We should have a $25 minimum wage
My argument for minimum wage has always been a philosophical one - human life and human labor has intrinsic value and any company&#x27;s bill of materials ought to include labor. The &#x27;market price&#x27; of a human life is, say, rent and food and medical bills (grossly oversimplified but the philosophical point is the same). Anything less than that is an undersell, equivalent to selling a food for less than the cost of farming it, or selling a device for less than the manufacturing cost. I.e. nonsense in the general case. Companies have been allowed to undercut worker&#x27;s value for centuries under the threat of homelessness and starvation. That&#x27;s not a free market. That&#x27;s robbery.<p>Companies are the only entities we allow to just take, setting their own prices, without quarrel, because laborers don&#x27;t have bargaining power when selling their labor. Hell, the interview process should be proof enough of that. Oppositionally, I believe in human dignity - I think a worker should be able to bargain. Frankly, since us regular people can&#x27;t just go up to the store and say &quot;well, I don&#x27;t wanna pay full price for this item, so I&#x27;ll just pay less for it - what&#x27;re <i>you</i> gonna do about it anyway?&quot; (we&#x27;d get arrested) I don&#x27;t think a company should be able to either. When you frame it in terms of an open market, the current labor situation sounds obviously and patently absurd.