ILLINOIS - You're probably going to get it.
And if you think things in Illinois are in destructive mode now, just wait til this is implemented.
While we've written about this before when the threat was $10 an hour (still too high), here are your drawbacks to the current disaster, in a nutshell:
The only employers who can afford $15 an hour minimum wage are the big employers; medium-sized and small businesses will not be able to do this, even on a 6-year phase-in, and will likely close, if not lose all staff in an effort to hang on. Look for your main employers - mom n pops places you've known all your life - to close up en masse.
If they don't close, your costs are going to go up exponentially. You can't expect to be a baker selling cookies 2 for $3 paying her employees effectively a wage that's doubled (even over 6 years). In 6 years, expect to be paying $5.50 for those two cookies....if she's still in business.
Minimum wage earners by and large don't understand that as their pay goes up, so goes their taxes (that's what this is all about....collecting more taxes). So between more being taken out of a minimum wage-earner's paycheck off the top, and increased costs for goods and services taking it off the bottom, there's actually not much benefit for the recipient. Plus...do you think public aid will adjust minimum income accordingly...? Think again. They're still adjusting from the last minimum wage increase. That's why some people who actually NEED food stamps can only get $16 a month.
The people who really are going to suffer, other than employers, will be mid-level employees who have worked their way up from minimum wage positions over the years. A person who's already making $15 an hour are going to expect an increase, too. If paying $15 an hour minimum is impossible, $20 an hour for a 10-year employee will be out of the question. Expect services to suffer as people with years at their job will go elsewhere, leaving the inexperienced (but makin thayut thur FEEYUFFTEEN DOLLURS UH HOUR!!) to tend to the jobs the experienced are vacating.
People who have never owned businesses, we've discovered, are the ones who shriek at articles like this. Also, those in government. Which should tell you a lot. We, as employers, should not be FORCED to pay a certain amount for employees; the market should dictate such a thing. $15 an hour doesn't work; places that have implemented it have discovered quickly that it's unsustainable. The way things are going in Illinois, the whole state is already in an unsustainable position. This might just be the deathknell we've all been dreading.