Bret Devereaux

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.

But awkward for those who get nothing instead. Like I said, at this point, raising the minimum wage is probably better than nothing. But it's not the best intervention here.

It's not a forgone conclusion that jobs will be lost to this intervention in meaningful numbers. It's an assumption. One reason progressives aren't inclined to follow it is that even if this worked perfectly conservatives would still make the same argument against the *next* hike

Sure and again - I am not arguing for 'do nothing' - I want us to do the same thing (raise incomes at the bottom of the distribution) through different means (EITC expansion). I have no brief for the 'do nothing' crowd, I think they are silly.

I don't have a strong opinion about whether this would be equally or more effective, and no prima facie problem with doing it. But I think the idea that wage hikes are on the table for mostly nefarious reasons is frankly offensive, and begs multiple questions.

For one thing, if this were actually an easy sell to the professional base of the Democratic party, it would have been on the table years ago.

'easy' and 'easier' are not the same. It doesn't seem even interesting to you that the one solution that has managed to make headway is the one which doesn't involve tweaking marginal tax rates upward?