It is sad the way Seattle voters have grown increasingly out-of-touch with the Seattle Times editorial board:

BACKERS of a $15 minimum wage who are celebrating victory in SeaTac now aim to seize the day in Seattle. They do have the political momentum. What they don’t have is a sense of responsibility or of any information on the actual effects of the law they favor.

Shorter Seattle Times: Back off until you lose all the political momentum.

Earlier in his career, Washington state Treasurer Jim McIntire, Democrat, was the principal investigator for a University of Washington study of the impacts of increases in the minimum wage in 1989 and 1990. The study, funded by the Legislature, found that for every 10 workers who got a raise, one worker lost a job — though many of the laid-off workers were replaced by other ones, typically of higher skill.

So what you're saying is that a 23-year-old study found that when wages were hiked, one out of ten jobs were lost, though most of those lost jobs were replaced by higher paying ones? So, um, 95-or-so percent of low-wage workers did better? And your problem is?

The passage of SeaTac Proposition 1 gives that city a minimum wage for some workers 61 percent higher than the $9.32 minimum around it. “That is a pretty dramatic change and could have some significant impacts,” McIntire said recently. “I would counsel the folks in Seattle to see how it goes in SeaTac.”

Because SeaTac is the perfect proxy for Seattle, right? Um, no:

It is sound advice. The Seattle City Council has approved $100,000 for a study of the issue. The study should find real information on jobs gained and lost, consumer spending and business investment in SeaTac before it reaches a conclusion. Let’s find out what happens in that small city before making a decision for a population 23 times larger.

Remember also that SeaTac’s measure won’t cover all jobs. Many are inside the airport, protected from competition, which won’t be true of jobs in Seattle. A Seattle proposal that would cover a broader group of workers could have wider negative consequences.

In other words, we should wait years to push a $15 minimum wage in Seattle (because that's how long it would take to adequately study its impact in SeaTac), even though there's not much to learn from the experience in SeaTac because, unlike in Seattle, SeaTac Prop 1 mostly raises wages for airport workers at captive businesses with captive customers. So really, all the editors are arguing for (again!) is to delay the $15 minimum wage fight until its momentum ebbs. Because they think their readers are stoopid.

I repeat—$15 minimum wage opponents and their surrogates at the Seattle Times have already lost the debate. Mayor-elect Ed Murray promised to make a $15 minimum wage a priority, and a majority of city council members are publicly on board in the wake of Kshama Sawant's $15-proxy election. If we don't get an ordinance passed and signed by July, an initiative is going to the ballot in November.

So my sincere advice to Seattle's business community is that they come to the table in an honest effort to shape the ordinance instead of wasting their time on this futile effort to kill it.