Today I saw a socialist city council member attacked from the left.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

5. Hmm.

Off the top of my head:

1) You're setting the minimum wage higher in areas where cost of living is high.
2) Those will disproportionately be prosperous areas.
3) This will lead to employment, and hence prosperity, moving from prosperous to less prosperous areas.

OK, I'll buy that as a potentially sensible national strategy, if my assumptions above hold water. It will both make the nation as a whole better off, and redistribute wealth from the richer to the poorer areas.


There's a probably downside involving accelerating migration, and hence causing overcrowding in some areas and decline in others - precisely what we're seeing here in the UK, with people moving to the Southeast, especially London, causing overcrowding there and decline in some other places, but that's probably a price worth paying.



One caveat is that if I were a mayor responsible for an individual city, rather than someone planning economic strategy at a national level, and wasn't keen to redistribute wealth from my city to others, (and I wouldn't be - a Mayor has a responsibility to his or her own city) I'd be chary about setting my minimum wage higher than theirs.