There ought to be a government-mandated minimum wage.

Many thanks to Mongeese for providing me with the opportunity to participate in one of the most challenging, interesting and, above all, enjoyable debates I have ever had on this site and for proving to be such a worthy and courteous opponent. Firstly, I would like to address my opponent's remark that "98.5% of all working Americans make above the minimum wage". Shouldn't that figure be 100%? This means that three out of every two hundred American workers are being illegally exploited by unscrupulous employers who are lining their pockets while their employees toil like coolies for less than the minimum wage. There should be a crackdown on these cowboy employers and the culprits should be punished to the full extent of the law. Moving on, the fact is that if the minimum wage were abolished, shareholders would insist that company directors slash their wages bills in order to boost profits and, thus, increase the shareholders' dividend payments. The result of this would be that the workers at the bottom of the pile, the unskilled or semi-skilled, would be forced to accept savage cuts in their pay or face being replaced by people who are currently unemployed. This would not create any more jobs: it would just mean that the existing jobs would be less well-paid – that's because companies don't employ people unless there is work for them to do, no matter how little they have to pay them – corporate expansion is driven by customer demand, not by any desire to do the taxpayer a favour by reducing the number of people who have to rely on welfare payments. The bottom line is that the abolition of the minimum wage would benefit wealthy investors at the direct expense of manual workers and their families, which would mean that the rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer. And it would be a mistake to assume that everybody on the minimum wage is a school-leaver, by the way: cleaners, farm hands, menial workers in manufacturing and construction, road sweepers, shelf-stackers and so and so forth, can be of any age, Anyway, back to Bob's Store. So he's thinking of adding a new check-out line to reduce the length of time his customers have to wait for the privilege of handing their money over to him, is he? Well, about time too, the service at Bob's Stores is absolutely appalling - if I was one of his customers I would shop elsewhere – even if it meant I had to pay more for my groceries. Now, Bob has done his sums and he estimates this new check-out desk will generate $6 per hour profit, which is not enough to cover the wages of the person manning it (at least if he pays them the minimum wage). Okay, but it therefore follows that the same calculations would apply to the existing check-out desks, which is bad news indeed for Bob because it means his business is insolvent and he is legally obliged to cease trading unless he can raise sufficient capital externally to cover the losses his store is making. Poor old Bob, it looks like he's going bust after all. Let's hope his house isn't repossessed and that wife doesn't run off with a business rival and that he doesn't end up employed as a sex worker in a gay bar and living in a filthy, rat-infested crack house. Above all, for the sake of Bob's life, let's hope the government doesn't abolish the minimum wage. Thank you.