there's no reason why minimum wage should rise alongside productivity. & I totally understand why you or anyone else would 'think' it's reasonable, but such drastic policy changes should be implented based on economic research results, not what we feel would be nice. however unfortunate that may be.

that's a valid point, but the counterfactual I would raise is: is there a point at which a proposal is too high to even be considered as legislation? I don't know enough about the actual process behind legislation in the US to answer that, though.

I agree that minimum wage increases should be evaluated according to cost of living.

yes, but we should be honest and point out that every one of those countries has a 10-25% VAT, most of them with few exceptions. or, that they have a much wider tax scale. In the US you don't really pay income tax until you hit ~$25k / year, and even then it's a fairly low amount. In Denmark, if you make over $6.2k (equivalent) you pay 8% income tax period. The US' minimum tax bracket is 10%, but that's not accommodating for EITC and other deductions. or, that a lot of those countries flat out bar about half their population from going to university.

my view on free college, is that rather than introducing tuition free university (which is essentially another transfer to the already well off), how about we expand Pell and other targeted support to the poor, 1st Gen college students, etc. For the rest of us, offer alternative debt instruments like income based repayment plans - or any plan that allows the debt burden to be shifted later in life away from your temporarily low post college income.