The navel gazing continues.

@1 It's a pretty good navel, tbh

@2 and @3 I invite you to look at the endorsements as listed at the candidates' own campaign websites. McGinn has a whole slew of labor unions plus the teachers' union and environmental groups. Murray has a teamster and some transit unions, but he mostly has a bunch of old-time politicians as well as the business groups - the establishment. Plus he has the damn Seattle (Bellevue) Times.

So, in other words, you're full of crap.

In addition, McGinn's mayoral record, which Murray has none, shows a city that faired pretty well while the rest of the country went down the crapper. I don't know why you fire a guy who's gotten the job done, unless you're the Big Money - the establishment - and you think somebody else would let you get more of your hand in the cookie jar.

Also, I wouldn't bet on Murray winning. That's the conventional wisdom, but that's just because Murray has the establishment's backing - the media and the money. However, McGinn has done too good a job, his policy positions better represent Seattle, and too many people know it. We're told repeatedly "Murray's going to win!" But that's just a bill of goods. If that was really obviously true, they wouldn't need to keep convincing us.

We're repeatedly told, ad nauseum, that if we pay workers $15 an hour and give them benefits then society will collapse. It's so obvious! Right now, the highest minimum wage (and correct me if I'm wrong) is in San Francisco, while the highest state minimum wage, as stated in the post, is right here. Both places are doing fine. The states with the lowest minimum wage? Minnesota, Wyoming, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Puerto Rico (not really a state, of course, but it fits my argument), Georgia, New Hampshire. I like Minnesota and New Hampshire (hell, parts of South Carolina are downright beautiful), but, by and large, you don't see these places thriving. If a low minimum wage meant more and better jobs then the South would be the economic powerhouse of the nation. Everybody would be moving there. Well, they're not.

Maybe we won't improve on the rights of workers nationwide, but if we can have little islands where the living is good, then those islands can serve as the examples of what happens when you move more of the general wealth back to the workers, as opposed to stealing it from them and concentrating it on the top with the promise that it'll "trickle down". Right... Their urine is the only thing that trickles down.

So on the continuation down this road, what about an initiative to cap public salaries at something line 20 times the average state public salary? Last I looked, that would put the cap somewhere around $750,000, granted, a little high in my book, but lets get the conversation started, right? Goldy, you have experience with the initiative process, is this feasible? Where do you suggest one starts with something like this?

Boeing hires grade 4 mechanics to build airplanes at … wait for it, ok, $15 an hour.
http://www.iam751.org/pages/currentwagec…

Somehow Boeing is able to pay $15 an hour, provide paid sick leave, and medical benefits.

@9 Why $7.25, you cheap bastard? Why not $15? Why do you hate workers so much?

There is a candidate that is going to fight for $15/hr min. wage if elected. Kshama Sawant. I also like floater's point. A higher minimum wage puts money into the pockets of low-wage earners who spend almost, if not all of their earnings into the local economy. But then again, the fast food industry's record profits might take a hit and that wouldn't look good in to investors, so...

This is a fantasy right?

Seattle is in the hands of the petit bourgeois and greedy land owners and rentiers.

Local government seeks to drain the wealth of the workingman with high sales taxes while funneling it all to those would put them into 125 sq. ft. kennel apodments.

The average workingman at a plant in Memphis, living on a 2 acre spread, with 4 to 5 vehicles ends up with much greater pure wealth than his beleaguered Seattle counterpart!

Bailo, sometimes your posts almost, sort of make sense.

@12 is not one of them. In fact, it's about as incoherent a statement as you've ever posted.

Please, in future, for your own sake, if for no one else's, do not post in the midst of a vodka-and-Vicodin binge...

Comte, sometimes I really wish Slog had a like button. As in, when I read your post @15.