Can NJ Handle a $15/Hour Minimum Wage?

We at the Herald recently received a news release stating that Gov. Murphy wants to mandate a $15-per-hour minimum wage before the end of the year. I, for one, don’t desire to throw cold water on his wish to help out individuals and families who would have a significant financial burden lifted from them if they could receive more compensation for their work.
Building on his premise that higher wages would not only help out the employee and his or her family but would help New Jersey’s whole economy, let’s get behind his leadership and figure out how we can make this work. First, we must acknowledge that employers must take in enough in sales to enable this salary level. The more they bring in, the more they are able to pay out.
So for New Jersey to set compensation levels which are higher than currently exist, we have to understand a couple of things. One, can employers afford to do so out of their current operations without damaging their business? We need to know the answer to this question.  If Gov.  Murphy has the answer; he doesn’t include it in his news release. It is important to know before moving ahead because if we New Jerseyans get this one wrong, the businesses will not have the money to meet the payroll. What will then follow is, their businesses may shrink or close, and their employees and our local and state economies will be worse off. So let’s take enough time to be sure that we are doing this correctly. I wrote of some of the challenges of the $15-per-hour minimum a couple of years ago, and in the meantime, it has been implemented in other places. Let’s go to school on their learnings.
If we are not certain that companies in general have excess profits to share, and we are forcing people out of work, we have to take the steps necessary to be sure there is better work available for them. Better work is probably not obtainable currently, or they would already be doing it. So what can we do? At the government level, we can work with companies which pay high wages and get the low-paid workers into training programs in order to qualify them for these better jobs. 
Our national economy is humming right now, and many companies are in need of workers.  Many of these jobs exist in the trades, with compensation levels which often exceed the earnings of college-educated workers.
Gov. Murphy wants to do the right thing. Let’s support him and ensure that he does it in a way that brings about success for the employees, the businesses and New Jersey.  If his advisers have not yet done their homework, the Legislature should insist that we move forward deliberately, not hastily. Over the years we New Jerseyans have proven that we are a productive people, which is how we became one of the wealthiest states in the nation. Let’s use our formidable thinking power and not get ahead of ourselves.