Pay should equal the benefit of the services. Apparently you subscribe to the Marxist creed that Capitalism steals the value of the working man's labor. It is a fact that about 2.5% of all people employed in this country make the minimum wage. Most people have some skill that makes them marketable enough to be paid more than $5.15.
To what level should we raise the minimum wage. How about $25 per hour, that would take everyone off welfare. WRONG, it would create massive unemployment, and more sweatshops that you complain of. In fact sweatshop that exist are probably the product of the illegal immigration problem in our country that not enough of our Democratic or Republican leaders want to address.
Have you read Milton Friedman or F.A. Hayek? Check them out.
Yes, I have read some. But my thoughts are more along the lines that "the heart of man is deceitfully wicked above all things"
by that and with 50 years of observation it seems quite clear that men unless restrained will abuse other men... they will work 8 year old children 12 hours a day... they will pay women 1/3 that of men for the same job (notice I said same not equivalent)... they will house workers in shacks, they will toss out an injured man and replace him with a healthy man... an old man for a young... they will build for themselves golden mansions in pristine locals,and they wil do so thinking all the while that they are moral men
No I am no Marxist but neither am I a full throttled Libertarian either.