LT, I just think there's no such thing as a free lunch, and mandating by law that kind of wage growth is one more example of the Govt thinking things are free. I mentioned the situation of workers being funded by tax revenue. I seriously doubt that taxpayers will vote in higher taxes, which means there must be job losses there and with it a reduction in services for the public for the same tax burden. With Walmart, we saw profit target cuts, store closures and layoffs, and we can expect the same of this elsewhere in the economy because there's no such thing as a free lunch (inb4 Yellen...). None of this addresses the real problem anyway: the wealth divide, the loss of better paying jobs, and the anemic rate of job creation. We have so many working poor now, seven years into the "recovery", because of all the globalization and policy errors of the last decade, and I fear that forcing such earnings growth by law leads to other short term consequences, and that they'll be equally poor in a few years time. Getting paid $15 in 2022 is not going to mean they'll be living the California dream by then. Hell, that's nowhere enough to live the California dream now.