Raising the minimum wage to $15 hour is merely a tax, a penalty on restaurant owners. One more attack on small business that will push the nail deeper towards big business controlling everything. I challenge anyone discussing this issue to state their business experiences and meeting payroll. My first business experience when I was 22 was building two restaurants. Start-up restaurants will drop drastically and this is one more move towards the imitation of the social democracy of Europe that has failed miserably. You can't legislate income equality. If anyone thinks the economics of this fashion work, look more closely at the failed systems of communism, socialism etc. I just read "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell who happens to be a great African American scholar and it helped me to understand the actual reality of a our great capitalistic system (which isn't perfect but as close as it gets) is and why we should be very careful before we tinker around with this proven system. Do you really think that someone who washes dishes should make as much as a college graduate? I washed dishes, was a cook, worked at Mcdonalds and eventually started my own business and have never looked back. With all these college kids out of work, we are going to give blanket raises to people just because we think they DESERVE it? With the internet, you can teach yourself how to code, how to do photoshop, build websites and a thousand other skills that would lead to better paying jobs. If you have never had to meet payroll do you really know the ripple affects of this move? Reading one economics book doesn't remotely make me an expert but it opened my eyes. Plus the dozen or so businesses I have built in my life. Before you jump to conclusions, please consider getting more info about this subject. From where I stand, if the whole country did what Seattle did, the ramifications will be devastating.

I have three sons and two of them work as life guards and they are building life experiences and work experience that will help impact their whole lives. What's going to happen when you have to pay a 16 year old kid $15 an hour? Their won't be these jobs, or as many opportunites for kids and young people or anyone for that matter to get working experience. Anyone who has a minimum wage job should be aspiring to getting training to get a better paying job. My first minimum wage job was $1.65 per hour when I was 13. How come these wonderful hard working people from foreign countries come here and don't even speak the language and before you know it, they own a small business and end up living the American dream? I can tell you why! Because they appreciate what we have here because they have a thing called "contrast." More importantly, they have instilled in them another attribute--work ethics. They will do whatever it takes to make it, even if it means working 7 days a week 12 hours a day. That is how hard I worked most of my life to build the businesses I have been fortunate enough to build. And I came from nothing. I meet people all the time who can barely speak our language and they find a way. Why? because they do not have a built-in American entitlement mentality. I know most are going to think I am a horrible capitalistic pig and that's just fine with me because I know that if you have walked in my shoes you would see what I see. Or at least you would pause for a moment. Life isn't necessarily supposed to be easy. Help from the government should only go to people who really need help. Not to blanket a gigantic group of people just because they don't have what others have. Who actually aspires to never leave a minimum wage job anyway? Anyone who has their mental faculties can work their minimum wage job and at night and on weekends can go online and--for free--learn just about any technical skill they want. Like coding, design, web development, and zillion other skills. Even my old ass has learned how to code by studying independently online. To me, all these weak views come from people who are not willing to do what it takes. We must become strong again in our will and our thinking and stop this entitlement mentality where everyone has to get their fair share. Get your fair share by working your ass off and nothing else. And if you need a helping hand somewhere along the way, our dear government has lots of help which is warranted to a degree. But moving more and more towards legislating everyone's success is going to end up tragic. So, for those of you who want to really argue the mandate of $15 an hour, what academic acumen do you base this theory on, or what EXPERIENCE do you possess that makes this anymore than an opinion that is baseless? Oh, I also do recognize that I am not really good at this commenting game. I am probably doing it all wrong. And more than likely I will even get kicked off. I tried to make a comment the other day praising a great African American leader and it popped up that I was making inappropriate comments. I can't even use the word that popped up. It begins with an "r" and in no way remotely was I making a comment like that. So, there you go, more policing of what is said and here we go with our government --who knows nothing about how business works--sticking their nose where it doesn't belong. Like the goofs in Seattle sitting on their boards getting their cushy benefits while they destroy the local restaurant owners. When their little experiment crashes and burns tons of hard working job creators, their retirements and benefits won't skip a beat.