I know plenty of tiny local business with less than five employees who will go out of business if something like this passes. I guess they could turn all their hourly employees into salaried ones, though? Regardless, any life you can live on the state minimum wage is going to be a rough one (if you aren't a teen still living at home, that is), don't get me wrong, but there will have to be some exceptions to a $15 an hour Portland minimum wage law.

If just changing the minimum wage to 15 is the end-all-beat all answer to all our poverty needs, why not just make it 25 or 30 and move these folks solidly into middle-class range?
Make it 50, and we will all be rich vacationing in the south of France, right?
What could possibly go wrong?

Justin, do you think that there might be room for exceptions if everyone had a basic income? You say no one who works should live in poverty, and it's hard to disagree with that, but with the tremendous wealth of this society we are just as well poised to say that no one should live in poverty for lack of work or an unwillingness to work for the kind of bullshit jobs that dominate the economy. While I would vote yes for a minimum wage increase, and will encourage others to do so, on the level of speaking to what matters I'd rather point to a future where people have the ability to reject working at even a $15 fast food job or an erratically scheduled Wal-Mart job than get overly celebratory about a technically feasible redistribution of profits that basically conserve those industries.

If small businesses were more fully aware of the public and private resources, then two important things could happen: Enhanced growth, and the ability to raise wages. Until this can be fully realized, we won't solve this crisis!

We've got to improve the playing field for small businesses to be able to reap the benefits of accessing timely information and resources, so that they are empowered to hire more employees, and fewer layoffs.

No, you don't know plenty of local businesses that will go out of business should this pass - because they won't. Raising everyone's wages will raise revenues for small business, this should actually benefit small businesses disproportionately because people with more money in their pockets are more likely to spend it and spend more of it with small businesses. It's working in Seattle and nobody is going out of business there as a result.

Tipping is supposed to be a reward for good service, not because you know your server is paid crap and needs tips to survive.

@ guspasho

Do you ever worry about knowing what you are talking about? Maybe you are just completely clueless as to just how close profit margins are for tiny restaurants and food carts in this town. Either way, you're wrong.

Wait, so raising the minimum wage to the point where a small business can no longer make payroll will somehow "raise revenues for small businesses"? Wow.

Funny thing, the naysayers have said the same thing about every minimum wage increase ever.

@dimitri How ironic that the person accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about actually does not know anything himself.

We've raised the minimum wage many times, and every time the whiners complain that it will kill the restaurant industry and cause mass layoffs, and yet it never does. Why? Because higher wages = more spending money.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/p…

http://www.ocpp.org/1999/rpt0399Rest.pdf

If the minimum wage increase was spread out over five years instead of three I think small business would be able to absorb the payroll hit better, who knows, maybe three years would work for some. The businesses that would shut down because of the increase probably weren't doing that well in the first place, anyway.

They also said all the bars would go out of business if smoking was banned on premises. Yeah, totally unrelated, I know.

Raising wages and taxes will result in fewer jobs. As deflation continues to lower the price of goods and services, the dollar becomes more valuable, as people have less money. Tax revenues are drying up, and soon, Government will not be able to meet payroll, at all. Feel good legislation might get politicians re-elected, but that's about all.

But how will you feel when your PBR costs $6?

This eliminates the middle class! There will not be raises! This is extreme socialism! Watch hyper inflation annihilate us! It will make everything worse! It will devalue the American dollar! i make $12 an hour and I know this! Educate yourselves before this is pushed. $15 is not a livable wage- the one's that actually have this are making $23 on up, and with insurance, its more. Dont believe the hype! It will not put more money in your pocket. Its only more money they will take away. Really look at it and do your research. Dont do it!

Oregon state wants you poor! They are one of the most taxed in the whole country and look at all the addicts, the education system, the foster kids, the housing, poverty,on and on. What they are doing has not made us better.

