“One of the strange things in our society right now is that we have all these low-wage workers who are getting $7.50, $8 or $9 an hour,” Unz said, “and because they earn such small wages, the government subsidizes them with billions or tens of billions of dollars of social welfare spending that comes from the taxpayer. It’s a classic example of businesses’ privatizing the benefits of their workers while socializing the costs.”

Now the truth is that inequality has grown so much that various programs to improve the living standards of the working poor are absolutely essential. Some should be expanded. Both Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and President Obama have suggested that help received under the earned-income tax credit be broadened to support workers without children (although Rubio has an ill-advised proposal to restructure the EITC and cut some of its benefits). A nation that proclaims its reverence for work should agree that nobody who works full time should fall below the poverty line.

But there’s a limit to how much taxpayers should be asked to subsidize employers. Lifting the minimum wage would help correct the balance…

And, as Annie Lowrey argued earlier this month in the New York Times, those who rightly worry about the breakdown of marriage need to remember that “creating good jobs with growing wages at the bottom of the income scale might be the best, if hardest, way to encourage young couples to wed.”