it NOW. Plus your hours are constantly changing so you never develop a consistent sleep pattern which leaves you out of sorts.

Of all the jobs I've worked in my life, I would have to rate the fast food industry as the most overworked, least paid and least respected of them all.

Well-Paid Workers Strengthen Local Economies

Nick Hanauer is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist in Seattle. He is the co-author of two books, "The True Patriot" and "The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government."

UPDATED JUNE 5, 2014, 12:25 AM

Orthodox economists and trickle-down dogmatists are sputtering in disbelief over Seattle’s new $15 minimum wage, convinced it will destroy our economy. As House Speaker John Boehner is fond of saying, “If you raise the price of employment, guess what happens? You get less of it.”

They are wrong. Seattle’s minimum wage is already way higher than in most of America. Yet our economy is thriving. At $9.32 an hour, Seattle employers already pay 27 percent more than the federal $7.25 minimum wage. And our tipped workers earn $9.32 as well, 437 percent more than the $2.13 federal tipped minimum. So if Speaker Boehner is right, Seattle must have massive unemployment.

Yet of the nation’s 50 largest cities, Seattle ranked first in population growth last year and third lowest in unemployment. And according to the most recent Paychex IHS report, Seattle is second only to San Francisco in job growth in small businesses.

Guess which cities have the highest minimum wage? In order, San Francisco and Seattle.

This makes perfect sense. The fundamental law of capitalism is that when workers have more money, businesses have more customers — and more workers. A city in which restaurants pay workers enough so that they can afford to eat in restaurants, doesn’t have fewer restaurants. It has more of them. But if a worker earns only $7.25 an hour, almost no money goes to local small businesses. At $7.25 an hour, you can’t afford to eat in restaurants, go to the beauty shop, or buy flowers for mom.

If the minimum wage had tracked productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.70 today; had it tracked the wages of us in the top 1 percent, it would be $28. Raising it to only $15 in a city as prosperous and expensive as Seattle isn’t a risky experiment. The risky experiment has been the 30 years of trickle-down policy that enriched a few of us while eviscerating the middle class.

The most insidious part of trickle down isn’t the idea that if the rich get richer, that’s good for the economy. It is that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. A $15-an-hour wage isn’t a risky and untried policy in Seattle. It is the natural evolution of common-sense economic thinking.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebat...kers-strengthen-local-economies?smid=tw-share

Even the IMF now agrees that less inequality creates stronger economies.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/26/imf-inequality-economic-growth

The Australian economy outperformed most of the OECD almost certainly because the previous government avoided austerity measures and because the high minimum wage means we have a strong consumer base.

Austerity was a disaster for Europe. There is no question that countries that instead went the stimulus route recovered more quickly and thoroughly. Too bad the US didn't also get the wages part right.

Too bad half our stimulus was more tax cuts.

No, you ignored my point to restate yours. I'm calling your premise that 'the dispatcher will think that the shit ain't worth it and quit' into question.

Right now there are multiple times more $15 an hour jobs out there than there are $9 ones. And as T.R. points out generally speaking the current $9 jobs not only pay shit but suck to work, which won't change with an increase in pay. So if the dispatcher isn't quitting NOW for the current $15 jobs, why will they do so when there are more shitty $15 jobs?

You've got to answer that question before we go down your FUD rabbit hole.