How much would I like to see New York raise its minimum wage? Let's put it this way: in 2001 as New Yorkers fought to increase the minimum from its then-abysmal level of $5.15, I dressed up in a too-large ostrich costume and paraded outside a strip mall in the Bronx. The goofy attire part of a demonstration in front of the district office of then-State Senator Guy Velella (later convicted on corruption charges, now deceased) and it would take another four years and substantial political maneuvering before a minimum wage increase was finally enacted over the veto of Governor Pataki.