So Long, Discount Shops

Mayor de Blasio, who pledged to expand the livingwage bill to include “tens of thousands of additional New Yorkers” not currently covered, might want to read up on the Law of Unintended Consequences. Lest it come back to haunt him. The mayor wants to end some exemptions from the 2012 law that mandates a “living wage” for workers. The law requires an hourly wage of $10 with benefits or $11.50 without benefits at projects whose developers receive city subsidies. Ending those exemptions would mean that more people must be paid the higher wages.

As we’ve said before, making jobs more expensive for employers can lead to fewer jobs. But, as Crain’s New York reported last week, it might also mean that discount shops, which can’t afford to pay the higher wages, are displaced by expensive retailers, which can.

Too bad the merchandise at these highpriced shops will be unaffordable to many workingclass New Yorkers — the very people a livingwage is meant to help.

Back in 2009, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. effectively killed a deal to build a mall, complete with 1,200 permanent jobs, at the longabandoned Kingsbridge Armory when he demanded a wellabovemarket living wage. Those stores were never built. Workers seeking jobs suffered, but so did customers seeking more shopping alternatives.

Now de Blasio wants to repeat the story by broadening the current livingwage law.

Does he think he’ll get a different result?