A year after Seattle’s minimum wage ordinance is signed into law, the sky remains aloft

In the year between the first Seattle fast food strikes and the passage of Seattle’s landmark $15 minimum wage law, business lobbyists and self-appointed experts insisted that they knew what happen if we raised the minimum wage. It was Economics 101, they’d say: higher wages would surely sink the economy. Businesses would be destroyed. Franchises would cease to exist. Prices would rise 25% or more. Open for business signs would go dark, owners would move to Texas, and Seattle would become a city of Cheesecake Factories. It hasn't quite turned out that way.

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You gotta see the looks on the faces of these Chamber of Commerce guys

The Thurston County Chamber of Commerce is teaming up with the Washington Restaurant Association to oppose the $15 minimum wage in Olympia — and then they invited Alaska Airlines CEO Brad Tilden to be their keynote speaker. So Olympia workers showed up and made sure their voices were heard too.

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2 of the 5 restaurant owners featured in KUOW scare story on $15 are actually opening new restaurants this year

It’s remarkable enough that NPR thinks it’s appropriate to do a story about the impact of $15 on restaurants without talking to a single restaurant worker or restaurant customer. But it’s even more amazing that they apparently didn’t bother to google the names of the restaurant owners either.

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About that story on zPizza and Seattle’s minimum wage…

Apparently one California-based international pizza chain has decided they somehow can’t succeed in Seattle’s Capitol Hill — one of the fastest-growing neighborhoods in the fastest-growing large city in the United States. Meanwhile, 14 different Seattle pizza places have posted job openings on craiglist in just the past week.

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