His push comes as Seattle's new mayor, Democrat Ed Murray, has said he wants workers there to earn a minimum of $15 an hour, and after fast-food workers staged nationwide rallies calling for higher income.Unz says taxpayers for too long have been subsidizing low-wage paying businesses, since the government pays for food stamps and other programs those workers often need to get by. He posits that the increase — at $12-an-hour, up from the current $8 — would lift millions of Californians out of poverty, drive up income and sales tax revenue and save taxpayers billions of dollars, since those workers would no longer qualify for many welfare benefits.He dismisses the notion that countless jobs would evaporate, noting that most of the state's lower-wage jobs are in agriculture and the service sector, which can't be easily automated or transported elsewhere.
He believes higher wages would make the jobs more attractive to U.S. residents, curtailing a lure for illegal immigration. For California, among the world's 10 largest economies in 2012, the jump "would be a gigantic economic stimulus package," Unz said in an interview. He hopes its passage in the nation's most populous state would have a ripple effect, prompting other states to increases wages.Unz is an unusual figure in California's largely left-of-center political culture, untethered to traditional party apparatus, libertarian in his leanings and wealthy enough to make potential rivals nervous.
He declined to provide specifics on his personal wealth — he founded Wall Street Analytics, Inc., which was acquired by Moody's Corp. in 2006.He calls the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "totally disastrous," lambasts the government for bailing out Wall Street banks and sees little difference between Obama and predecessor George W. Bush.In high school, he ranked among the top math students in the U.S. and studied theoretical physics at Harvard University, Stanford University and Cambridge University, according to his website.His journalism and writings over the years — touching on subjects as diverse as college admissions, immigration and homosexuality — have been described as everything from insightful to offensive.