NY1 reports that liberal interventionism and economic reality could be able to hit Manhattan’s high-end-cupcake businesses:

[New York City] could be getting its own separate minimum wage under a new proposal by Governor Andrew Cuomo. . . . It would be the first time that the minimum wage in the five boroughs would be higher than the rest of the state.
Under the governor’s plan, the state’s minimum wage would rise to $10.50 an hour by the end of 2016. But it would go up to $11.50 in the city. . . .
John Nicolaides, owner of Molly’s cupcakes in the West Village, says a minimum wage increase would delay expansion plans that would include more jobs. But he wouldn’t cut his staff or their hours.
“We have 401k profit sharing and full health care with Blue Cross Blue Shield. So it’s not that I don’t care about employees but it’s tough to impose a minimum wage sometimes,” Nicolaides said.
The governor still has to present his idea to the state legislature. But he could face a challenge getting the wage hike passed by the Republican-led State Senate.

This happens to be a nice display of the bizarre relationship between the New York City government and the New York State government, which gets to control a substantial amount of policy you’d think the former would handle. This has mostly been to the good over the last few years, as Andrew Cuomo has pushed moderate-Democrat priorities (e.g., small-beer pension reform and poorly designed tax cuts) while the New York city council and now Mayor de Blasio are more into Sandinista-type stuff.

The NYC proposal is probably just part of Cuomo’s constant balancing act between moderate and liberal policies, a way to match or outdo de Blasio’s successful effort to raise something called the “living wage” that applies to some workers in NYC. But the idea of a different minimum wage for the city isn’t unreasonable — it’s much better than raising the wage to that level everywhere.

Conspicuously, while President Obama has pushed a higher national minimum wage in the last two State of the Union addresses, the topic is getting little attention this time around (he’s pushing new tax and spending proposals instead). That comes after a number of state governments have been raising their minimum wages — not a great economic policy either, I’m inclined to think, but one much less noxious to conservatives, as I argued soon after last November’s election. Pushing these decisions to a more local level is a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.