My 7th grade  history class was taught by a burly white man who liked to do civil war reenactments and pretend the rebels had won. We talked a lot about the causes of the civil war. I didn’t learn that the civil war was about freeing slaves; I learned that it was about economics. Slaves only came into it because they were an integral – and profitable – part of the southern economy. Ending slavery hurt that economy.

This morning Dylan Matthews wrote that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is a terrible idea. It would hurt the economy, maybe even make things worse for low-wage workers. But I wasn’t thinking about the economy when I read his article; I was thinking about what it’s like to live on minimum wage. I was thinking about the exhausting, humiliating grind of poverty.

Maybe Matthews is right and raising the minimum wage would hurt the economy. But if treating people with humanity hurts the economy, it’s time to change the economy.