Dude, I just read online that Seattle, Washington just upped their minimum wage to $15 for the whole city. It said they are slowly rolling it out starting with the large businesses, but by 2021 every business is required to offer $15 an hour minimum.
My wife and I were talking about moving up there in a few years because of the quietness and beauty. This just made the idea look a whole lot more appetizing.
It’s getting closer to being ironed out. Sure it passed, but now… how do you actually make it work?
Many business have said they will pack up and leave the state if this becomes a mandatory across the board things. So sure there will be $15.00 an hour in one city, but no jobs available.
Plus… every year there is COLA increase. So the new rewrite would be in compliance with COLA anyway. It’s a very odd situation right now. If you want quietness and beauty, I’d say go to some of the towns just outside seattle. Shoreline, Burien still have property that isn’t through the roof.
My parent’s have been talking about moving to Shoreline. It’s only 30 minutes north of where they live now, and it’s so very much cheeper.
I would cry tears of joy if I made 15 an hour.
It’s in relation to the cost of living. If there wasn’t a rent jack up going on in the city, there wouldn’t be a need for a $15 hour minimum wage.
Now that more people are making more money, landlords are getting ready to raise rents again. I really hope our rent doesn’t go up.
I can see this as being a problem. Minimum wage goes up and so EVERYBODY wants a piece of the extra money people are gonna have, causing people to be more broke than when they started.
I think it’s happening to fast, they need to make small adjustments and give the economy time to adjust to the changes. Otherwise you get this feedback loop. If the economy resonates too fast in certain parts, it will tear itself apart like a wine glass + opera singer.
$15 an hour in the city isn’t all that much unless you live in the ghetto, and even there it’s kind of high unless you have rent subsidy.
I’ve made $15 and even $20 an hour in the city in the early 90s, and it covered bills and let me save a little and take road trips occasionally.
If the MW goes up I’m sure everything else will. How else will businesses survive? If they have to pay employees more, they are going to charge more for their products and services.
It sort of makes me sad to hear of some of my favorite shops ready to pack up and move out when this goes through… causing more loss of jobs in the area.
But your cost of living wasn’t 20 bucks for a greasy spoon dinner or $1,300 a month rent for a low income hole.
I’m lucky that my personal rent is low because I do yard work here to get a few 100 knocked off… plus the landlord is an old friend of my Dad’s. So at $900 a month, I paying well below market. Plus my sis splits rent and groceries and bills with me.
I was actually about $900 a month with rent and utilities. Electric was part of the rent but cable, phone, heating oil, and gas was what heated the water and the stove & oven ran by. What nailed me hard too was car insurance that was $130 a month for 10 months of the year. That was just my car.
I thought rent was supposed to be cheaper up there in Washington? Or is Seattle just expensive because of the high minimum wage? That was also one of the reasons for moving out of California was the cost of living here sucks.
Due to two stadium projects, a big dig tunnel and other stuff, tax in this city is high. Get out of the city limits and it all gets a lot more reasonable. There are some areas of Seattle that aren’t as desirable as other places so the property tax is still normal I’ve been thinking Shoreline would be our next move.
I don’t know how accurate this is, but i do know Washington has a high cost of living. Alaska is higher in some ways, but i also found Alaska cheaper for certain things, like a gallon of milk…don’t ask me how, they had no dairy farms where I was and Washington has many. that was years ago though, so i don’t know about now.
http://www.costoflivingbystate.org/
"Washington has the second highest price for housing in the nation. - ’