This week’s decision by the Los Angeles City Council to raise the local minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour by 2020 is part of an intriguing development in urban politics and social policy. Reacting to grassroots campaigns carried out by labor unions and other progressive groups, some of the biggest cities in America are now defying several decades of economic orthodoxy, as well as challenging a set of social norms that regarded low-wage jobs as unavoidable and acceptable.
For years, efforts to raise the minimum wage at the federal and local levels faltered, despite the fact that, over the past few decades, it has failed woefully to keep up with inflation. (The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour.) But something is different now. Last June, Seattle’s City Council voted to raise the minimum wage from $9.32 an hour to fifteen dollars an hour by the end of 2017 for large businesses, a huge hike by the standard of previous raises. In November, residents of San Francisco approved a ballot measure that would also set a minimum wage of fifteen dollars an hour, to take effect by 2018. Other cities, including Chicago, Kansas City, and Oakland, have joined the wage-raising trend, or appear poised to do so. (In an informative post, NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben provides the full list.)
[For more of this story, written by John Cassidy, go to http://www.newyorker.com/news/...t-is-about-to-unfold]
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