> Your arguments seem to be from the business perspective, of the value of labor. My arguments are from the human perspective, in terms of the value of a person.

Well, given that we are talking about the market itself, that is and should be the only thing that matters.

Ultimately this is an economic issue, and you will not get away from the economic incentive structures by appealing to emotional arguments.

>I would argue that the minimum wage is an indicator of the minimum humane value of an individual's time, in the eyes of the government. That is, if someone is paid less than that for their labor, it is humanely non-viable.

You can argue that however much you like, it will not change the fact that such a policy will only have the effect of reducing peoples options and make life harder for the very people you are claiming to want to help.

This is plain mathematics, if the value someone produces is less than the value they cost to employ, then they will not be employed.

Companies are not, and should not be, charities. And forcing them to behave like charities will simply result in those costs being passed on to their clients, and to society at large through greater inefficiencies that will result in less wealth to everyone.

>Again, this just feels exploitative. Take someone who hasn't finished highschool, for whatever reason: by your measure, likely not a very "productive" worker, and your argument implies someone like this may not "deserve" the minimum wage. But this person now has no way to rectify this situation: they have to work more than one job, beyond "full time", just to have enough to survive (because by your measure their limited productivity means they don't deserve enough money to feed and house themselves--a "living wage", as GP said above). Working multiple jobs to earn enough to survive means they don't have the time nor energy to continue to educate themselves, so they cannot raise their value as a worker, in your eyes. They are now trapped in this cycle.

How can providing someone with the best option they have available to them possibly be exploitative?

And indeed, how can removing that option be anything less than exploitative?

Adding a minimum wage does not result in those workers being paid more, it results in them being unable to legally work. And work is the primary way that they dig themselves out of that situation.

The idea that people working for low wages will remain trapped in that situation forever is plainly not true, and indeed even if it were, that is a better situation than the alternative, where they are unable to even work at all!

>Admittedly, "minimum wage" is perhaps not the best tool to address this problem. I would argue that something akin to UBI would be the best way to approach this--guarantee that every citizen has access to some minimum standard of living, with access to housing/food/education/information, and then let the labor economy exist on top of that. However, in the absence of such a system, and with intense resistance to anything like that kind of system, minimum wages are one of few tools available to address the problem of giving people options to exit living on month-to-month paycheck lifestyles.

Why do you think offloading social work to private companies is a good idea? That has costs, and they will be paid for.

Having private enterprises subsidize your pet projects is a great way to make everyone poorer.