The minimum wage has been a fact of American economic life since 1938<\/a>. And yet, 76 years later, right-wing politicians and their corporate allies are still fighting it. Maybe I haven\u2019t been paying attention, but I don\u2019t remember a time when arguing against the existence of<\/i> the minimum wage\u2014not just against raising it<\/i>\u2014was even a topic for discussion. So, you\u2019ll excuse me if I am outraged by an outbreak of arguments contending that a federally mandated minimum wage is bad for America.<\/p>\n In the conservative echo chamber, one line of argument is that lefties have been erroneously using the example of Henry Ford\u2019s $5-a-day wage, 100 years ago, \u00a0as a justification for raising the minimum wage. The argument alludes to what is being dubbed \u201cThe Ford Myth.\u201d The myth, goes the argument, is that Henry Ford raised his factory workers\u2019 wages to $5 a day as a way of enabling the workers to buy the products\u2014cars\u2014that they were producing, and that his motives were, at least in part, charitable.<\/p>\n To their credit, the debunkers appear to be correct. Historical records do, indeed, show that Henry Ford raised wages not to get his workers behind the wheel of his products or improve their lives, but rather to reduce turnover at his factories. Forbes Magazine<\/a> summarizes the real motives this way:<\/p>\n It simply isn\u2019t true that his motive was to enable his workers to buy his cars. Instead, Ford calculated that by making his wages more attractive than his competitors in the market for industrial labor, he would gain by reducing turnover costs. In 1913, to maintain a factory workforce of about 14,000, Ford had to hire more than 52,000 men. The assembly line jobs were very tiresome and repetitive. Workers often quit, sometimes even in the middle of a shift.<\/p>\n With his business experience and the logic of human action as his guide, Ford concluded that the cost of additional pay would be more than offset by the reduced costs of labor turnover.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, all right, then. Myth debunked. \u00a0If only the argument stopped there.<\/p>\n