| Retirees and savers are not entitled to below market labor rates (nor interest rates high enough to live off of savings and investments [1] [2]). Save more and/or get a job. Unemployment is at its lowest in 50 years [3]. This would be the ideal time to implement minimum wage increases, so any workers let go are reabsorbed into businesses that can pay the new minimum wage (while those that can’t go out of business). "Creative destruction" and all that jazz. The more disposable income minimum wage earners have, the more mobility they'll have, and with it the ability to move to locales with better housing affordability. The Fed can’t generate a small bit of inflation with trillions in quantitive easing and holding interest rates down (and as a side note, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis has even said "Pay more" to attract the workers needed [4]); raising the minimum wage is unlikely to cause inflation any appreciable fashion (compared to existing housing and healthcare market dysfunction). Previous HN thread 15 days ago [5], with WSJ article showing the federal minimum wage bump to $15/hr can be implemented with little downside, along with the CBO report the article is based on [6]. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-23/a-decade-... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-27/intere... [3] https://www.npr.org/2018/10/05/654417887/u-s-unemployment-ra... [4] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/07/20/low-infla... [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20385740 [6] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55410 |