Generally the math works the other way. I worked in a Wendy's for a while; I made minimum wage and most of the people made a little bit more. We cleared $30,000 a month profit for the owner ($100K revenue, $70K for expenses including all of our wages). If a company is so inept they can't generate a bit of value from people, then to be frank, as a society we can afford to be without them. Look at the minimum wage as a filter to remove companies that are so unsuccessful, that they disappear before dragging down the citizens.

Pretty amazing! Way way better than any of my friends who have owned restaurants. Did that $30,000 profit include paying off the mortgage, various forms of insurance, legal fees, accounting fees, taxes, and so on?

30% profit for a fast food restaurant is not credible. It's too competitive. I worked for McDonalds (a long time ago, but...) the best store in the market made a little over 10% profit. Others made less, or even lost money at certain times of the year.

That’s an amazing level of transparency to share all the company financials with the minimum wage workers.

So if someone else is willing to work for those wages (they don’t really need the income or have minimal expenses) you’d tell them “tough, it’s illegal to work for that wage now”?

That question never happens in places with a minimum wage. What you can do is support your employer by showing up early and/or helping out a few extra hours after the shift. Nothing in writing or by force.

As an employer you’d be crazy to do that. Nothing would stop that employee from turning around and demanding back wages.

I've really had a lot of jobs. I would just do anything for a while just to see what it is like. In some places it is as if Hitler won the war, in others the boss or manager becomes a good friend. You don't demand back wages from a friend.

Since that is how the relatively uncontroversial minimum wage law (which has been around since 1938) works, yes, society has generally decided that we do want to tell people, "it is illegal to work for some very low wage." And, while not the parent poster, I agree that it is a useful policy.

That’s a very US centric point of view and appeal to authority. Just because it’s been the law for almost 100 years doesn’t mean it’s the ideal approach.

And several developed countries have no floor other that agreed by through collective bargaining.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080515/5-dev...

The problem here is, most peoples' wages are defined by their leverage, not their value. For people in those situations, the benefit of minimum wage is that most people below that wage immediately get leverage in the form of legal requirement to pay them (or anyone else) min wage.

This isn't a matter of improving the situation for everyone, it's a matter of improving the situation for the majority of min-wage workers.

If someone genuinely can't provide $10/hr of value, then either 1) they need to upskill (and there are social services for that, although perhaps not in the US idk) or 2) they're like one of those literal retards who are becoming literally unemployable, and the solution is either to subsidize their employer (which is okay in this instance because you're not subsidizing a race to the bottom like you are with subsidizing normal e.g. McDonalds wages) or put them on a disability pension.

But realistically, most people are capable of upskillinng and that's what they should be doing if they're not valuable enough to an employer.

Equally the status quo is not tenable and clearly not the solution.

There are many people coming up with solutions but clearly 'free market' adjustments have failed an increasing number of workers.

But I will disagree with your economic value question, I think service workers are undervalued greatly.

There is a giant disconnect between wage and economic value, the market is terrible at connecting the two.