> If we assume that wages and productivity are correlated, then while reducing wage floors sounds like a good idea, what actually happens is that we're encouraging employers to use low-skill, low-output-per-hour labor in place of machines that have a higher output-per-hour but a higher up-front cost and no ability to externalize maintenance expenses (ie: between the cost of keeping a machine repaired or a worker fed and housed, we currently allow employers to externalize the latter but not the former).

Humans aren't capital that is produced to industrial demand; if humans aren't employed productively, they still need to be fed and housed (or, alternatively, the externalities associated with their not being fed and housed must be accepted.)

So its somewhat inaccurate to say that we allow employers to externalize those costs, as they are cost that exist independent of the decision of employers to use labor, and which low wage payments, while not completely offsetting, mitigate somewhat.

If industrial machines were produced independently of industrial demand and produced negative externalities if they weren't maintained whether or not they were productively employed, then it would make sense address them differently with policy than we do now, too.