Guaranteeing a minimum hourly wage for workers and protecting competition will not hurt Hong Kong's economic growth, according to FinanceAsia readers.
In our web poll last week, readers were generally of the opinion that Hong Kong can afford to guarantee a better deal for its low-paid workers and to restrain the power of monopolists, but plenty of people took the opposite opinion too.
The new wage bill has been a long time coming. Workers in the city had campaigned for a minimum wage for years before finally winning the battle two years ago, when the government caved in and agreed to set a mandatory hourly rate. After all that,...