>I'm either arguing with an 11 year old or someone willfully ignorant.
Please refrain from these sort of personal character attacks, they don't lead to fruitful discussion and they suggest a weak argument.
>No opposition to welfare. It should be more generous and more readily available.
Then you really don't have any problem with subsidizing those who aren't earning enough to cover a living. Which makes me confused again by your rhetoric about "subsidies to the rich."
>Why do you believe all work must be paid?
If a worker and the employer agree upon a wage, I see no reason for the employee not to be paid.
>The simple fact is that it takes a minimum amount to live in our Society.
That number depends on a number of unique individual factors. You can't broadly decide what an individual requires. When I was young and living in the woods, it only cost me about $300/mo to survive and I was very happy to do odd day labor for shit wages which fully provided for my lifestyle. A single mom with diabetes may need at least $2k / mo to stay out of 'poverty', and quite possibly more than that. You wouldn't outlaw the services I provided when I was young to people that kept me alive, just because someone else may need more than me.
>How would anyone benefit from learning a trade where people are working for a pittance to "learn" how to do the trade?
You don't see the benefit of learning a trade and progressively being paid more while doing so? Being paid _something_ is better than nothing, unless of course you're in the sort of welfare trap that cuts off some of your aid in a way that makes you worse off for working.
>They'll be shuffled out as soon as they start to earn too much.
If you're shuffled out of a position, then you now have more bargaining power for the next one if you have more skills. Also it would be dumb to fire someone who you're paying market rate and employing profitably for a position critical to your business.
>it's just a silly red-herring.
You've just dismissed a wide swath of people who may want to work but can't, because any employment they could do is effectively outlawed, as a 'red herring.'
>If there were a world where hiring people to learn well paying jobs made sense, you'd see scholarships or free programs setup to do this. Where are they? It doesn't make sense, from a corporate perspective. Sub-minimum wage would only ever exploit.
It does make sense to hire people in a capacity where they will move up, and some businesses do. In a variety of positions, the education isn't 'free' but rather you learn on the job and provide your labor and in turn you become more qualified in industry. There are plenty of people hiring apprentices and entry-level positions. A simple search 'apprentice' on indeed yields a number of positions like this. Unfortunately minimum wage puts a floor at where people can start, and especially those starting from a very disadvantaged starting point may not be able to get a foot on the ladder at all unless minimum wage is sufficiently low.
> It doesn't make sense, from a corporate perspective.
Training people makes sense from a corporate perspective, and about every job I can remember entails some sort of training. Just handing things away for free doesn't make sense -- corporations aren't charity (of course I am overlooking some corporate charity and scholarships, but on the whole of course corporations aren't there to give you free things).