Minimum wage: The morality of $15 an hour

of housing. That’s $15 an hour for a 40hour workweek.

Any amount below this usually requires the government to make up the shortfall — using tax payments from the rest of us to finance food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance and other kinds of help.

What about the risk of job loss? Historically, such a risk hasn’t deterred the nation from setting minimum work standards based on public morality.

The original child labor laws that went into effect in many states in the early 1900s were opposed by business groups that argued such standards would raise the costs of business and force employers to lay off large numbers of young workers. But America decided the employment of young children was morally wrong.

The safety laws enacted in the wake of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, which killed 145 workers, were also deemed “job killers.”

“We are of the opinion that if the present recommendations (for stricter building codes) are insisted upon ... factories will be driven from the city,” argued New York’s association of real estate owners.

But New York and hundreds of other cities enacted them nonetheless because they viewed unsafe sweatshops as morally repugnant.

It was the same with the 1938 legislation mandating a 40-hour workweek with time-and-a-half for overtime, along with the first national minimum wage.

“It will destroy small industry,” predicted Georgia Rep. Edward Cox. America enacted fair labor standards anyway because it was the right thing to do.

Over the years, America has decided that certain kinds of jobs — jobs that were done by children, or were unsafe, or required people to work too many hours, or below poverty wages — offend our sense of decency.

So we’ve raised standards even if that meant we’ve lost such jobs. In effect, we’ve decided such jobs aren’t worth saving.

Even if a $15 an hour minimum wage risks some job losses, it’s still the right thing to do.

Tribune Content Agency robertreich.org