Ask HN: Makers, would you choose Laravel for a new project?

From what I gather lurking around internet/twitter, it seems Laravel is the new hot backend framework in the maker/bootstrapping community. PHP being bad has almost become a joke and I see some really smart people creating with that stack.

Given that HN crowd loves Ruby on Rails for quickly scaffolding a backend, I just wanna gather some info from those who have launched successful projects with PHP and Laravel.

1. Would you consider your choice of tech stack a good or a bad choice from a business perspective?

2. Why did you choose Laravel and not Rails or Django in the first place?

3. Having built or maintained a PHP/Laravel project, would you choose this stack again or go with something else(Django/Rails).

4. Do you believe that modern JS frameworks will make traditional MVC backend frameworks almost irrelevant for most use cases(CRUD)?