The progressives who populate the Seattle City Council made dubious economic history on Monday by voting to increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.
The pay hike – which will be phased in over the next several years – is meant “to address the national trend of rising income inequality and a city that has become increasingly unaffordable for many of its residents,” the Seattle Times reports.
Good luck with that.
The $15-an-hour minimum wage law may feel good, but it’s actually going to cause economic hardship for a large segment of the population: teenagers and twenty-somethings who are trying to gain an economic foothold in the world.
While the new law allows employers to pay a lower “training wage” to teens and disabled workers – paging the ACLU – it will undoubtedly lead to an overall decrease in hiring of teenagers and other beginning workers.
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