“North Carolina’s refusal to increase its minimum wage is beginning to look as heartless and thoughtless as its refusal to expand Medicaid,” says The News & Observer in an editorial that rejects as unfounded the canard that raising the wage will hurt businesses or employment and says keeping it at $7.25 “doesn’t improve the state’s economy and only protects jobs barely worth having.”

“Even the rationales for stifling minimum wages in North Carolina contradict themselves,” says the newspaper for North Carolina’s third largest city.

North Carolina State Representative Chaz Beasley knows a thing or two about why raising wages is so important to working families like the one he grew up in.

North Carolina working people and families need a raise. Too many workers in our state don’t get paid enough to afford the basics. That’s why we’ve joined a broad coalition to campaigning to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in five years.