The biggest problem with the Democratic proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour is that it’s way too large of a jump.
An increase of that magnitude — more than double the current minimum wage — would drive up costs and fuel inflation. It would cause businesses with lots of minimum-wage workers to reduce the size of their staffs. And it would accelerate the trend toward automation.
The result would be detrimental to the very people a minimum wage hike is supposed to help.
That said, there should be a mechanism in place to periodically adjust the minimum wage for inflation.
The last time the minimum wage was raised was 11 years ago. That’s too long. To keep up with inflation, the wage should be $8.80 now — a much more reasonable increase than what Democrats are advocating in Congress.
Instead of these periodic fights in which proponents of an increase always ask for more than they know will pass, it would make more sense to have in place a law that automatically adjusts the minimum wage on a set schedule — say, every four years — to account for inflation.
That would be fair to the workers and less disruptive to the economy.
