Well, the primary goal is, of course, to raise the income of minimum-wage earners. Failure criteria probably include things like a) a marked increase in busines

Well, the primary goal is, of course, to raise the income of minimum-wage earners. Failure criteria probably include things like a) a marked increase in businesses that rely on minimum-wage earners going out of business relative to other and/or b) a marked increase in unemployment among minimum-wage earners. I don't know what thresholds are reasonable. (Possibly confounding: as minimum wage increases, the available labor pool will also increase.) In the case of Seattle, they commissioned two pieces of research for this ordinance: UW Evans School of Public Affairs study: Local Minimum Wage Laws: Impacts on Workers, Families and Businesses [1] University of California, Berkeley study: Who Would be Affected by an Increase in Seattle’s Minimum Wage? [2] The second paper addresses a lot of the questions I suspect you're interested, and it addresses them with empirical evidence based on previous such experiments in other cities. [1] http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Evans-report-3_21_14-+-appdx.pdf http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Evans-r... [2] http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/UC-Berkeley-IIAC-Report-3-20-2014.pdf http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/UC-Berk...