@Panamaniac Dread

Raising wages results in *more* jobs because unlike taxes, wages get recycled directly back in to the economy as revenues. Increased wages -> increased spending -> increased demand -> increased revenues -> more jobs. Keeping wages down is what actually results in fewer jobs because when nobody has any money, they don't spend it (shocker!), and businesses don't make any money, and can't afford to hire any workers.

If you make minimum wage now, and you got a raise to $15/hr, what would you start spending your extra money on? Or, if you already earn $15/hr, what do you spend your money on that you didn't when you only earned minimum wage? The businesses that sell those things will benefit from your spending, raising their revenues, boosting their profit margins, and helping them to pay their employees $15/hr if they didn't already, and requiring them to hire new employees to keep up with the increased demand.

This is what the economy is - everybody spending money, which fuels everyone else's spending. When you don't have any money, you have no economy. When nobody has any money, there is no economy.

Most small business owners understand this which is why they overwhelmingly support raising the minimum wage. (http://www.smallbusinessmajority.org/small…)

Small businesses with thin margins are caught in a trap. Their employees are rarely their customers. If they pay their own workers more but nobody else does, the effect on their own demand is negligible. It's only when all businesses pay their workers more that their own demand will increase.

We aren't discussing raising taxes and there's absolutely no reason to think that raising the minimum wage would cause deflation. I don't think you know what you're talking about with either of those things.

@Demondog PBR wouldn't cost $6, but you would be able to afford $6 microbrew pints if that was your preference. Businesses still have to compete and nobody is going to raise prices as long as their bottom lines can afford it. Raising the minimum wage has a negligible effect on inflation (and certainly won't cause deflation) because we aren't printing money, only redistributing it. Businesses are making record profits, while wages have remained stagnant for decades, many businesses can afford to pay workers more without raising prices.

I'm just curious how this will affect the price of legalized weed.

I have some questions. First, will employers also be required to raise the wages of all workers already making above $15.00/hr? For example, would someone earning $16.00/hr get raised up to over $21? Or would they stay the same, effectively creating a mass "fifteen dollar" class of worker? And if that is the case, how do we then decide what or who qualifies for social services?

Exactly, any worker now earning 15 would most assuredly get pissed that the new guy or gal is suddenly making what it took them time and learning to achieve, and this will work its' way up the pay scale, as they demand more for their abilities now that the baseline has changed.
The question remains, if 15 is the end-all, beat-all answer -which it seems to me is very poorly thought out- then why wouldn't making the minimum wage 25 be even better?
At what point is it harmful?
We can always just print up a bunch of money, much like the Russians did, and devalue the dollar while causing huge inflation.
Then you are right back in the same boat.
Jeez, this seems to be so obvious.

Except we aren't talking about printing money, because that's not what raising the minimum wage does. The federal minimum wage has been increased dozens of times yet inflation is at a near-record low, and the inflation rate has shown no correlation to the minimum wage or the wage level. Raising the minimum wage does not cause inflation.

Why? (It's funny how conservatives always forget the basic economics they love to cite when it's inconvenient.) Because businesses still compete with each other. Nobody is going to raise prices before their competition as long as they can avoid it. Business profits are at all-time highs because productivity has doubled in the last 40 years, but wages have remained stagnant. They have spent the last several decades claiming all the increased productivity of the American worker, and giving none back to the worker. They can most certainly afford to pay their workers more.

The only way to raise civil servants' pay is to raise taxes, unless State university presidents take a cut from their $400K annual salaries to cover.

We are currently in a deep recession which is resulting in DE-flation, not IN-flation. This isn't being reported by 90% of the media which is owned by 6 corporations, that are controlled by the backers of the corrupt politicians who cook the books to lie about the tanking economy.

Deflation is a surplus of goods and services, like oil, gasoline and car rentals, and a shortage of cash. The money for pay raises has to come from somewhere, and neither the Federal Reserve or the US Treasury is printing any more, or oil would be in more demand, not less. Oil is a measure of manufacturing output, as it takes more energy to produce more goods. Since nobody is buying any manufactured goods, oil consumption is down, creating a surplus of oil which lowers the price.

