Why not hike minimum wage to $ 20?

Re: “Minimum wage hike to create more job stability, NDP says,” June 19.

I support increasing the minimum wage, but I am suspicious of Lori Sigurdson’s claim that raising the minimum wage to $ 15 will increase employment.

The argument is that when workers earn more money, they spend more in the local economy, thus leading to more jobs. This makes sense, but then why not increase the minimum wage to $ 17 or $ 20? By Sigurdson’s logic, this should lead to even more jobs.

Clearly, there is going to be a sweet spot, or magic number, that maximizes both job growth and poverty alleviation, while minimizing shock to the economy, but what is it?

We’re dealing with complex economic principles here, and yet the $ 15 number seems to have been chosen not based on modelling or careful calculation, but simply because it is a nice, round, emotionally satisfying number.

It’s almost as if the primary consideration in choosing the $ 15 target was how good it would look on a campaign brochure. Joel Adolph, Calgary