[josephferano]

This. I get a little exhasperated wheneve I hear people push for a FEDERAL minimum wage. I'm not against wages being negotiated for the benefit of workers, but like you mentioned; wage hikes will not have the same effect in San Francisco as they would, for instance, where I'm from; San Juan, Puerto Rico. The deleterious effects of price floors on labor are on a continuum and they would disproportionately affect our economy.

As others have pointed out, why can't the States handle it? I feel like Americans are too quick to forget that the United States of America are a federation of States and too often conceptually envisions the country as a single political unit. Comparisons to Europe are frequently drawn even though the scales are different and even then, many European countries have more decentralized minimum wage laws, such as collective bargaining agreements within specific industries, rather than nationally mandated ones.

[dragonwriter]

> I get a little exhasperated wheneve I hear people push for a FEDERAL minimum wage.

I would get exasperated by that, too, if it actually occurred; I mean, we’ve had a federal minimum wage since 1938, why would people be arguing for something we’ve had for close to a century?

But, since that is the case, I wonder if you’d like to clarify what it is you are ranting against, since it can't possibily really be the nonexistent and, if it did exist, utterly redundant movement to adopt a federal minimum wage.

[josephferano]

"I get a little exhasperated whenever I hear people push for an increase to the federal minimum wage"

Fixed.

We should not be raising the federal MW and should instead prefer more localized measures, such as States, counties, cities, or individual industries developing their own policies.

[dragonwriter]

> We should not be raising the federal MW and should instead prefer more localized measures, such as States, counties, cities, or individual industries developing their own policies.

Why? Abstract concerns based on ideal market assumptions that (1) apply the same to more localized measures as to federal measures, and (2) haven't been born out by 83 years of experiencing having, expanding the applicability of, and raising the federal minimum wage?

Yes, we should have more localized policies—and we do—but that's no reason not to raise the federal minimum wage to roughly keep pace with the lower of productivity and national price level.

Now, sure, if you want to argue that despite the relatively benign experience of state and federal minimum wages, there's a good argument that providing a floor through something like UBI would have less risk of inhibiting employment, and do we should transition from minimim wage to UBI (say, reducing hourly minimum wages from the level thet would otherwise be set at by annual UBI ÷ $2000 as we ramp up a UBI over time), I’d agree that makes sense.