Bret Devereaux

In essence, the 'sawing the bottom rungs off of the ladder" problem. That problem is going to be a lot more acute, obviously, in parts of the country where people start lower on the ladder in absolute dollar terms by virtue of the local economy.

We've already gotten a far-too-big divide between regions with lots of economic dynamism and regions with very little. I worry that raising the minimum wage so high will make this problem worse and as a result, not help all of the people it should help.

By contrast, a big boost to the EITC would put money into those economically weaker regions of the country, potentially helping them to become more economically dynamic and successful.

But, I mean, let's not fool ourselves. We're not doing minimum wage because it's the smart intervention. It isn't and never was. We're doing minimum wage because the costs with it are politically invisible and fall heavily on marginally politically involved (poor) people.

We *could* raise taxes and do income support, but we're not going to do that because it means raising taxes on the urban professionals who make up part of the core Democratic base.

At this point, I'm pretty open to the idea that a less-than-ideal intervention like raising the minimum wage is better than no intervention. But we need to be honest that the minimum wage is on the table because of a political calculus that is not great.

Minimum wage is on the table because service workers and their unions spent a decade organizing for it. If you think what these people have fought for is to punish themselves to please the professional base of the Democratic party I'm not sure what to say.

"and their unions" being the operative phrase. Remember, economically, unions organize laborers who are employed both to the cost of management (ok, fair), but also of laborers who are not employed. Yes, the higher minimum wage will be great for those who get it.