The minimum hourly wage
We are against slavery.
So, how little in wages may we pay so that we are not some latter day variant of the old South’s peculiar institution?
Are we going to pay so paltry an hourly wage that someone has to force an employer to do the right thing – to pay a decent wage?
The answer is yes – that’s exactly what we’ve had to do, and now the established “minimum” is itself too little.
This nation has an unflattering history of employers taking advantage of workers unfairly.
Children were forced to work in sweat shops under such harsh conditions that we had to outlaw this child abuse.
Workers were in harness for so many hours, they’d drop, and we had to establish legislative standards limiting how long an employer could force one to work.
There have also always been employers who paid too little for an hour of work.
We talk about compassion, but too many employers scrimp on what they pay a worker, take advantage of their desperation, increase their profits at the expense of a worker’s misery, by denying him a decent wage.