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Comment by fxd123 | Hacker News Reader

Because you can just increase minimum wage at the state level

So why not just recalculate the federal MW as a function of the states' - lowest, median, or average? I ask because lots of things like welfare payments and estimates of poverty level involve comparisons with the MW. It's sometimes advantageous for a politician to say 'we give $X in food stamps, that's equivalent to Y hours [of federal MW], therefore people are lazy freeloaders' or 'Median rent is equal to Z hours at federal MW, therefore rental is impossible'.

If we have an officially defined metric it should correlate with real conditions in some way, get updated to reflect inflation etc.

> I ask because lots of things like welfare payments and estimates of poverty level involve comparisons with the MW

Can you give an example of such a welfare program? I'm not aware of any that use the minimum wage as a baseline. Most use the federal poverty level, which is pegged to the cost of food (and is updated yearly for inflation).

> It's sometimes advantageous for a politician to say...

I don't really care what politicians say; I'd rather have policy be evidence-based rather than reaction-based

Not caring what politicians say is asinine, since its politicians who ultimately write the laws. The fact that their lines of reasoning may be bullshit doesn't alter this, because lots of policy is sold on bullshit arguments.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44667 references some federal metrics that incorporate the MW as an input.

> Not caring what politicians say is asinine, since its politicians who ultimately write the laws.

You missed my point. I'm saying we shouldn't write laws with the goal of changing what politicians say.

> references some federal metrics that incorporate the MW as an input

You are misunderstanding that report. It's discussing potential ways to index the federal minimum wage to inflation. All those metrics do not include the minimum wage as an input

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