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This article appears in the April edition of the Financial Post Magazine. Visit the iTunes store to download the iPad edition of this month’s issue.

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union proposal to raise the federal minimum wage in the U.S. immediately set off a debate over whether Canada should do the same. And really, why not? Obama proposes raising it from US$7.25 to US$9 an hour, but that seems chintzy. Who wants to live on $9 an hour? I say anything less than $45 is an outrage. I know, I know, you’re going to tell me that’s too much, that it will “cost jobs.” That’s what business types like you always say. Why, if supply and demand were what governed wages, it wouldn’t even be at the level it is now.

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Chances are you’ve heard some version of this argument. Proponents of raising the minimum wage are always in favour of setting it at the “right” level, which, by a remarkable coincidence, is always a little more than it is. Suggest quintupling it instead and you get a withering look: an implicit acknowledgement, that is, that setting wages above market levels throws people out of work.