Ken Weinstein, the politically active Mt. Airy entrepreneur who runs the Trolley Car Diner, made the rounds of local news by publicizing the fact that he and several other local businesses in both Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill will raise their own minimum wages paid to employees to $11.

“Our employees deserve better,” Weinstein told Sue Ann Rybak in this week’s front-page story. “We must roll up our sleeves to increase the minimum wage over the next four years. “A higher minimum wage will result in an increase in business, lower recruiting and training costs and better service by more experienced staff.”

Increasing the minimum wage has become increasingly a key focus point for progressives who see it as an easy way to address rising economic inequality and to boost local economies under the very simple principle that more money in the pockets of local employees means more goods, services, rents, etc. paid by those employees back into the local economy.

This is particularly true in Pennsylvania, which is one of 21 states that have not increased the statewide minimum above the federally mandates $7.25 an hour. Twenty nine states and the District of Columbia have pushed local requirements up to $11.50 an hour. Seattle and San Francisco recently enacted legislation to incrementally bump the minimum wage until it reaches $15 an hour by 2018 and 2021 respectively.

The results of increased minimum wages, though, are a matter of political debate. Not surprisingly, support for increasing the minimum wage closely follows partisan and racial divides. According to a PEW study of the issue released last week, 52 percent of all people surveyed support increasing the federal minimum to $15 an hour. Along partisan lines, however, only 21 percent of Trump supporters back a minimum wage increase while 82 percent of Clinton backers support it. And while a majority of minorities polled support a $15 federal minimum wage, 54 percent of whites are opposed.

But what would a bump in the minimum wage really do?

The question still appears to be unsettled. What is clear is that some of the worst expectations of what a high minimum wage would do really are not much more than myths. In Seattle, a bump of wages paid to fast food and restaurant workers to $11 an hour did not appear to destroy restaurant jobs, put restaurants out of business or drive up unemployment and food prices.

But in a story last summer in the Washington Post, studies didn’t track any noticeable benefits in Seattle either. On average, worker’s weekly earnings rose by less than $6, less than $300 annually. It has not amounted to the sort of wholesale benefit supporters have promised.

Clearly, more studies should be done in places where wages are going up. Are those wages gains wiped out by rising costs? Are employers going to cut jobs to boost their bottom lines? None of those questions seems to be settled fact yet.

That said, Weinstein and other restaurant owners like Amy Edelman and Meg Hagele deserve credit for pushing the issue forward and literally putting their money where their mouths are. It’s one thing to argue for a cause and something else entirely to lead by example.

Pete Mazzaccaro