What is the impact of increasing the minimum wage for Los Angeles?

If you can’t afford to do business and pay people a living wage, then maybe you shouldn’t be in business to begin with. That’s a mantra of some advocates pushing for a higher minimum wage in LA.

And day-to-day, this increase is helping employees offset rising housing costs and student loan debts. Evelyn Campos is an employee of a fast-food restaurant in Santa Monica and an advocate for the “Fight for 15.”

She is using the bump in salary to help pay off her student loans and, like most LA residents, maintain her car so she can get to and from her job. The managers where Campos is employed, a trendy vegan restaurant, have raised meal prices and cut down on plastic utensils to counteract the bump in salaries. And so far, consumers and employees are satisfied.