On several occasions during last night’s Democratic presidential debate, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist whose populist presidential campaign has posted surprisingly strong numbers all summer, voiced support for raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

“In my view,” Sanders said at one point, “what we need to do is create millions of jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure; raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour; pay equity for women workers; and our disastrous trade policies, which have cost us millions of jobs; and make every public college and university in this country tuition free.”

Raising the minimum wage like this is an idea that’s become increasingly common amongst more liberal Democratic politicians and policymakers: The city of Seattle, Washington passed a law raising its minimum wage to $15 last year, and the Los Angeles city council voted to follow suit. Soon after, New York state announced a plan to raise the minimum wage of all fast food workers to $15, and the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, recently said he believes it should apply to all workers.

Many of these plans start from the assumption, implicitly or explicitly, that these minimum wage hikes would be relatively cost-free, pointing to several studies seeming to show that increases in the minimum wage don’t have much effect on jobs.

Read the full article at Reason.com: Sorry, Bernie Sanders. Raising the Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour Wouldn’t Create Millions of Jobs. But It Might Destroy Them.