The scale of the increase Hanauer’s proposing is also remarkable. When asked what the effect of a doubling of the minimum would be, Neumark replies, “No one knows. No one could know. There’s no experience with that…Anyone who says ‘I have a pretty good idea what would happen’ can’t be on solid ground.”

Interestingly enough, Dube agrees. The evidence we have on the effects of minimum wage increases, he notes, are “limited to a historical period where statutory minimum wages have ranged between roughly 35% and 50% of the national median wage.” Hanauer’s proposal would put the minimum wage at roughly 75 percent of the national median, which Dube notes would put it higher than any OECD country, including several European social democracies. “We just do not know what a $15/hour minimum wage would do based on the type of careful research designs that have become the hallmark of modern labor economics, and ones I strive to use in my work,” Dube writes in an e-mail…

Dube is doubtful of the stimulus claims as well. Thinking about an Obama or Miller-sized increase, to $9 or $10 an hour, “it’s hard to get to something bigger than a few billion dollars in net stimulus,” he emails. A $15 wage is historically unprecedented, he notes. “We don’t know what happens to employment of low skilled workers when the minimum wage is doubled,” he says. If it falls, that dilutes any stimulative impact. If employer pass along the increased wage in the form of higher prices, that means inflation, which, as Salmon notes, may be stimulative in its own right, but which dilutes the real earnings gain the minimum wage effects, and any stimulus coming out of that wage gain. “I don’t see why this is a serious consideration,” he says. “Economically speaking I think we have more targeted ways of providing stimulus – like give money to the unemployed.”