Why oh why can’t we have a Brad DeLong who will put the adults in charge of the clown show that is John Kerry’s campaign? (For those of you who do not read DeLong, I am borrowing his anti-Bush tropes) Don Boudreaux writes

Proposals, such as Kerry’s, to raise the minimum wage modestly will cause the rate of unemployment of low-skilled workers to be only modestly greater than it would be otherwise – an effect sufficiently modest that people who lose their jobs as a result, or who don’t get jobs, are unlikely to trace their misfortune to its source.

…I propose a genuine test of this absurd faith: raise the minimum wage to $70 and see what happens.

For Discussion. Make the best case that you can that raising the minimum wage to $7 and hour will have a high benefit/cost ratio but that raising the minimum wage to $17 an hour will not.