In closing, I would say I am one of the few people, it seems, who believe that laws must be passed based on the behavior they incentivize. What I have basically argued above is that Minimum Wage Laws incentivize employers to act in a way that is not in the best interests of prospective employees. These laws are meant well by most, not all, people who advocate for them, but their well-meaning motives unfortunately incentivize behavior that is detrimental to society as a whole.
Like I said, not all people who advocate for these laws mean well. Some of them have vested interests, like trade unions. As already mentioned in previous articles, minimum wage laws cause the less experienced and less educated to be unemployed. Now, there is no trade union for unemployed youth (i.e., less experienced and less educated); as such, when trade unions argue for a minimum wage, they are in effect thinking about their base, which is already employed (i.e., more experienced and more educated), thus in effect creating less competition for their base. This is so because employers will be more willing to hire a more experienced and educated workforce at a minimum wage rate because its productivity is likely to match the minimum wage rate or surpass it. In effect, minimum wage laws are tariffs imposed on the unemployed, particularly the less experienced and less educated. Some trade union leaders know this and know exactly what they are doing when they lobby for minimum wage laws.
Furthermore, the things I said above are not pulled out of thin air. I would love to quote statistics to support it, but that can be a cumbersome task. As such, I would like to leave that part to my critics; for example, a good place to start would be reading “Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell. Thomas is smarter than me and spends most of his time researching these things. It was him who influenced my views on minimum wage laws. I was also as gullible to this like everyone else. Thank God for Thomas!
I also studied economics in my first and second year of university. What I have explained is predicated on the theory of economics, viz., supply and demand. If you floor prices (creating minimum prices), you create an excess supply which will not be matched by the demand, thus creating an inefficiency in an economy. In the case of the labour market, that excess supply is unemployment!