Minimum Wage, Minimum Freedom

“Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.”

― Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy

I only need one reason to oppose minimum wage laws: They are an unjust government interference in the otherwise voluntary exchange of labor for value. An economy will always suffer when free trade is blocked or prevented. Still, far be it from me to discount the many good reasons there are to oppose such laws.

• High minimum wage countries (Spain, South Africa) have high unemployment.
• Zero minimum wage countries (Switzerland, Singapore) have the lowest unemployment.
• Minimum wage laws make it illegal to hire people who are unable to add even $5 worth of value for an hour of their labor. So, the least skilled people receive nothing, and as a result have no feasible path of acquiring a job skill.
• The education system, which is intended to prepare people to function in the society play the cruelest joke, by teaching skills no one will pay for.
• When the lowest skilled persons are "assigned" a high enough wage, that job will be eliminated first, either through reduced service or automation. 
• People who have worked for years and developed skills that trade for $15 will suddenly be told they have wasted their entire career developing higher skills.
• If everyone in the neighborhood survived with their jobs intact, they would be competing with more dollars for the same goods and services their neighbors want and need, raising the price of everything, creating price inflation, and thus, defeating the original purpose of the wage price increase.
• Minimum wage laws hurt lowest income neighborhoods hardest, because the industries that operate there exist on the lowest profit margins. When the businesses are no longer viable, they will close.
• Minimum wage is a system of slavery; causing massive unemployment, and creating an ever growing dependent class. This is the real, insidious reason why the idea is promoted by the politicians. They can then control who hires people, and who doesn't.
• The reason our unemployment rates are so high today (and yes, they are as high as ever), is that the Bush-Obama recession was a significant deflationary event. It caused a critical number of people to fall below their point of economic viability. If minimum wage controls hadn't gotten in the way, and if the Fed wasn't intent on creating inflation to overlay the whole scenario, the recession probably would have ended of its own accord. Continued distortion of the true economic situation has not helped in any way.
• Just because the republicans are against minimum wage increases it doesn't mean minimum wage increases are a good idea. They are bad for all reasons, including all those involving  fairness, freedom, and compassion.

Personal freedom means economic freedom, and as a consequence, our rights to exchange our labor for value should never be infringed by a government. If I want to work for $5/hour, I should have that right.