Marketplace Morning Report for Monday June 2, 2014
On Monday, the Seattle city council votes on a $15 minimum wage. The deal was hammered out by business, labor and community leaders. The resolution creates the Minimum Wage Commission to oversee the law's implementation. We look at this unique test case for low-wage workers. Plus, now that housing prices have recovered in most regions, homeowners are once again pulling equity out of their houses with re-financings, and banks are revving up the second-mortgage biz, also known as home equity lines of credit. Also, we talk to Erin McElroy, an anti-gentrification activist in San Francisco who co-founded the Anti-Eviction mapping project that uses data visualization to track how wealth has displaced tenants in the Bay area. Then, why do Southern states in particular seem so eager to subsidize private development with public dollars? Despite overwhelming public opposition, Cobb County, Ga. commissioners voted to sink $300+ million taxpayer dollars into a new Atlanta Braves stadium. Meanwhile, Gov. Nathan Deal touts Georgia’s designation from “Site Selection Magazine” as the top state in which to do business, in part because of generous public incentives. Experts say the South gives away the store more eagerly than other regions because of history. Southern states invented modern economic development incentives during Reconstruction, when they were desperately courting financiers to rebuild the region's devastated industrial capacity. It became a habit, and then a vicious cycle.
On Monday, the Seattle city council votes on a $15 minimum wage. The deal was hammered out by business, labor and community leaders. The resolution creates the Minimum Wage Commission to oversee the law’s implementation. We look at this unique test case for low-wage workers. Plus, now that housing prices have recovered in most regions, homeowners are once again pulling equity out of their houses with re-financings, and banks are revving up the second-mortgage biz, also known as home equity lines of credit. Also, we talk to Erin McElroy, an anti-gentrification activist in San Francisco who co-founded the Anti-Eviction mapping project that uses data visualization to track how wealth has displaced tenants in the Bay area. Then, why do Southern states in particular seem so eager to subsidize private development with public dollars? Despite overwhelming public opposition, Cobb County, Ga. commissioners voted to sink $300+ million taxpayer dollars into a new Atlanta Braves stadium. Meanwhile, Gov. Nathan Deal touts Georgia’s designation from “Site Selection Magazine” as the top state in which to do business, in part because of generous public incentives. Experts say the South gives away the store more eagerly than other regions because of history. Southern states invented modern economic development incentives during Reconstruction, when they were desperately courting financiers to rebuild the region’s devastated industrial capacity. It became a habit, and then a vicious cycle.
