Did you hear the one about the "living wage" for stand-up comedians?

Seriously, folks -- a bill setting minimum pay rates for professional jokesters has been introduced in the state Legislature by Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat (D-Manhattan).

Espaillat's proposal would require that comics be paid a minimum of $120 for every 20 minutes of work on weekends, and $28 to $46 for every 20 minutes on weekdays. The law would apply only in New York City, so laughs would still come cheap in the rest of the state.

The justification? From the sponsor's memo:

Often comedians in the New York City area are paid approximately $20,000 per year. Often times these comedians work in various parts of the City within a short time frame making the use of a taxi service a necessity. They are not compensated for travel and often are not provided with benefits from the contracting entity. Therefore it appears that $20,000 a year may not be an adequate salary to live in the city of New York.

We were under the impression that most struggling, up-and-coming comics support themselves with second jobs -- like driving taxis. But we digress ...

For purposes of the Espaillat bill, a "standup comedian" would be defined as "a professional performer who has worked a minimum of two hundred performance hours telling jokes and/or performing comedy at a comedy club or other place of entertainment where people watch and/or listen to such performances." (Unfortunately, the bill does not require that such performers actually be funny.)

This may seem easy to laugh off, but Assemblyman Espaillat can't dismissed as a back-bench clown. Now in his fifth term, he is chair of the Legislature's Black & Puerto Rican Caucus and lead sponsor of another wage-rigging bill that's been getting deadly serious attention in both houses. It would authorize a direct state tax subsidy, costing $60 million over the next three years, to raise hourly pay for unionized building security guards.

There is no Senate companion for the comics wage bill -- yet. A savvy lobbyist would surely advise the comedians to affiliate with SEIU and form a PAC financed with liberal contributions from comedy club alumni who have gone on to make millions in TV and films. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

At this writing, the "Living Wage for Standup Comedians" bill is killing them in the Assembly Labor Committee.