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Nasir and Matt talk about the effects of Seattle raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and discuss whether cities like San Diego will follow suit. They then answer, "In late November 2013 I bought some things for a local business and was given a check for the exact amount a few days later. I had forgotten about the check for 2 months and when I went to the bank to cash the check, it bounced due to a closed account. I called the business owner and they said someone had stolen their checkbook awhile back and they had to close the account, and not to worry as they would write another. It's been 4 months now of me texting them each week asking about the check she was supposed to leave at the business and they always just come up with some excuse." Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: This is Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, submits to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. MATT: For our loyal listeners, they heard a slightly different intro. This is our alternative intro. As you said, “this is” instead of “welcome” and that’s all right. NASIR: I thought I usually say “this is” but do I say “welcome” first? I don’t remember. MATT: Well, I think it’s still fine. It doesn’t have to be the same every time. NASIR: Well, big news in the northwest, huh? MATT: Yes, we talked about this at the beginning of the year. I didn’t really want to talk about it again – a repeat – but this is just too big of a story to pass up. For those of you that don’t know, Seattle just approved what’s going to be the highest minimum wage in the country. It’s eventually going to crawl up to $15.00 an hour. I think the state minimum wage is the highest right now at $9.32 so this is a pretty significant increase. Also, San Francisco had the highest minimum wage and that was $10.74 an hour. This is just a huge jump up from what it’s been. Obviously, we can look at the numbers and see, if you have minimum wage employees, you’re going to be paying them X amount of dollars more. It gets into non-exempt employee issues as well but this is just huge. I think this is going to have a rippling effect – not just for Seattle but for other cities in the country as a whole. NASIR: Yeah, it’s definitely huge news. I think that $15.00 mark, even though that’s going to be years from now, it’s still just so apparent that that’s going to be a big deal for businesses for all. I read an article of Forbes, I thought it was great. They basically say it’s not difficult to outline the effect of the new $15.00 an hour minimum wage. They claim that basically, if the minimum wage is of a certain percentage away from the median average income, then it has little to no effect. But, once it goes beyond a certain percentage, then that’s when you get some significant employment effects. I think we get around 45 to 50 percent of the median wage, that’s when you really start to see those effects. That’s from a kind of financial economic point of view. I’m sure there are going to be people that disagree with that but it’s definitely interesting to note. MATT: Yeah, and I think it’s going to stick, too. There’s obviously going to be and there already are groups – and I think franchise owners are the ones the ones that are kind of leading it – planning to sue and stop this. I mean, this still is a significant jump. It is gradual; it’s not like it’s going to go up to $15.00 tomorrow. It is slowly going to climb. I’m in San Diego and there’s been talks about it jumping up in San Diego as well. I think there’s kind of a push to get it up to roughly $13.00 an hour, slowly throughout time. But I can see other cities doing this as well, especially some of those bigger cities where the cost of living is kind of high. NASIR: Yeah, we already have San Francisco is classically already at $10.74 and, of course,