As I'm sure most everyone reading this knows, the minimum wage in the U.S. hasn't come close to keeping up with inflation, which means that either it was either way too high in the 1960s, or it's way too low now, or some combination of the two. If you assume it was correctly set in the 1960s, it should be over $10 now only factoring in inflation.

If you then factor in productivity gains since then, it should be between $12 and $22, depending on how much of the credit for productivity gains you give to the workers at the bottom of the wage scale. (Numbers from page 2 of this pdf. This is the figure that serves as the basis for Sen. Elizabeth Warren's much-publicized $22/hour figure.

When you take into account that there is no discernible correlation between increased minimum wage and increased unemployment, there is no reason we can't do better than the federal minimum we have now. (And the ridiculous $2.13 tipped labor exception to the minimum wage, put in to placate the restaurant industry, needs to die a painful death.)

There are interesting, if not entirely practical proposals out there to begin providing a universal basic income to everyone, which would obviate the need for a minimum wage. To provide a livable basic income would cost a lot of money, but it could be funded by scaling back / eliminating some of our current safety net programs, which has given the idea some traction on the right. Switzerland is currently debating a rather generous version of a basic income measure right now (or was, anyway) so it's like it's a Looney Tunes idea, though it probably is far out there in the current U.S. political climate.

So, yes, let's experiment with these higher minimum wages all over, let's raise the federal minimum to at least get it to parity with what it was in the 1960s, and let's analyze the results. Let's let the laboratories of democracy work for us.