Seattle just passed a $15 minimum wage...

Cargo cult economics at its finest.

http://www.seattletimes.com/busines...ss-rate-stays-steady-at-53-percent-in-august/

It's a job killa!!!1!



*I will note that this is MSA data and not just Seattle. However data earlier this year showed the city had lower unemployment than region as a whole (Eastside - Microsoft Suburbs had lowest) and city was pulling away from region as a whole.

And if they didn't have that wage law, unemployment would be even lower.

Alaska, Michigan and Taxachusetts are all growing faster economically than Washington, of course, along with the all the successful economies like Texas, W. Virginia, Oregon and No. Dakota.

Just imagine the economic growth Washington could realize (i.e. how much richer everyone could be there) if not burdened with price controls and other stultifying policies. But that's okay, some liberals can feel better about how swell they think they are, and self-satisfaction, after all, has a value too. [But please do check back at the next cyclical downturn on the value to taxable base of that smugness.]

Can you imagine how much lower it'd be without the sickleave law? You know the one 4 years ago Fox started this thread about:
Seattle Continues Efforts to Kill Jobs.

It'd probably be in the negatives!

That's a good point. The parts of the state that haven't enacted higher minimum wages and mandatory sick leave aren't doing nearly as well as Seattle.

Tuttle's list of successful economies and economies that are growing faster than Washington is pretty revealing. Based on that list, it appears the two main drivers for economic growth are (a) short-term influxes of cash from drilling for non-renewable natural resources, and (b) ... liberal economic policies.

Extrapolating from there...

Conservative economic policy: exploit the shit out of natural resources, blame the Fedgov for the inevitable bust.

Liberal economic policy: build an educated workforce for long term stability in growing tech field.

Yeah, that seems to cover it.

http://m.kiplinger.com/slideshow/bu...the-fastest-job-growth-2015/index.html?page=3

You will notice WA is number 2 on the list of states with the fastest jobs growth in 2015. #1 was Utah as it started fairly low and so it is easy to get higher percentage gains (I am sure it helps that population growth is high due to large families). Despite all the negative talk about of Republicans CA is #9 on the list for percentage jobs growth and it also creates more high paying jobs.

That's like "pressing our own pants." We can't just be our own customers and make any money. That said, drugs and prostitution need to be legalized on general principal.

First you get the money.

Then you get the power.

Then you get the women.

Please do not ever crow about liberal economic policies, you just sound asinine or ignorant. It's sad how locked in liberals are - we've seen no solid recovery following one of the deeper recessions in memory, although in past all economic slumps were followed by a boom time accompanied by healthy growth. No boom yet after the deep contraction following the sub-prime bust.

We have the Fed still giving free money after nearly eight years of zero interest fed fund rates, and talk of unprecedented QE4 to deal with our lackluster economy.

We have purportedly "full" employment with unemployment rates of 5.5% [false and misleading, of course, since the participation rate is at or near all time lows, and productivity is in the crapper] - but yet we've seen nary a hint of inflation that invariably accompanies economic growth -nor in fact have we seen any wage rate improvement during Obamadmins (so much for caring about the US wage earners, if actual results are any indicator). In fact so concerned is the Fed about the failure of any perceptible US recovery that it backed off on any hint that we might see a rate hike up from zero during 2015. So, full employment in nominal terms only, with feeble, sclerotic growth, is our new reality in America?

We see global demand so feeble and inventories so high so that commodities of all kind and everywhere are in a bust cycle, nearing all-time lows for many comm. prices. China and other third and fourth-world economies won't be filling the void left by the decline of the aged and decrepit US economy, not until commodities prices improve, so perhaps it'll be a long wait before people on the planet start getting richer again.

About 15 or 20 years ago the Economist mag. used to run cover articles about the US economy, and its role as the main engine keeping afloat world-wide economic growth (a picture of two-engined airplane with one engine running- that engine was the US economy, and the plane was the "World Economy").

Yet today famous economists talk of a "new" paradigm (that has accompanied obamanomics): that America should forget our consistent 3 to 3.5% economic growth during normal economic growth periods, because that's a thing of the past. That we instead should resign ourselves to two per cent growth like euroland as the best we can do in this "new" age (of obamanomics, I guess).

Fuckin left-wing circle-jerkers should be left to your own narrow fields of perception, t'won't be me educating you, but fwiw you should really find a couple of more sources of information and broaden your informational horizon, imho.

I love how the wing nuts keep trying to blame Obama for the baby boomers getting old and retiring. The fact is young people are having fewer kids and having them later in life while old people are living longer than ever. This combines to pushing down the labor participation rate because there are so many more old folks.

