Isn't the news in this lede the fact that Obama and Edwards are supporting a minimum wage of $9.50 per hour?
Could former senator John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama be considering a truce?
For a brief moment Saturday night, that unlikely prospect suddenly appeared possible.
Democratic presidential candidates had gathered here for the Brown and Black Forum, a panel on minority issues, and during a question-and-answer period, Edwards (N.C.) was given an opportunity to aim a question at any of his rivals.
Rather than hit Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) with a tough challenge, Edwards lobbed something of a softball to Obama: Would the senator from Illinois, he asked, join him in pushing to raise the minimum wage to $9.50?
"I think our voices together are more powerful than our voices alone," Edwards said, praising Obama even as he asked the question.
In his response, Obama did not hesitate. "The answer is yes," he said, drawing a large round of applause. "And John has done good work on this."
According to MSNBC, Edwards wants to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2012. Under current law, the minimum wage is now $5.15, will rise to $5.85 on July 24 and to $7.25 in two years.
The economic evidence on the effects of the minimum wage is more mixed than most people realize, but this seems like a major increase with potentially significant negative effects on entry-level employment. I'd like to see what Democratic-leaning economists think...
Update 12/5 9:02 AM: Phil Klinkner of Polysigh sends along this graph, which illustrates that a $9.50 minimum wage would be very high in real terms (it looks like it would approach the historical peak of the late 1960s):
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