Caitlin Dewey recently reported in the Washington Post on an interesting turn of events in Maine.  A referendum increased the minimum wage for waitstaff, but then waiters and waitresses rallied to undo it:

James Dill, a college professor and the Democratic state senator from Maine’s 5th District, received hundreds of emails and phone calls from unhappy servers, he said. He initially voted for the ballot referendum because he supports a higher minimum wage. After the outcry, he signed onto a Republican measure to lower the tipped wage down again.

That measure passed the Senate by a vote of 23 to 12 on June 7, and the House on June 13. Governor LePage signed the bill into law last week, a spokesman for his office said, though the signing was not publicly announced for several days. It’s expected to go into effect in January 2018.

“I realize not everyone is in the same boat,” said Dill. “But the ones who called me were saying, ‘I make $20 to $25 per hour, I’ve bought a house with that income, I support my kids — it’s really important that you don’t mess with my tips.’”

Even with a subject as apparently narrow as the minimum wage for tipped restaurant worker, legislators can’t possibly know all of the consequences of changing policy.  Maybe the law works well for some and not for others; who ultimately has the right to decide between them?

The problem, I think, is that people too often rely on general impressions and anecdotes or, at best, broad statistical averages that don’t give a real sense of the lives people lead.  This is one area in which the market sets prices better than the government can, and in which legislators should accept reality and seek other ways to resolve circumstances they see as problems.