• $15 Now files ballot initiative to raise Seattle’s minimum wage:

Activists this morning filed a Seattle city charter amendment to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour starting Jan. 1, 2015. The measure calls for a three-year phase-in for small business and non-profit organizations and defines a small business as any with 250 or fewer full-time employees.

• Hike the Minimum Wage? Show Me How: The CEO of a national nonprofit writes about what a $10.10 federal minimum wage would mean:

Monday-morning managers who suggest that I cut executive staff are off base. Even if my executive staff works for free, that would still not cover the cost. . . . We serve people, not burgers. If the minimum wage is increased, we cannot pass the added cost onto our customers. Paradoxically, our customers are for the most part indigent. The federal and state government picks up their tab.

• Robert Reich on the Minimum Wage: How Would He Draw the Demand and Supply Curves?: David Henderson on Reich:

Also, note something else in Reich’s statement above. He writes: “But because the higher minimum will also attract more workers into the job market, employers will have more choice of whom to hire . . .” I think he’s right. With employers being more choosy, some employees get left behind. And who are they? The ones who are least productive. Reich has made a substantial concession, whether or not he realizes it.

• Should We Force People to Save for Retirement?: Megan McArdle on a Steven Rattner NYT op-ed.

• No One Is Safe: The Dangers of Defined-Benefit Pensions:

[O]ver the past few years, many of these [multi-employer pension] plans have already failed, and those that haven’t are headed for disaster unless something changes. . . . This is more evidence, if any was needed, that defined-benefit plans are far, far less stable than 401-k style defined-contribution plans.