Seattle's city council has made the audacious decision that if you're going to work within city limits, you deserve at least $15 per hour.
With the highest minimum wage in the country set to be phased in over three years, all eyes will be on the city to see which prognosticators' tea leaves are correct.
Business groups are decrying it, warning it will raise prices, push jobs out of the city and ruin the Seattle economy.
Labour groups are promising that this will be a boon to local business as employees will soon have more spending money to put back into the economy.
No doubt, some businesses already on the bubble won't have the wherewithal to contend with the higher overhead. That is the nature of venture capitalism.
But the trend in the last 30 years has been for the cost of living to rapidly outpace growth in wages and we worry this represents a greater threat to the economy as a whole.
Every year the cost of living in the Lower Mainland is dragged ever higher by our already absurd real estate market. Every extra dollar spent on housing is one that could have been spent in a local business.
To her credit, raising the minimum wage to $10.25 was something then-B.C. Liberal leadership candidate Christy Clark campaigned on and implemented shortly after becoming premier, though she has rejected recent calls to raise it any higher.
While $15 will hardly rescue the middle class, it's nice to see at least one jurisdiction has decided that the race to the bottom has gone on long enough.
