Please read this article: To My Fellow Plutocrats: You Can Cure Trumpism . It discusses many of the themes we have discussed here over the years.

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The real threat to our republic is an alarming breakdown in social cohesion, and the cause of this breakdown is obvious: radical, rising economic inequality, and the anger and anxiety it engenders. The truth is that over the span of decades, American lawmakers (at the behest of economic elites like us!) have enacted policies that have depressed wages, stoked economic insecurity and exacerbated cultural angst and social dislocation. At the same time, a tiny minority of mostly urban elite (again, us!) have benefited obscenely from our growing economic, political and legal power.


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In 2014, when I last checked in with you all, my home city of Seattle had just passed a $15 minimum wage ordinance. Seattle we were told, would slide into the ocean. Restaurant closures. Epic job losses.

Over the last three years we have implemented the policy in stages. Today, all large employers—those with more than 500 workers on their payroll—pay their workers $15 an hour. Small employers pay between $11 and $13. So how is Seattle doing?

When the ordinance passed in June of 2014, Seattle’s unemployment rate already stood at a healthy 4.5 percent; in April 2017, it hit a record low of 2.6 percent. Seattle is now the fastest growing big city in America. Our restaurant industry is booming, second only to San Francisco in the number of eateries per capita, with food service industry job growth far outpacing the nation. Restaurateurs who once warned against raising wages are now complaining about how hard it is to fill the positions they have.

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