For the last two days in this slot, state Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas has been x-raying the merits of a minimum wage in California’s private and public sectors.

But should there even be a minimum wage?

Why?

Isn’t this the grossest form of governmental interference in private commercial affairs?

Isn’t this spitting in the twin faces of capitalism and pure American freedom?

What was on display yesterday in streets across the country  was an embarrassment to normal workers in America:

Waves of mostly misguided pity-seekers willing to be manipulated by the darkest forces in the workplace.

The ostensibly honorable marches were filled out by supposedly underpaid workers, bolstered by professionally unemployed “activists” who roam the country as tools of labor unions.

Watching the minimum wage workers stepping out was like revisiting a state-sponsored parade in the old Soviet Union days.

Intricately organized labor union puppets  — trying desperately and unsuccessfully to paper over the strings that inexorably attach them to their masters — staged closely scripted marches across America for a so-called living wage.

The phoniness is wildly transparent.

The marchers’ liberal enablers believe they are fooling normal Americans into shaming business owners to jack up minimum pay to $15 hourly. Don’t laugh. It has working, at least in bastions of liberalism.

These weren’t so much demonstrations by “poor” people to help them climb into the nonexistent middle class as they were Muscle Beach playlets by failing labor unions to recruit fresh bodies.

GOP presidential contender Mario Rubio said the other day the minimum wage should be $30 an hour. I will raise him. Let’s make it $45 an hour.