Do Poverty, Inequality, and Mobility Have a Lot in Common? Not Really

In June 2014, the Seattle City Council approved an increase of the minimum wage to $15 per hour, to be phased in over several years. In the ordinance itself, the authors cite the work of French Economist Thomas Piketty and the “need to act on income inequality” as motivation for the increase. But after a couple of increases in the minimum wage occurred (before reaching the $15 threshold), a research team at the University of Washington found that, “total payroll for such jobs decreased, implying that the Ordinance lowered the amount paid to workers in low-wage jobs by an average of $74 per month per job in 2016.”