Author: John Burbank

When the minimum wage increases, jobs increase as well 0

When the minimum wage increases, jobs increase as well

Last week Snohomish County state representatives Mike Sells and June Robinson, D-Everett, Cindy Ryu, D-Shoreline, Derek Stanford and Luis Moscoso, D-Shoreline, and Mary Helen Roberts, D-Edmonds, joined Jessyn Farrell, D-Seattle, in proposing to increase...

Can we all benefit from the economy? 0

Can we all benefit from the economy?

The slow recovery from the great recession has heightened stark inequality in Puget Sound. Corporate profits and the stock market are soaring (think Boeing) but wages are stagnant, workers have lost their company pensions...

Respecting workers and their work 0

Respecting workers and their work

Last month voters approved a $15 an hour minimum wage for workers at Sea-Tac. In California, Ron Utz, a conservative Silicon Valley millionaire, is pushing an initiative for a $12 minimum wage. In Seattle,...

Tax-break Boeing needs to get to work 0

Tax-break Boeing needs to get to work

So how about that $8.7 billion tax give-away Boeing just received to build the 777X? We have been here before. In 2003, the Legislature excused Boeing from $4 billion in taxes, in order to...

Seeking some balance in disparity city 0

Seeking some balance in disparity city

On my way to a conference in Philadelphia last week, I took the subway from the train station. It was in disrepair, with no signage and blocked exits and entrances. And the people I...

Story of hope: People want, need this care 0

Story of hope: People want, need this care

Republicans in the Congress have lost. They failed to stop the Affordable Care Act from starting up. Every day, more and more people sign up for health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act....

Health care helps lessen the fear 0

Health care helps lessen the fear

I looked out the window as I was getting ready for work and realized that, yes, fall has come to Puget Sound and with it, rain. So we start our six months of gray,...

Adding up the benefits of Obamacare 0

Adding up the benefits of Obamacare

The other day I went onto the Washington Health Benefit Exchange website to look at the actual costs for health coverage. (In the interest of full disclosure, my spouse works for the Washington Health...

Keep in mind government’s good works 0

Keep in mind government’s good works

This past week I flew out to visit my 94-year-old dad in Vermont. We drove around a large part of the state, taking in the Green Mountains, the old towns chartered before the revolution,...