Minimum wage game-changer

President Obama wasn't speaking to a bunch of small business owners on Labor Day when he once again lauded the importance - the necessity? - of significantly raising the minimum wage.

No, the president addressed a union gathering of some 6,000 like-minded souls who fervently favor bosses making less and employees making more. Until they become bosses, anyway.

But something in the president's speech shook our little soapbox. Believing strongly, as we do, that free markets and not government should determine what private sector employees are worth, we were unprepared for the president's assertion that states raising the minimum wage on their own are adding jobs faster than states holding pat on minimum wage.

Let us say that again, a little differently: At the beginning of 2014, 13 states raised their minimum wage. As a group, those states are creating more jobs than are their counterparts who left minimum wages untouched.

That's simply stunning news to those who read and agreed with a federal report in February casting dark shadows on future employment if the federal minimum wage were raised to $10.10 an hour, as the president and others have proposed.

The Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal hike to $10.10, phased in over three years, would kill an estimated 500,000 jobs. The report also projected that the increase would lift 900,000 Americans above the federal poverty level by 2016.

Of course, the CBO report could only approximate impact. The budget office said actual impact would likely range from a very slight employment reduction to a loss of 1 million jobs - hence the 500,000, midway estimate.

We aren't going to switch allegiance on the minimum wage issue based on such a small sample of apparent evidence, but we are eager to see a) statistical proof of the president's claim of job growth in those states, and b) longer term evidence that it isn't a blip or an anomaly.

In North Idaho, this editorial board for years opposed what we perceived as overbearing federal expense and regulations dealing with mining wastes in the Silver Valley. However, we said that if science could prove massive cleanup was warranted, we would support it. The respected National Academy of Sciences eventually studied the issue intensely and essentially supported the feds' assessment. Because science and not politics said so, we backed off our staunch opposition.

Today we find the nation at a compensation crossroads with tremendous long-term social and economic consequences, and we feel similarly to the EPA debate. Prove that raising the minimum wage significantly will end poverty for many and positively affect the number of jobs, and we will happily support movement in that direction.