"Let the free market determine a worker's worth" is the credo of the free market purists. They see minimum wage laws as government "interference" with the free market's invisible hand-given right to set wages. They applaud corporations that relocate their manufacturing operations to countries like China and Vietnam which have no minimum wage laws or worker protections. They sleep well at night as hundreds of millions of factory workers, primarily in east Asia, who are often housed in corporate work quarters adjacent to the factories, are worked 12 to 18 (or more) hours a day for laughable wages with no benefits and no hope for recourse. And their only response to the resultant decimation of the American manufacturing base is to continue chanting the virtues of the free market ideology that has destroyed it.

As nations with minimum wage laws and other worker protections continue their descent and nations without such laws continue to prosper by comparison, it's only a matter of time before the free market purists get their day in the sun here in America (and in Europe.) As we force undocumented workers back across our southern borders into the slums where they came from -- which libertarians like Rand Paul have called for -- those jobs will be filled by Americans whose unemployment benefits have run out and who face homelessness (if they aren't already there.)

Then it will be argued that the only way those corporations will be able to survive is if they're permitted to pay their American replacements the same pseudo-slave wages. This will be heralded as an economic necessity not only for the survival of the corporations but for the survival of the American economy. And they will have no problems filling those slots as more and more Americans slip into poverty and homelessness and are left competing for the few scraps of crumbs that remain.

And so the race to the bottom will continue, out of economic necessity of course, until our lowest paid workers will be given the no-choice choice of working for a food allowance and living in slave quarters, or dying in a gutter.

This is the logical end to the free market.
_______

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bud-fuzzyman/28994/for-unskilled-workers-the-logical-end-to-the-free-market-is-slavery

or....

people might actually go back to being paid living wages,, which would allow them the money to buy goods and services, which would keep business flowing,, which would keep people employed, which would allow them to have money to buy goods and services,, ,,and so on ,, and so on


there is no absolute fix but there is also no absolute failure because businesses have to pay decent living wages

Maybe they finally got the fax I sent.

I suggested, dumping Min. wage and let applicants offer employers what they are willing to accept as pay and benis.

Sealed bids.

some of the upper management type jobs do still NEGOTIATE a salary with the worker,,,but alot of those job opportunities come out of 'networking', and not the average resources available to the average joe,,,