let it be resolved that the minimum wage should be abolished

To clarify I will be making an argument that the minimum wage is racist I'm not forcing it's assumption - CON is very welcome to challenge my argument there. The minimum wage, like any price floor, leads to a surplus. A surplus in the form of labour means unemployment. This phenomenon is most obviously observed by studying teenage unemployment following the introduction of the minimum wage. Teenagers are an excellent surrogate for low skilled workers in general, since teenagers have minimal marketable skills (little job experience, no college education, poor work ethic etc.) Here is a study which examines the impact of a 43% increase in the federal minimum wage in Lousiana (this state has no state minimum wage law). Unemployment among Louisiana teenagers skyrocketed during this time period from 13.6% in 2006 to 34.4% in 2011. http://www.thepelicanpost.org... The minimum wage has no power to raise wage rates. All it can do is prohibit employment of individuals with a skill set which demands they be paid a wage lower than the minimum wage. In general these people tend to be the most destitute, the most in need of employment. This is a vicious predatory law which greatly harms those who are most desperately in need of help. Why then would anyone possibly support a minimum wage? There are do-gooders on one hand, who erroneously believe that this law helps the poor. Then there are the people who benefit from the minimum wage - namely skilled labourers. Let us assume you have a widget factory, and a skilled widget maker can make 15 widgets an hour and commands a wage of $20 / hr. An unskilled widget maker can make 5 widgets an hour, and commands a wage of $6.66 an hour. To the employer it really doesn't matter if he hires one skilled widget maker, or 3 unskiled widget makers. But what if there was a minimum wage of $10 an hour? Then the employer could not hire the unskilled widget makers, and the demand for the skilled worker would go up since the competition from the unskilled widget makers would be no longer present. And this is EXACTLY who advocates for minimum wage increases - unions representing skilled workers who make much more than the minimum wage. What's more advocates of the minimum wage implicitly acknowledge it's weakness. Why are there student minimum wages and minimum wages for waitresses which are lower than the general minimum wage? It is precisely because these groups are generally low skilled - a lower minimum wage for them lowers unemployment in those groups, just as a lower minimum wage for everyone would lower unemployment for everyone. Milton Friedman has referred to the minimum wage as one of the most racist laws on the books. Before the minimum wage was introduced, unemployment among blacks was roughly equal to unemployment among whites. Today unemployment for black teenagers stands at a staggering 30%! This law unfairly targets minorities. It kills their ability to get a job, to learn more marketable skills, to stay out of trouble and to gain capital. Here's another case study : http://idahofreedom.net... Between 2003 and 2011 teen unemployment in Idaho increased from 10.6% to 30.9%. Between 2007 and 2009 the federal minimum wage increased from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour. This policy is especially aggravating since it occurred during a recession, a time in which prices, including the price of labour, must fall. This is in contrast with Idaho's over all uneployment which stands at 7.8% as of May 11th 2012.