Jester,

Some thoughts on both your posts today.

The economic reality for many segments of the population remains markedly mediocre to outright bad, depending on what demographic we are talking about.  Things are improving in a painfully slow fashion with little prospects of accelerating. The elderly and middle to lower classes have tons of impediments to a decent standard of living.

It is because of this reality that the economy will only grow in the low 2% range.  

A push for better wages is IMO, not a bad deal given how stagnant they have been for decades.  It may not be intuitive but it offers Wage Inflation and likely more money to flow throughout the economy.  Given where this economy is at now, this may not be such a bad thing.  It will allow people some additional breathing room, so long as inflation does not run out of control. There are questions of course: Is it going to create more loss of jobs?  I do not  have a categorical answer . As you know, conservatives insist higher wages do lead to higher job losses, but liberals offer studies that contradict that.  I would guess the truth is somewhere in the middle.  In addition to globalization, I think technology has been as big a culprit in job losses in the past 30 years.

The push for higher minimum wage in California will take until 2023 or 7 years.  I am not an economist, but that seems to be a reasonable time frame for business to prepare and adjust for the higher cost. Maybe, just maybe, contrarian thinking is the way forward?