I'm going to repost an old comment I wrote a week or so ago because my outlook hasn't changed and I don't feel like repeating myself:

"I just think it's an incomplete fix without a check on inflation to match the increase. Going to the movies used to cost a nickel, the cost of the first production model Corvettes in 1953 was $3490 (thanks Wikipedia), and so on, and so on. To me inflation is a game played with numbers to trick younger generations into thinking they are doing better than their parents were. "My pops only made $25,000 a year at the steel plant but I make $65k as a web designer"... but the purchasing power of his money was twice what yours is. It says exactly what it is: a new $15/ hr minimum wage. You will have to have it to afford the steadily increasing local rents and barely scrape by as the costs of food and services steadily rise as well. Look at someplace like San Francisco, the sky is the limit. You can pay somebody $30/ hr if you like but if rent on a one bedroom apartment is $2500 a month and simple items like a sandwich at a deli cost $15-20 suddenly you are right back where you started. Right now real minimum wage to not have to share a house and to have regular utilities and eat comfortably with a small entertainment and savings budget is probably $45,000 a year before taxes (take home about $35k) and that works out to roughly $22.50/ hr for 2000 hrs of work in a year (50 weeks @ 40 hours). In another 100 years everybody can be a millionaire if that's what it takes to make them feel important."

Dred, dude, lay off the pot. For all of us.

The decades long trend of inflation is over. There is no such thing in economic terms as "Depression," but back during the so-called, "Great Depression," the problem then was Deflation not Inflation. Gold is deflating same as oil, and eventually even food will be cheap, but nobody will have the money with which to buy it. The real estate bubble is getting ready to burst again, too. There is a surplus of realty on the market, but the banks don't list for sale the foreclosed properties, because they wish to create an artificial shortage in order to keep the prices high. Soon, there nevertheless will be a 90% correction in real estate values as well as the Stock Market.

That's why the Joint Terrorism Task Force is militarizing local police, but relax. After the Rapture, The Antichrist will render all of the World's WMDs, inert, and create an economic boom during the first half of the seven year, Great Tribulation. It will be a time of spiritual deception, sex, drugs, and rock and roll! You won't even have to take the Mark of the Beast until after the Antichrist recovers from an apparent mortal head wound, proclaims himself to be God, and creates a great big giant robot that looks just like him and is tied into the Internet.

Fucking Commies.

What liberals and Mr Caleb fail to tell you is if this is forced on us companies will cut hrs, jobs and benefits plus pass the costs on to all of us in higher prices.

If companies were able to raise prices, they would have done so already.

Companies will respond by cutting hours, jobs, and benefits, but if prices are raised, even more profits will be lost due to decrease in revenues. Most likely companies will simply go out of business.

You won't have to raise taxes at all when you are raising incomes already. Higher wages -> higher tax receipts. Since most people who will benefit from this are private employees and there are few public employees that make less than $15/hr already, the increased tax receipts from the raised wages would easily cover it.

Again, there's absolutely no reason to think that raising the minimum wage would be deflationary. Such a thing can only come from a profound misunderstanding of economics.

Guspasho's argument is essentially taking water from the deep end of a swimming pool to fill up the shallow end.

Your analogy is horribly flawed, as usual. How do you think wealth is created in the first place, Spindles? What do you think an economy is?

@Matthew Vandress

I have been explaining to you why that's wrong in this very thread. You conservatives refuse to listen.

Well than here's another one for you, guspasho: I need a blood transfusion, so I will take several pints of blood from my left arm and put it in my right arm, while spilling a bunch along the way.

Where exactly do you think that this money will be coming from again? Your proposing to essentially tax it from the productivity of other people, thus reducing demand somewhere else. Labor is a product. The worker is the producer, and the employer is the customer. The price of labor rises, and so people buy less of it. Unemployment rises, and people with jobs find themselves either laid off or forced to work fewer hours in order to reduce costs.

