Correct me if I'm wrong -- we knew it would a) reduce total employment and b) help the poorest percentage of the population in the short term. Right? We still know this as far as I know, only apparently it took a CBO report for Republicans to realize it? I still want to see what happens with this, and I was privately hoping that we would wait long enough with federal minimum wage reform to see what the results on unemployment were. EDIT: intervention is probably not a good thing in the long run for our economy -- actually it's not, period, but if we're going to have a minimum wage it's ridiculous for it to be unindexed to inflation, because it provides companies essentially with an excuse to pay their workers below living wage. So that's probably a positive change. Maybe. EDIT2: I believe that 500k number was intentionally found using very harsh estimates.