"Living wage" is a fallacy, simple as that. Is a living wage the same for a single parent of five as it is for a single, healthy adult? No.
I worked for minimum wage and lived with roommates for awhile, and I survived. Did I go begging for the government to put people out of work to give me a better more money? NO! I just got a different job and worked my way up to a better position.
Want to help the poor working low-income jobs? Why not LOWER THEIR TAXES! Why doesn't the state government give sales tax refunds at the end of the year to working class families? Sales tax hurts the poor more than it does the rich anyway. But no, the government needs its money to pay for its bureaucracy.
This is madness, plane and simple.

@2

Lookout everybody, we've got a temporarily embarrassed millionaire over here!

No-one is arguing that sales tax isn't regressive. Your arguments are (in no particular order) weak, previously disproved, and causing many herrings to blush.

So you all really believe that making labor more expensive will have no impact on demand for labor?

#2: You're really embarrassing yourself. Everyone gets it, you don't understand anyone who isn't a privileged white guy, bootstraps, Ayn Rand, government is force, etc. From now on just comment "MEMEMEME!" and it will save everyone time.

Danielle, honest question:
Does The Stranger provide a living wage of at least $15 an hour, health care benefits and paid days off to all of its employees and only contract with printers and other service providers who do the same?

If not, why not?

@4 & 6
I'm actually an African-American who was born into poverty and I currently make about 37,000/year. And I am 100% against any increase to the minimum wage, taxation, most regulations, wars of socialist-style aggression etc. Stop making fools out of yourself by generalizing.

@5

The existing evidence points to there being a direct impact on demand for labor, and guess what, it's *gasp* POSITIVE.

It's entirely shocking just what happens when the consumers in a consumer-based economy have more disposable income with which to consume products and services. Just shocking.

@7

Does any of their competition? If not, why not?

Bonus Question: What specific circumstances might cause The Stranger and its relevant competitors in Seattle to simultaneously begin offering the sort of pay and benefit offerings about which you inquire?

I’d like to see an organization (maybe a local publication???) certify local businesses as “fair and ethical” based on published, defined and measurable criteria. A “living wage” paid at all points of production being one of those criteria. Businesses could apply, and certificates suitable for display could be distributed annually to businesses that demonstrate and maintain compliance with the criteria. Suspect businesses that don’t apply could be invited to apply, and those who fail to respond or fail to meet the criteria could be published in a “black list” until they earn certification. Then we could “look for the union label” as it were and distribute our patronage accordingly. It could even award levels of approval (like Michelin Stars) and easily adjust the criteria annually to respond to changing times.

This could all be done without legislation, and it’s hard to believe that any business that failed to certify would last long in Seattle. Right?

I nominate the Stranger to implement this plan!
(Will it certify? How many stars will it get? How many of its advertisers will certify?)

@8

Don't you lump me in with the white privilege-accuser. I didn't say your were privileged, just stupid.

8: Sorry. I assumed you had self-interest in mind with your weird pro-rich-white-guy anti-minority Bollywood/ghetto rants. Silly me.

@11
You said I was "an embarrassed millionaire." Last time I checked, millionaires were indeed "privileged."

@12
First, anyone advocating for anyone in America is, on a global level, "pro-rich." Why? Because even lower income people in America are rich compared to people in the third world. Would you be okay with a 10% tax smacked onto the poorest Americas so the government can ship money to the third world? After all, compared to people in South Sudan, Guyana and New Guinea, those Americans working at fast food restaurants are the 1%.

Second, "progressives" are the real racists: they have this paternalistic idea that people of color can't do anything for themselves and need a socialist style government, run mostly by wealthy white liberals, to run their lives for them. Just as imperialism in Africa was justified with the racist "white man's burden," today's modern imperialism (neo-liberalism) is justified by saying essentially that African-Americans can't run their own communities and need government to come in and run them.

Third, liberty is in EVERYONE'S SELF INTEREST! I have the right to negotiate my own damn wages and I don't need the corporate-owned state to negotiate them for me.

Fourth, neo-liberalism/socialism is, by its nature, anti-minority. Under the statist-left, minorities will always be looked at as groups first, individuals a distant second. Under liberty, color and ethnicity don't matter as much as individual dreams, ambition, needs and desires.

Common Sense would tell us that the more they get paid the less they rely on the state for aid.

@2 You are F.O.S.

@13

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

- John Steinbeck

To reiterate, I didn't say you were privileged, just stupid.

@19
"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it"-Thomas Sowell.

As for calling me "stupid,": http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/4…

@17
The right is racists, okay...I'm a leftist, so what the hell does that have to do with me? I'm a left-libertarian, I hate government as much as I do giant corporations and see them as the same being. But unlike the "leftists" socialists who would replace the corporate-state with a socialist-state, turning us from obeying one master to another, we would replace the corporate-state with a minimal state and let communities do the rest.
Second, I'm an African-American. How can I be racist against myself? I've seen the black community be abused by government and seen government force its way to every aspect of black life. From welfare benefits that create dependency to the War on drugs to regulations on what few businesses blacks own, I've seen what the state has done to my fellow Africans. Goldy is suggesting it do something else: create a high-wage situation that will put what few businesses they have out of business.
We want blacks to be free to be a community again. Liberals want blacks to be enslaved by the state and regulated to death. Who sounds more like the racists here, us or them?
Third, this was the father of Libertarrianism...how exactly was he a "racist"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Sp…

@20: Thomas Sowell also compared President Obama putting together a relief fund for communities stricken by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to the rise of the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany. He's an idiot, and quoting him on anything weakens your position.

@23
I never said I agree with everything Sowell says, just that he's right about socialism. And John Steinbeck, the guy the other person quoted, was a VERY VOCAL supporter of the war in Vietnam and even shook hands with LBJ (may he burn in hell) thanking him for starting the war. So who quoting who makes whose position weaker again?