The notion that reallocating resources to the poor is going to create enough demand in the general economy to off-set the higher price of labor is specious at best. Poor people tend to buy things like consumable goods; food, utilities, rent, ect. They don't tend to save up a lot of money in the here and now and invest it into building a business, capital goods and capital growth that will increase productivity over the long run. You're working off an economic model where I can come into your store, take 100 dollars out of your cash register by force with the vague promise that I'll spend it in your store later. You're not 100 dollars richer.

Raising wages is not deflationary. Raising wages ought to be inflationary, but there aren't any discretionary funds to raise wages with. Deflation is a shortage of dollars relative to a surplus of commodities, goods, and services. Yes, it would be nice to have a raise, especially for low income recipients, but raising wages is like your cutting off the branch upon which you sit.

As a matter of fact, right now, the Senate plans to lower the minimum wage, and employing hundreds of thousands of new immigrants.

http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/senators-scheme-to-import-more-foreign-workers/

Don't worry, righties. When the $15-an-hour zombie apocalypse devastates the Northwest, you can go find refuge in the booming, thriving Promised Land of KANSAS.

Perhaps it should be reasserted that most of the folks who don't support a 15 dollar minimum wage (I make a little over 13 dollars an hour) do so not because they hate poor people and want them to suffer, but probably because they're concerned about the increased burden to the poor by way of the inevitable labor slashing and benefit cutting that will happen.

They might also be also be wary of the inequity where the majority of a workforce in an industry that hires entry level employee's at minimum wage, who have assumed more responsibilities and make more than minimum wage, will have their labor and skill-set reduced in value when matched up against a new 15 dollar entry level wage.

Plus, there's the fact that violent force and coercion via the state to mandate wage controls, courtesy of politicians and groups that are utterly divorced from minimum wage hiring industries and have no sympathy for their financial constraints and limitations, is never a great or ethical plan to solve complex social problems.

Kansas will likely be a more stable, less violent state to live in after the shit hits the fan. At least they still farm.

@Spindles

Your analogies are still wrong. The patient doesn't need a blood transfusion, he needs his heart restarted. The pool is stagnant. We are talking about economic activity, not money supply. The economy is not the pool, it's the circulation.

And you cannot have a thriving economy when most of the producers cannot afford what they produce. The share of output enjoyed by labor has shrunk from half to a third in the last 40 years, there is no natural reason that has to be the case other than employers' greed. You would not complain if employers raised wages voluntarily, and you would not say the same thing would happen, would you? Because it would not. If employers voluntarily raised wages, you would see more money in workers pockets, which they would spend, which would increase employers' revenues, which would create jobs and drive new business growth. you can't start new businesses without demand, not the other way around. We're everyone to save as you suggest, the economy would fall apart, which is part of the problem we are having now, the people that have the money, employers, aren't spending it, because no one is buying, and the people that would generate demand aren't getting the money. Raising the minimum wage would solve that problem. It would also be the moral thing to do because there is enough wealth in this country that no one who works should have to live in poverty.

end corporate welfare before poor parent welfare

......have not read a single thinga bout the $15 , and I don't care. I work with the hands god gave me and get shit for it. Real currency is more than green paper and fools who think $15 means anything are just fools. If people want to play you they'll play you $15 or not. THink about it; they upped your rent without your consent how you thing $15 with their consent gives you any power? Power is in the walls your liiterally getting paid $15 / hour to build dumb asses

Food stamps is corporate welfare. It's a program of the US Department of Agriculture, established due to lobbying efforts by big, corporate agriculture. When people buy food, it benefits farmers, most of which are big corporations, nowadays.

Scripture says that we should all be farmers, fishermen, or carpenters; anything but a merchant or banker.

9.25 is too low, 15 too high.