Seattle just passed a $15 minimum wage...

None of those jobs are even close to minimum wage jobs so that isn't even a factor for a company like Google. It is lilely high paying jobs are more interested in the depth of the talent pool and cost to rent business space as well as business specific factors (like location of fiber or server farms).

The companies most effected by MW laws are companies with large numbers of MW workers.

Even in Seattle McD's is doing the 2 for $5 promotion where you get two big macs for $5. So the going price right now is $2.50 not $4.60. Oh, and things like input costs and rental costs factor bigger than wage costs especially in urban areas. As I said wage costs are certainly a factor but not as large as some have previpusly claimed. Of course, the flip side is the highwr wages get the larger of a factor they become wrt total business costs.

Great for Seattle, doesn't mean any town USA can support a $15 an hour minimum wage. McDonalds will be fine. What I want to know is how are the mom and pop stores doing, can they support that kind of wage?

It might not be right for all states, it might not be right for rural areas. The claim in this thread was that it was bad for Seattle. That is clearly not the case.

Yeah, but the argument from what I've heard from the left is that it should be the federal minimum wage. I think it was Sanders saying this. I doubt that would be good for everyone.

Who do you think pays the difference?

Most of the difference is likely made up of increased land and rental costs. I. E. the restaurant location might be $20,000 a month in NYC but just $450 a month in Cornhole, Arkansas.

I hear Cornhole, Arkansas stinks.

That's why rents are so cheap there.

I wonder if they're looking for a football coach/teacher...

According to employment figures, it's bad for employment within the city limits of Seattle, but possibly good for surrounding areas that are unaffected by the wage increase which might see increased business coming from the city.

And Seattle isn't at $15 an hour yet.

Companies with 500+ employees are at $13.00 per hour. Small companies are at $12.00 per hour.

Large companies won't pay it until 2017 and small ones have until 2021 to start paying it.

False. While it is still early and there is a lack of solid data, circumstantial evidence points to the opposite being true.

I believe it's 2021 if you offer health insurance, 2019 if you don't.

And once everyone is at $15, then it gets tied to inflation.

That much was kind of implied by the user handle of the first post.

I suspect the tied to inflation part will eventually end up being problematic especially if there is another stagflation period.

There is solid data. I posted it a few weeks ago.

The last graph compares employment in the city with the employment in the surrounding metro area. The losses in the city match pretty well with the gains outside the city.

False.

The numbers used were not employment IN a city, but employment of residents FROM a city. It was also based on a survey who's sample sized was so small they couldn't just do Seattle but had to mix in the other large cities and then layer in a bunch of assumptions.

Data was so bad the blogger had to admit it was BS: "Perhaps those BLS data are unreliable," he told me by email.

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-85985936/

Ah, so the Bureau of Labor Statistics can't be trusted, nor can the law of supply and demand.

Anything contrary to gturner's lies can't be trusted.

If the law of supply and demand held, your posts would dwindle and eventually stop altogether.

No, the American Enterprise Institute can't be trusted. This is the third time they've been busted using data out of context.

UC Berkeley touts $15/hr minimum wage - then fires 500 workers after it passes.

https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster

GT, you continue to use cooked data.

Nope. Not a single one, even if we raise it to $100 an hour.

Ah, now we've moved on to the reductio ad absurdum stage of the desperate flailing.

Speaking of which:

Early analysis of Seattle’s $15 wage law: Effect on prices minimal one year after implementation
....
The study, conducted between January and May 2015, surveyed 567 randomly selected Seattle employers as well as 55 workers, asking their awareness of and feelings about its expected and actual effects, to establish a baseline for that information.
...
Sixty-two percent of employers said they expected to raise prices of goods and services to accommodate the higher wages brought by the law. Ten percent of the employers believed incorrectly that the ordinance would force their business to move to a $15 wage immediately upon implementation.

But in an analysis of area prices over time, done through a combination of “web scraping” and in-person visits to grocery stores, restaurants and other retail locations, such price increases were not in evidence.

“Our preliminary analysis of grocery, retail and rent prices has found little or no evidence of price increases in Seattle relative to the surrounding area,” the team concluded.
...
http://www.washington.edu/news/2016...prices-minimal-one-year-after-implementation/

This would be expected as most of the imputs are from outside the $15 area. The main cost is going to be reduced hiring where ever possible. That said, most companies were already doing that so total effect should be marginal for modest increases in MM.

Over time I do expect the low skilled and/or inexperienced to lose out on opportunities as employers aim for only the best and most productive employees instead of taking a chance on lower skilled but formerly cheaper folks.

I hope you realize that the major driver of Puerto Rico's insolvency was forcing them to use the federal minimum wage? Their job market collapsed and they flooded to the mainland that could support a $7+ minimum wage.