re: Local minimum wage laws

In a perfect world, I don't disagree with you. This isn't a perfect world, unfortunately. We have minimum wage laws, and they aren't going away. I would rather watch, say, the city of Madison experiment by raising their city minimum wage than watch that experimentation occur on the state level. Three reasons for this. First, if there are disastrous effects, they are isolated in that local community that chose to raise its minimum wage. That city can then act much more quickly to alleviate the ill affects, and it has much less impact on the state economy. If it turns out that it was a good decision (and I doubt raising minimum wages is a good decision right now), then the state can look at whether it is a good decision for the state. Second, if I am personally opposed to raising the minimum wage, I can be much more affective organizing an effort against it if it is proposed by a city government than the state government. In other words, my voice is louder with my city government than it is with the state. Third, a minimum wage of $X may be easily absorbed in a city with a strong economy like Madison, but disastrous in another city in the state, say, Ashland. I'd rather have the city of Madison tinkering with its own fate than going to the state government and lobbying the state to tinker with all of our fates.

Don't get confused and think that I support raising the minimum wage. I don't. I think circumventing cities from making their own mistakes means that we'll be making those mistakes on the state level instead, and it'll be more costly.