Once again, Walter Williams cuts through all the blather to drill right into the heart of the matter.
Entry level employees with limited skills are apprentices. They have limited value to an employer. They take up space and are capable of the most basic tasks, usually done poorly. Their value increases as their skill, even at basic tasks, improves.
Requiring employers to pay a living wage to apprentices forces employers to eliminate apprentice level employment from the labor force, or, to set a higher standard for entry level apprentices. This begs the question of where training becomes available for entry level employees. Public education can provide basic job skill training.
Living wage standards has the additional influence of motivating the employer to automate entry level tasks. All of these effects of living wage pressure on entry level jobs has the unintended (?) effect of increasing unemployment among the young and unskilled. The plus side, of course, is the positive effect of increased employer expectations/requirements on motivated young apprentices.
The group most negatively affected by living wage standards is the poorly motivated unskilled segment of the labor force that has no expectation or desire to improve their employment skills and simply wants the most money for the least work. These are the real losers, as they should be.
The argument that a job, any job, should provide a minimum standard living wage begs the question of the nature of that standard.
If the minimum wage is expected to provide all of the basic elements of an acceptable standard of living for a family of 3 it will fail by restricting upward mobility in the labor force. This has the effect of creating a class of employees that are unable to rise above basic income. It creates a steel vault that prohibits entry level employees from advancing. This model completely restructures labor/management to a more primitive economic model. For t5hat segment of the population looking for maximum benefit for minimum effort this is likely desirable.
Thomas Sowell would easily concur with the article. It reflects exactly what Sowell kept reporting from his economic research.
The government does not have the right to set a minimum or maximum hourly rate.
As I have posted before, the government can establish a legal minimum wage at any value it wishes. Whatever value it sets will always be preempted by natural law; that minimum wage, set by natural law, is now and always will be $0.00 per hour.