Or else the employer can forego free money from the city, or large city contracts, that's what else. The Living Wage bill is not a minimum-wage law. This bill affects only the employers who choose to be affected by it. It adds absolutely nothing to the general cost of doing business in the city for most employers. Paying federal income taxes is a mandate .
Jury duty is a mandate .
Agreeing to pay your workers ten bucks an hour as a condition of accepting larger city contracts is no mandate, it's just another part the mutual obligations one enters into when agreeing to a contract. If you don't want to pay, you don't have to play. As central as it is, this point could not be found, stated or implied, anywhere in the article. I understand part of what the Living Wage opponents are trying to say. Milton Friedman, after all, was my first love in economics, before Henry George came along.