Opinion

Minimum morality

In all the huffing and puffing over New York’s minimum wage, the only thing missing is the obvious: Whether the state boosts the rate to $8.75 an hour this year (as Gov. Cuomo proposes) or phases in some unspecified increase (as Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos says he’d consider), mandating a minimum wage is not the way to help workers.

In a state whose economy is roughly the size of South Korea’s, you’d think that would be obvious. Plainly it isn’t. So here’s a message for our political class.

The ticket to better-paying jobs and a move up the social ladder remains what it’s always been: the expanded opportunity that only a growing economy can provide.

The economic argument against the minimum wage is straightforward. The more costly you make it for businesses to take on workers, the fewer they will hire.

Some economists dispute this effect on employment. But if they are right, why stop at $8.75 an hour? Why not $20 an hour? Why not $100?

The answer is that at those prices, everyone would see the cost, in terms of fewer jobs for workers and higher prices for consumers.

Seldom do we hear politicians make this argument, perhaps because they fear being tagged as anti-poor. This week, Gov. Chris Christie wisely vetoed a bill that would have raised New Jersey’s minimum wage to $8.50. He rightly noted that an increase could affect the state’s economic recovery.

The pity is that the moral argument is as strong as the economic one. Ask yourself this:

If you were a worker with few skills, what would serve you better? A minimum-wage law that says you can’t work unless you can find an employer willing to pay you what the state says your labor is worth? Or a vibrant, growing economy that gives you a wide choice of jobs — because employers are hungry for labor?

So long as no one is forced to work for someone else, shouldn’t the decision to take a job at a given wage be the worker’s?

In short, the owner of a Bronx bodega who hires a housewife or a Queens car wash that takes on a teenager does more for their upward mobility than any governor, mayor or legislature that has the vanity to believe it can create better pay by decree.