Yes, there is a reason The Economist speaks of a paradigm shift. Circumstances change, inputs change, economic results can't simply be wished, based upon past performance. It's like Jeb Bush pounding his chest and shouting 4%!!!! That's great, but if he thinks that can happen across the entire country, then he doesn't have a clue why Florida actually achieved that rate for a time (hint: population growth).

This.

This has been happening in Japan at an extreme rate where the population is expected to be half of what it is now in fifty years or so. It's part of why they've become more open to the idea of immigrants than in previous decades.

"Yo quiero sushi."

There's women?! I'm in!

One of the most homogeneous nations in the world welcoming immigrants? That'll be a hoot!

Well, welcoming may be an overstatement...more like a necessary evil like lawyers and such.

Between more women jumping into the 18 hour workdays that men have been expected to put in since forever and most males making Ted Wolf look like a stud in comparison with their waifu pillows, I wouldn't be surprised if they died off in 500 years (assuming global warming hasn't fucked the whole of mankind before then).

New data suggests no hiring downside:

http://www.investors.com/news/econo...ifed-seattle-restaurant-jobs-new-data-say-no/

Several other big cities with recent minimum wage hikes were studied, too, with similar findings. Seattle, Los Angeles, DC, the findings are consistent. The affected industries continue to expand, continue to hire. This is what we would expect, of course, unless you subscribe to discredited Reagan era supply-side theories.

That is consistent with evidence from the UK since the introduction of its minimum wage.

It takes some time, but now we see the effects of @Tuttle 's stupidity. How are louisiana, kansas, and other republican testing grounds doing? What say you michigan, how are you doing? Are those tax breaks for the rich bringing in big business? Is deregulation making business honest? The US red states have proven what I have said about Tuttle. He has his head shoved so far up his ass he cannot see a thing and he is so high on his own farts he is halucinating a fantasyland of his own ignorant and selfish desires.

First you get the monkey.

Then you get the chowder.

Then you get the linen.

Also from this week's news: Google to add 3k new jobs, quadruple Seattle presence.

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/google-plans-big-expansion-to-south-lake-union/

I wonder why they chose Seattle and not say right wing econ poster state Kansas. It makes no sense.

Oh yeah, and while quadrupling in size, they aren't adding parking:

“We’ve loved being in the Fremont neighborhood but will need a bit more breathing room,” Google Seattle site lead Clyde McQueen said in a statement. “We’ll still catch a view of Lake Union, just from a new location. We’re looking forward to walking, biking and riding the streetcar through the neighborhood.”

Commies!!1!

That's great news about Google, certainly, but I doubt it has much to do with the minimum wage directly. GE is relocating its HQ to Boston, also great news, but I doubt they considered Boston's living wage ordinance when making their decision. The larger story is that cities attracting educated residents will also attract high value employment. Such people tend to want a vibrant selection of restaurants and coffee shops, something that works best if we make such employment more attractive. There is a lot of synergy.

Where's @Volpone?

Yep. Not directly, but indirectly as a 'quality of life' incentive for companies to base here.

Price of Big Mac in Seattle: $4.46

http://www.humuch.com/prices/Big-Mac-sandwich/______/17#.VvbtCnlRHMs

Price of Big Mac where I live (San Antonio, TX, with only the Fed Min Wage): $3.20

Seattle price index relative to San Antonio 40.0 % higher prices using the BIG MAC INDEX (no PPP calculation since they're both in US). Fans of the Economist rag magazine will recognize veracity of BMI.

I'm glad for Seattlans but I wouldn't want to be one. I moved from New York to the best state I could find. We considered Florida, GA, NC, OK and other states with good policies and great growth. Nobody even considered the west coast because the horrific effect its policies would have on me, my savings, and my business. I'm glad my house cost 25% of what I had paid in NY (I shit you not) and my big macs (such as it were) cost 28% cheaper.

If I wanted to live under euro-standards of government intervention I'd have moved to Switzerland in 2008, or Montreal (euro-lite) in 2010. Certainly not Seattle which is a very nice place to visit if you love mist. Better than London anyway (only because it's much cheaper tho).

I agree that the data supports those cities being able to support those wages but there probably will be either reduced hiring or at least more selective hiring (only experienced people instead of taking a chance on teens with no experience). The big problems comes at the state level as rural areas get less commerce than urban areas thus it is unlikely they could support tge same wages as more dynamic cities. It is one thing for a city to pass it and another to have one MW for a whole state which includes lots of rural areas.

It does combine to create a net draas well as inflationary pressure but it is clear that right now the positive forces in the economy are bigger than the increased net drag. That would imply it still has an effect just not as big as some of the antis claimed. The other thing I wpuld like to look at is the ratio of independents to chains as large companies can more easily hand increased costs as they are averaging them over hundreds of restaurants where as a mom and pop might onlu have one.