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If you were starving and I offered you a job washing dishes for $2/hour, would you take it to be able to afford some rice+beans tonight or would you rather not eat tonight? You're worth more than $2/hour.

We need minimum wage laws to protect people from being crunched by capitalists exploiting labor market inefficiencies.

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> You're worth more than $2/hour.

Says who?

In this scenario let's presume the laborer has valuable welding skills but the only factory in town closed. They need to move somewhere else to use their skills but that takes time. In the meantime they need to eat and so they take a job washing dishes.

Inefficiencies in the labor market happen all the time. A minimum wage is one way to protect desperate people from being unfairly exploited.

It was a parameter stipulated in a hypothetical example.

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