What Mitch McConnell Gets Wrong About the Minimum Wage

If San Francisco passes a ballot measure this November, almost one-quarter of San Francisco's workforce will get a raise. That's a lot of grateful voters. But by the time the full force of the measure takes effect (in 2018), many of those workers may not reside any longer in San Francisco, forced out by the steep and rising costs of housing—if they can even afford to live in the city now.

A new report from the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics (CWED) finds that about 142,000 San Francisco workers stand to gain from the measure, which would increase the minimum wage to $15 over four phases by 2018. The minimum-wage hike would boost aggregate earnings in San Francisco by nearly $400 million, the report says, with the bulk of the benefit going to workers of color. Some three-fourths of San Francisco's working poor families will get a boost from the measure, if it passes.