The minimum wage aids in the propagation of social justice and the fair treatment of workers  Businesses operating in a free market are concerned principally with their bottom lines. In order to increase profits, firms will seek to exploit workers, to lower wages as far as possible. This exploitation will continue indefinitely, unless the state intervenes. The state does so by implementing a minimum wage. The lowest paid workers tend to be less educated, less skilled, and less organized than higher-paid employees. This makes them the easiest to manipulate and the easiest to replace. [1] In order to stop this outright exploitation of the most vulnerable members of society, the power of wage setting must fall to some extent within the purview of the state. Certainly, it is far better for state, which has citizens’ best interest at heart, to weigh in on the issue of setting wages than businesses, which tend not to care about their workers’ welfare or have competing interests. Furthermore, a minimum wage sends a social signal of valuation; it affirms that all people have worth, cannot be exploited, and are owed by dint of their humanity a certain level of treatment in the workforce, i.e. a minimum wage. This is important as a means to assist the self-empowerment of the poorest members of society, by encouraging them to value themselves. Also, the minimum wage aids in promoting social justice and equality by lowering wage disparities. [2] Citizens of more equal societies tend to have more in common and can share more in the construction of societal goals and aims. This form of social justice is certainly preferable to the class divisions propagated in the absence of a minimum wage, in which a part of society is relegated to permanent wage slavery.  [1] Filion, EPI’s Minimum Wage Issue Guide, 2009  [2] Waltman, The Politics of the Minimum Wage, 2000