You don’t have to remember much about the minimum wage debate. Except for this.

Tattoo this:

If even the federal minimum wage had increased with productivity and inflation since 1968 – as it had done in prior decades — it would be $17 per hour today instead of a meager $7.25.

This happens to be a sentence from an article by my pal Mark Weisbrot. But, it’s not new. Back in 2009, I wrote that the minimum wage was a national scandal, one the current president was perpetuating with a meek proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour.

So, just remember that one sentence when some idiot says the minimum wage is just fine, or that the country is doing some favor to people by hiking it to $9 an hour. That just reflects one thing: a four decade robbery, using the hard work of people to make a profit and refusing to pay they a fair share.