[minimuffins]

A business that pays poverty wages is insufficiently socially useful imo. We do too much for it; it does too little for us.

> some government idea of enough pay

Misleading. There is an objective amount of pay that is or is not enough to live on in a given place. The government tries to guess at this sometimes, for the purpose of setting min wage, but that value is objective and exists independently. It's not some arbitrary bureaucratic thing.

[throwawayboise]

Not everyone who works does it for the goal of "living on" that one job. Some people work for supplemental income. Some people (teens) work for spending money and to gain experience. Some people (retirees) work for something to do other than sit at home.

If all jobs had to pay enough to "live on" then most of the people above would be able to work at all, because the jobs simply would not exist.

[minimuffins]

You are setting up a scenario where we have to choose between:

A) teens and retirees having access to low paying scut work jobs

B) eradicating wage slavery for non-teen, non-retirees by making it illegal for employers to pay poverty wages

I don't know if it's really such a simple binary opposition, but if it is, B for me.