Prices would adjust and everyone's purchasing power would revert back to what it was before the increase. Your standard of living would be the same while your paycheck has more digits.

This is false, because you are ignoring the fact that raising the minimum wage flattens the distribution of wages. Purchasing power decreases, but only low-wage-earners income increases. higher-spending people feel more of a crunch, and lower-income people get more of the benefit

price increases impact higher-spenders more than lower-spenders

Plenty of folks would be perfectly happy flipping burgers instead of going to college, so there would be fewer qualified folks for the positions which currently pay 70k, so those salaries would go up (since supply would be going down), so some of those businesses would go bankrupt, etc.

A burger flipping job isn't a bad job simply because it's paid badly. It's boring, unfulfilling, tedious and people don't respect you for doing it. People would still go to college to get jobs that have those things.

Arguably a high minimum wage would mean no one would want rubbish burgers any more, so perhaps burger flippers would have to retrain as chefs. That wouldn't be such a bad thing.

> It's boring, unfulfilling, tedious and people don't respect you for doing it. People would still go to college to get jobs that have those things.

Ha, they'd give up on years of income and pay tuition for that? Nope, I think a lot of people either wouldn't care enough, or just wouldn't be able to afford the opportunity cost. For many of the people whom a 70k minimum wage would affect, college is a financial investment, not a route to lack of tedium as an accountant or whatever.

> It's boring, unfulfilling, tedious and people don't respect you for doing it.

You can say the same thing about any job. I program. It's a terrible, worthless, respectless job. And yet, they're paid more.

but instead of rubbish burgers costing $1.50, they will now cost $3.00

If everyone made $70k though, wouldn't the amount of "buying power" that $70k commands now go down/prices of things would go up?

I would rather be able to buy less for myself than far more than my peer.

So, I'm your peer. You can send your extra money to me. That's how it works, right? (Do you need an address, or do you prefer PayPal?)

Yes, and I do contribute to charities. Somehow I doubt that the average HN writer needs anything.

You don't understand the parent's comment. Check my other comment.

"QED"

It's interesting to ask this company, which I didn't get in the article - was this intended to be a minimum wage or common wage? The CEO was getting it too. The ramifications of each are quite different.

> What kind of impact would such a massive redistribution of income have?

Surely this would have terrible inflationary effects. Not that I'm against it.