I was never unclear that it's about the living wage and not employees in one particular industry; nor that any living wage law would apply to all workers.

That's why "anyone making less than the new minimum" isn't so much foolish as employed by somebody's who's breaking the law. That kind of problem tends to take care of itself with only a little help from lawyers.

The thing about lamenting the disappearance of low prices when WalMart stops building its " empire on the backs of low wage workers" is that you, finally, introduce the question of morality. It's about time. I think that intellectual honesty obligates us to ask how much the resistance to increasing the wages of employees at WalMart or McDonald's isn't just self-interest; whether we're balancing justice versus the dollar amount saved. Those low prices come at a cost nevertheless, both from the hide of the workers, as well as from the consumers who supposedly benefit, but make up the deficit indirectly in taxes that support social welfare programs that take care of WalMart's and other's exploited workers.

If you can believe that the Invisible Hand will balance out wage increases, why not acknowledge that the benefit to employers of paying low wages is just a shift in cost to somebody else's pocket? It's not a real profit, it's a bookkeeping illusion. It's a fraud on the taxpayers.

Yet another sign that democracy died long ago in America, and that today we live in an oligarchy.