I’ll type real slow...
Min. wage is govt interfering with contracts. Min. wage NOT voluntary. It’s not govt property (aka $$) to dictate terms, minimums, constraints....NOTHING. Min. wage is a TAKING (anti-5th). If person A is worth $X, govt mandates/demands, regardless of worth, A is paid $Y (a taking of $Y - $X [plus the mandated 50% of SS, HCare costs, mandatory min. ‘leave’ time, etc. etc.] PER EMPLOYEE).
Civics 101: The Constitution doesn’t grant Rights (which are inalienable ONLY to We the People, from our Creator). It specifically states what powers are given, by the will/consent of the governed (the People); it does not restrict We the People.
Q: “How does Art 1 Sect 8 specifically exempt Congress from imposing any minimum wage?”
A: A1S8 doesn’t list many things, one of them being min. wage. Hence, Congress has NO authority/power in the matter.
Welfare, EITC, MediXYZ, school grants, foreign aid, etc. IS involuntary servitude. They are $$, given to one group from the pocket(s) of others. Try not paying your taxes and see the deadly force of govt, regardless that those taxes are unlawful to begin.
The 5th amendment doesn’t prohibit taking. It prohibits taking without due process; taxation is taking which is explicitly permitted.
A: A1S8 doesn’t list many things, one of them being min. wage. Hence, Congress has NO authority/power in the matter.
So you’re going back to the 9th/10th amendments (which I agree were implicit in A1S8). Your problem is that A1S8 explicitly refers to CONGRESS. Trying to extend the silence of A1S8 to the states by means of A1S10 expressly contradicts the 9th and 10th amendments which reserves those powers to the states.
Taxation is not involuntary servitude.
It boils down to this: if you try to assert that these programs were forbidden by the letter of the Constitution, you lose. No court is going to side with you, and no electorate is going to accept your authority. It’s far better to argue that these programs are imprudent, and would have been recognized as imprudent by our founding fathers for undermining what they were trying to achieve.
Once you do that, you’re also not restrained by the need for absolute ideological purity; you can dismantle the system of injustices by where the injustices are most acute and where they create the greatest dependencies.