I think most people in this country, even the 1%, are on board with the idea of living wages. But I think they are looking at the issue as not being very black and white. It's not a matter of "should we give them a living wage" but "how do we do this without tanking our economy?"

Anyone here should be able to understand that there will be a very big impact if we give a 50% raise to that many people. The money has to come from somewhere. And while we all know where that money is (executive salaries and bonuses) we also know what will happen if we try to cut it. Those executives will leave for greener pastures in a different company or state, which will have a catastrophic impact on the company and the state.

With the rise of automation, what we will probably see, if everyone got that 50% raise, is a massive increase in jobs being replaced by automation and hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions, not only McDonalds) of people flooding the unemployment lines with no skills. Imagine 10 million non-skilled workers who have been replaced by robots due to rising labor costs. What are we going to do with them? The only solution is that the country will turn into a welfare state.

Predicting the cause and effect of a wage increase is a scary task. What I think is important is that we have to look at the problem from a larger perspective. I think it's narrow minded to just focus on hourly wages when CEOs are still getting golden parachutes. The bigger picture is that we need to figure out how to keep executive salaries limited so that living wages can come directly from the coffers of the company and not wind-up as a tax burden on the state. (wellfare state) The only way that's going to happen is with legislation. And the only way legislation is going to happen is if we stop unchecked corporate contributions to political candidates. Until we fix that, there is little point in doing anything else.