The Seattle City Council has approved a $15 minimum wage.
I'm skeptical, in all honesty. A higher minimum wage would definitely be a good thing, but a lot of it would impact jobs like retail checkout drones who haven't really been seeing the productivity gains of the last few decades, and Seattle is a small area, so businesses will start decamping to nearby municipalities with the standard minimum wage, especially small ones and start-ups. All this will do is give the right more ammo on the minimum wage debate.
I'm honestly not sure how true this is, or if its a bad thing - Businesses that are in the Seattle area are already paying a ton more in rent and other costs for being there, and they've decided its worth it. If they leave, they'll probably be replaced by other businesses that were already looking to move in. A lot of these businesses can't move because Seattle is where their customers are, and most of the rest minimum wage employees make up such a small portion of their costs that this still isn't likely to change.
On the other hand, higher minimum wage means a lot more people working in Seattle are suddenly going to have a disposable income that isn't just living paycheck to paycheck. Businesses in Seattle that aren't stupid are going to take advantage of this, and probably see an uptick in business.
If it was some podunk town with a min-wage factory, yeah, I could see it doing a lot of damage... but not in a place like Seattle, where super cheap labour prices are most definitely NOT one of things that attracts businesses to do business there. Anyone who is that cost-conscious already moved away from Seattle a long time ago.
Also, Seattle startups tend to have salaried employees and partners as their major employees, there will be a minor increase in service costs but honestly I doubt it will change anyone's decision on where to locate.