(The proposal was already approved by voters in 2004, by a 68-32 margin, but now, being a state Constitutional amendment, requires a second OK.)

The plan would also set up a system under which the state minimum wage would be racheted up each year to stay at least $1 above the federal standard.

And why not? The power of government is nearly magical in this way. Wave a magic wand, and every struggling, hard-working young head of household, trying to support a growing family on $5.15 an hour, receives a nearly instant 20 percent raise in their purchasing power. Furthermore, those who vote for such a measure don’t have to dig into their own wallets or bank accounts to send an extra 40 bucks a week to the fry cook, the dishwasher or the soda jerk -- the money comes out of the pockets of greedy businessmen who while away their days at the country club, anyway. What’s not to like?

You had to ask.

Weirdly, the measure in question contains two huge exemptions. Unions are exempt from paying the higher minimum wage, as are employers that cover at least 90 percent (apparently -- the language is unclear) of the cost of health insurance for their employees and their employees’ dependents.

What’s that doing in there? Is this a minimum wage hike, or a back-door attempt to pressure employers into “going union” or paying health benefits for the small minority of part-time workers who actually earn the minimum wage -- and their families?

Can that really be done for less than $40 a week? Will state bureaucrats now have to wade in and define what’s “adequate” health insurance to win the $1 exemption? Of course they will. What will that cost?

Meantime, the proposed law does not actually require that anyone be given a raise. It simply makes it illegal for an employer (other than the aforementioned unions, and the growing number of black market employers) to reach mutually acceptable arrangements with would-be workers whose work is mutually agreed to be worth $5.85 per hour, or $5.35 per hour, or whatever.

Forty years ago, the minimum wage was $1.25 an hour. How many of the jobs that were paying $1.25 an hour back then will now pay $6.15 an hour? Back then, the kinds of job that paid at or near the minimum wage (if you’re too young to remember, ask someone born before 1955) included soda jerks. (“Pour me a vanilla Coke, son.”) They included gas station attendants. (“Fill ’er up, ma’am?”) They included short-order cooks who stood at the grill in the back room of hamburger joints.

After 40 years of minimum wage hikes, will those same workers -- or, if they’ve moved on, will their grandkids -- now get a raise from $5.15 to $6.15 per hour to do those same jobs?

No. High school kids freshly graduated or looking for a summer job will only get puzzled looks if they try to apply for any of those jobs, because they no longer exist. Most of the soda fountains are gone, or gone “self-serve.” Gas is self-service, too. Robot broilers cook the food at most fast-food restaurants, now.

What happened to those workers? The vast majority, thankfully, found other work, having learned the value of showing up on time, the pride of buying something with the hard-earned “after-tax dollars” in that paycheck.

But some did not. Some had not had time to acquire any skills worth the higher new “mandatory” minimums. These kids went back to live in mom’s basement, fell into lives of petty crime, ended up in jail or languishing on welfare. Maybe you passed one today -- the grimy character with the bedroll -- begging for change at the intersection.

We can’t know how many, because the kind of people who want to outlaw the jobs that could have given those wasted lives a better start, see to it that government keeps no statistics on such outcomes. In the words of the French economist Frederic Bastiat, they are “what is not seen.”

If government had really “ordered that soda jerks and gas station attendants be given a raise,” then the business owners who installed those self-service gas pumps and soda pop dispensers would be in jail now, don’t you think?

But they’re not, because “minimum wage hikes” don’t order that anyone be given a raise. Instead, they do just what the unions want. They outlaw the first jobs of eager young workers who want to compete in the job market. The unions successfully lobby their pet politicians to outlaw those jobs by passing “minimum wage hikes,” the business owners obey the law, and the jobs are permanently gone.

After all, why would any union member want to “help” workers who were trying to compete by offering to work for less?

When government mandates higher business costs, either those businesses go out of business -- fewer independent gas stations and soda fountains around than there used to be -- or they find ways to pass on added labor costs to their customers (ever seen a restaurant menu with new, higher prices, glued over the old?), or they cut jobs.

Think this new law won’t reduce the number of waiters and waitresses, accelerating the spread of “cafeteria-style” service? Think some of those workers won’t end up on welfare, being supported by heftier deductions out of your paycheck?

Meantime, what these “escalator” wage hikes do accomplish is to devalue the dollar, by declaring the dollar that bought 48 minutes of unskilled work 40 years ago -- 12 minutes of unskilled labor last month -- will buy only 10 minutes of such labor in 2007.

Having gone to the polls and OK’d such inflation, how will you now pay your own, inflating bills? You’ll need another raise, of course. And to think you just wished on yourself that traumatic visit to the boss’s office, hat in hand.

And so the voters will “play Santa Claus,” promising raises to minimum wage earners -- who turn out almost never to be heads of households, by the way, but rather young people grabbing that lowest rung on the employment ladder.

The only problem is, for some of those kids, the Christmas package is going to contain nothing but a pink slip.

This measure will make Nevada’s economy a lot more like California’s. Wonder how many new Nevadans voting for this measure moved here from California, to escape that state’s stifling and oppressive socialist economic climate? Wonder why they’re so dead-set on recreating that environment, here? Do they have plans to move on to Utah or Wyoming, once they’ve finished Californicating Nevada?