Wage sense

The Post apparently doesn’t understand the value of prevailing wages despite clear empirical evidence that it greatly benefits our city and state (“Prevailing In$anity,” Editorial, June 6).

Prevailing wages are, in fact, middle-class wages, which are the foundation of our economy. So if you’re attacking prevailing wages, you are attacking the middle class.

This is appalling, considering Americans continue to face wage inequality.

The Economic Policy Institute, a well-regarded Washington, DC, think tank, analyzed New York’s prevailing-wage law and wrote that such laws lower costs through attracting and hiring the industry’s most productive workers and providing them with the most advanced equipment and technology.

This high-wage, high-skill approach to minimizing cost is referred to as paying “efficiency wages,” a well-established strategy that is basic labor economics.

The prevailing-wage law adds more money into the economy and substantially increases New York’s state and local tax reve- nues. Thankfully, advocates of the prevailing wage in Albany, including Gov. Cuomo, care about the future of our middle class and continue to fight to keep it. Gary LaBarbera, President, Building & Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, Manhattan