Should There Be A Minimum Wage (or one at all)?

Minimum wage philosophy centers on balancing economic efficiency with social justice, debating whether a government-mandated wage floor is necessary to prevent exploitation and ensure a basic standard of living, or if it disrupts free-market dynamics, causing unemployment and inflation. Proponents view it as a moral, social, and economic imperative to reduce poverty and income inequality. Come join us for this discussion

A minimum wage has several ethical dimensions:

1. Utility: A minimum wage could raise total utility by raising the incomes of the poor. (Transferring money from rich to poor raises utility under the assumption that wealth has a diminishing marginal utility, such that the poor value money more highly than the rich.)
2. Efficiency: A minimum wage could be inefficient because a wage is a price for labor, and all price floors are inefficient.
3. Equality: A minimum wage could make incomes more equal by transferring money to the poor from the wealthy.
4. Property rights: A minimum wage would mean forcibly taking money from some people to give it to others.
5. Fairness: A minimum wage would be paid for by business owners and their customers, rather than voters at large. This can be considered unfair because it was the voters who wanted the minimum wage in the first place. Relatedly, penalizing the owners is perverse because they were the only ones to give the workers any money so far.