If raising the minimum wage to $15 is a good idea and won't hurt the economy or cause layoffs, why stop there? How about $20 or $25?

The reason why council isn't going to $15 immediately is that they don't know if this will cause prices or rise or lead to layoffs. In February, the Congressional Budget Office (a nonpartisan agency) said that raising the country's minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016 would result in 500,000 layoffs.

Think of how many people that would be? 500,000 is equal to a city the size of Fresno. And they'd all be out of work and on the welfare dole.

A survey conducted in March by Express Employment Professionals found that if the minimum wage went up to $10.10, 19% of companies would fire workers, 39% would cut their hiring and 51% would raise their prices.

My guess is that the council is doing a favor for its union backers and not thinking this through. Time will tell.

As usual Jim Neal is the only one using common sense and looking at things from all the different angles. For the very small business it will be a shock because they will have to pay the raise plus all increased taxes .

After this article, Jim has my vote! I only wish there were three "Jims." To the other candidates, $15 an hour isn't going to solve the living wage problem. This issue has been around forever. You are only continuing the "entitlement" problem plaguing the United States. Based on the direction, we are heading to a social system like Europe. Is this what we want for Mountain View?

This will only force businesses to hire more illegals and underpay them and under the table. the cost of doing business in the city will skyrocket with these added wage raises. People start businesses to make money and not shell out more in wages to workers. I completely agree that workers need to make decent wages but that only is applicable where costs are decent. In Mountain view, living wage may be $100K or perhaps more. Does anyone see 'Pizza My Heart' or 'Chipotle' or some vietnamese noodle shop paying the workers $100K? or Google paying the janitors $100K?

What the heck ever happened to the law of supply and demand? Do these nut case candidates think that this "raise" will help? It is all part of the left wing and union selfish dialogue to push this country into Socialism, where everyone is dependent on the govt.

EGADS Mtn.View, wake the heck up...

Man, I hear all these "americans" bellyaching about these "illegals" taking their jobs. Why don’t YOU go work minimum wage or less? Know why not? Because YOU are lazy. On one hand you yell out "free market!" and "supply and demand!", yet having "illegals" come over and compete with you for jobs is as open as it gets! Want to have a truly free market AND let "supply and demand", uh, flourish? Open the borders? No work permits needed!

Did you know that farmers have to let crops rot in the field because they can’t get enough workers to harvest them? Even the "illegals"! So, get off your lazy "legal american" butt, get down to the central valley and break your back picking fruits and nuts! Or go clean out a toilet. Until then, you can just shut up when the community decides that below-poverty level wages is not good for the employees, nor is it healthy for our society or economy.

Lazy!

You are correct, 11 million illegals and the farmers still don't have enough to pick them. Tells me one thing, that the illegals are not here for the crop picking jobs, they are here to take all the fast food jobs or even your higher paying job.

It is nice to voice and feel what "would be nice"... BUT... what the heck ever happened to the law of supply and demand ???

Wake up MtnView...Sure... we should all get over 100K per year...Hey.. if an employee is good and works his/her butt off, they will rise to higher levels...If not, ain't that the way the world goes...

If the low income folks can't make it here, let them go elsewhere and open up those entry level jobs to high school kids...
So much of the low income folks today are sending huge chunks of the money back to their home land....
Wake the frig up.

Bye George.

I did have a minimum wage job... in fact a series of them when I was young, just entering the job market, and lacked job skills. In every case, after anybody was there 6 months, we received a raise in pay. Sometimes the raises weren't what I felt I deserved, and I moved on for better opportunities. It didn't take too long to realize that I'd never get anywhere without more valuable skills, so developing those became a priority.
Help wanted signs have sprouted everywhere in the valley, indicating a shortage of entry level workers. Anytime someone complains of being marooned in a dead end minimum wage job (sometimes for years!), I wonder why. After whatever period of service, are their job skills still so poor that they can be replaced by the next unskilled candidate? Why would they not work to improve their value? Or maybe it's just too much effort.