Except that the study found California economy grew faster than states with low minimum wages. The law is actually necessary for growth. Conservative economists just lied, nobody thought this was actually going to cause unemployment.

This is the message.

One of the reasons why equality is so freaking important for a market economy is because it lets more people participate in it - equality is prerequisite for a market economy (and a democracy, but that is another discussion)

This is a crazy take. It’s not the company’s responsibility to provide a safety net. It’s the government’s and the government should collect taxes to do so.

We already have a system for this in theory - the Earned Income Tax Credit. The program use to be widely supported by both Democrats and Republican administrations.

What’s a “living wage” anyway? It’s not the same for a single mother of 3 as it was for my then teenage son.

And I find it rich for people on HN to say that companies that can’t afford to pay its workers are commenting on a site run by a VC fund where almost none of its companies could afford to pay anything if they weren’t being propped up by investors and most of the companies will never make a profit

You're a tool... of landlord propaganda.

There is no such thing as a living wage in a housing market like this. The recent bill in WA to control rents limited rental increases to the rate of inflation plus 7% (or a flat 10%, whichever is lower). So when inflation is at 3% every year, and rents rise 10% every year, how long before someone who gets a 5% annual raise (40% higher than the rate of inflation) can't afford rent?

As long as the rental market cannot meet rental demand, raising wages just bids up rents. No more people get housed or are able to create savings to weather emergencies. All that money just gets transferred from business owners to landlords, using minimum wage workers as mules to transport the money.

Your bias is demonstrated by the fact that you seem to think this is all about greedy business owners and you put ZERO responsibility on the landowners and politicians who have perpetuated this housing crisis.

Meanwhile, in states without property tax caps, overheated housing markets raise the property taxes of seniors until they can no longer afford their homes, even if they're paid off. My property taxes are still just a fraction of my mortgage but they've more than doubled in the past 8 years and in another 8 years I'll be 64 and likely pay more annually in property taxes than in mortgage payments.

So seniors and digital nomads sell their ridiculously overpriced homes in superheated markets and take those profits to cooler markets, increasing property values and property taxes, which may seem like a benefit until it heats up the local housing market too much.

But we saw Marc Andreessen and his wife demonstrate their nasty NIMBY values trying to stop a measure increasing housing density in Atherton, California a few years back. The same hero of VC who invested 9 figures in Adam Neumann's housing startup doesn't want any of the plebes it would serve within a bike ride of his home.

What's funny(in a sad way) is that there are arguments made regarding labor to pick crops saying we need migrants because local labor won't do the work for cheap and regarding manufacturing saying that cheap labor enables us to have a higher standard of living.

Is it really that simple though? Aren’t there cases where if those same people would otherwise be unemployed, society might be better off having the perks of that business’ existance, and subsidizing those workers up to a living wage using tax $?

Thank you for stating this so simply and clearly.

It's absurd to see so many commenters, who are probably mostly wage earners, mindlessly repeat the right wing propaganda. Civilization needs some minimum decency.

Interesting perspective. I need a paragraphs worth of text translated once a week by a native speaker. Should my biz not exist or am I allowed to use "slave labor" fiverr?