"Minimum wage" is one of those odd concepts that *seems* to have an intuitive definition, but the harder you think about it, the more complicated it gets. For example, if you want to work, but can't find a job, then the minimum wage you'll get is zero:
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That's why politicians like Avi Lewis (who is running for leader of Canada's New Democratic Party) has call for a jobs guarantee: a government guarantee of a good job at a socially inclusive wage for everyone who wants one:
https://lewisforleader.ca/ideas/dignified-work-full-plan
(Disclosure: I have advised the Lewis campaign on technical issues and I have endorsed his candidacy.)
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If that sounds Utopian or Communist to you (or both), consider this: it was the American jobs guarantee that delivered the America's system of national parks, among many other achievements:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps
The idea of a wage for everyone who wants a job is just one interesting question raised by the concept of a "minimum wage." Even when we're talking about people who *have* wages, the idea of a "minimum wage" is anything but straightforward.
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Take gig work: the rise of Uber and its successors created an ever-expanding class of workers, misclassified as independent contractors by employers, seeking to evade unionization, benefits and liability. It's a weird kind of "independent contractor" who gets punished for saying no to lowball offers, has to decorate their personal clothes and/or cars in their "client's" livery, and who has every movement scripted by an app controlled by their "client":
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/02/upward-redistribution/
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The pretext that a worker is actually a standalone small business confers another great advantage on their employers: it's a great boon to any boss who wants to steal their worker's wages. I'm not talking about stealing tips here (though gig-work platforms do steal tips, like crazy):
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I'm talking about how gig-work platforms define workers' wages in the first place. This is a very salient definition in public policy debates. Gig platforms facing regulation or investigation routinely claim that their workers are paid sky-high wages. During the debate over California's Prop 22 (in which Uber and Lyft spent more than $225m to formalize worker misclassification), gig companies agreed to all kinds of reasonable-sounding wage guarantees:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#prop-22
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Cory Doctorow
Kevin Karhan 