Fast food workers took to the streets starting Thursday, Sept. 4, in one of the largest labor demonstrations of 2014. These strikes occupied more than 100 cities across the nation, demanding a minimum wage of $15 per hour. Most readers came across the story on CNN or Facebook feeds, but some may have had their understanding of the events shaped by Steven Gillard’s column published in the Daily Collegian on September 10.

Gillard’s anti-labor column not only drew the ire of readers and sympathetic minimum-wage workers, it also brought the Collegian national coverage via the depraved hack job published the next day on Jezebel.com. Although I disagree vehemently with the perspective Gillard shared, I was disgusted by C.A. Pinkham’s childish personal attacks and unfounded assumptions, along with their hypocritical attacks on Gillard’s journalistic process. I rest easy at night knowing that such garbage would never be published in the Collegian.

Despite Gillard’s insistence that “the protests are not so much an issue of economics, but an issue of principle,” workers’ rights and the minimum wage debate absolutely are economic arguments. Labor, like all markets, regulates prices through supply and demand. The chief price of the labor market is wages, so there are, without a doubt, economic strings pulling the wages of fast-food workers up or down.

Like most economic issues, politics and executive decision making play certain roles, but Gillard was too quick to move past the economic debate behind raising the minimum wage and I think he did so because he knows he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

The federal minimum wage stands at $7.25 for private sector workers and $10.10 for publicly contracted ones. Of course, $7.25 is a federal minimum, meaning that state governments can establish higher minimums, but they can’t go lower. One such example is Washington state, which serves as a model for the pro-labor argument with its highest-in-the-nation $9.32 floor on wages.

Opponents of Washington’s high wage base claim that high wages will harm job growth. Yet, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington has maintained a job growth rate of 0.8 percent, compared to the national average of 0.3 percent over the last five years. That’s right, the state with the highest minimum wage is nearly tripling the national average in job market growth. Would a $15 minimum across the nation produce the same results?

Instead of guessing, quoting conservative think tanks or blaming lazy people, it’s easier to look at what economists have to say on the subject.

Michael Reich, a University of California, Berkeley economics professor, led a decade-long study at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. The study concluded that, “Our data show that an increase up to $13 an hour has no measurable effect on employment.” The Seattle Times piece recapping the study went on to explain that greater minimum wage hikes, such as the desired $15 rate that Seattle residents already enjoy, were mostly covered by decreased labor turnover as a result of higher wages. Simply put, higher paid employees were more productive and kept their jobs longer, and fast food joints saved money not training their replacements.

The second major economic hurdle that anti-labor advocates can’t get over is the argument that a higher minimum wage increases prices on the products and services provided by minimum wage workers.

Using the same Seattle example, Berkeley concluded that a $15 per hour minimum wage would increase the price of restaurant tabs in Seattle as much as 7 percent. That may sound daunting, but paying $5.35 for a Subway $5 foot-long would absolutely be worth knowing that my fellow Minuteman was getting $15 per hour to slice my Black Forest ham, as opposed to Massachusetts’ abysmal $8 minimum. Between insignificant price increases to non-existent dents in employment, a $15 minimum wage is a perfectly reasonable point for workers to negotiate toward.

Does every person who is hired at a fast food restaurant deserve $15 per hour? I don’t know, and I don’t care. Some probably don’t, and some, who cook my Wings Over Amherst so well that I’ll be a customer for life, surely do.

I won’t possibly try to judge the work ethic of the American public. Some probably get by on a minimum wage job and don’t strive for more, while others work 70 hours a week in the service industry trying to pay off student loans or put a roof over the head of the family they must provide for. It’s not my role to judge the person, but it is an absolute truth that, if we can afford a minimum wage increase, then it’s the right thing to do.

The fast food strike is not a symbol of greed. It is a final grasp at the American dream for those who otherwise lack the opportunity to obtain it.

William Keve is a Collegian contributor. He can be reached at [email protected].