We have reservations about the state House passing a bill to incrementally increase Pennsylvania’s minimum wage.

As this issue has routinely resurfaced every few years for decades, we’ve noted that the economies of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, their suburbs and our more rural region are all distinct. We have expressed skepticism that rural Pennsylvania needs as staggering an increase as the advocates of a $15-an-hour minimum seek.

We appreciate that this measure, at least to some degree, acknowledges that — phasing in a $12-an-hour minimum wage for rural Pennsylvania and a $15-an-hour for more urban communities.

But we must also note that wages, in the past several years, have increased without the coercive nature of government action. And what every family in Pennsylvania, from apartment high-rises in Philadelphia to homes on dirt roads between Montoursville and Barbours, has seen is the spiraling effect on the cost of living higher wages will inevitably produce.

We have only grown more certain that as legislators debate higher minimum wages, they must also prioritize addressing the cost of living — resisting the environmental alarmism that drives up electric and heating bills, curtailing the excessive regulations that stymie housing construction and leave families with more expensive mortgages, eliminating the bureaucratic bloat and pursuing reform so that the costs of education and health care no longer rise as steeply.

We want our region’s families — and all American families — to prosper. Increases in paychecks and salaries that are soon dwarfed by increases in the cost of living — housing, health care, utilities bills, groceries and education — is not the path to prosperity.