Huh?
It has been shown that a very small (almost imperceptible) percentage of American families live on minimum wage. The vast majority of minimum wage earners are school age or people entering the job market for the first time. One has to start somewhere. Additionally, the marketplace determines the value of the existing wages with the exception of the artifical floor created by the minimum wage laws.
Also, how does one define "subsistence wage." Is it enough to support oneself, a family, live-in lovers? Should everyone be able to afford a home, a car, a television, a VCR, cable, etc?
I started out at 16 earning minimum wage and slowly worked my way up. It gave me an opportunity to gain job experience and a sense of pride from earning my own paycheck. If I am unhappy with my present situation I can look elsewhere. If additional skills are required to move upward, I can do something to attain them. Of course this requires motivation. If I am guaranteed an unnaturaly high salary there is less incentive to advance myself through hard work and dedication.
A "living wage" is one of the standard mantras of the socialist left. it completely defies the basic laws of economics. If you price someting above equilibrium it results in loss of supply. In this case it is jobs. Additionally, it causes samll business owners to make decisions regarding levels of employment. If they can no longer afford to pay what some bureaucrat dictates, then they will either have fewer employees, or resort to the underground economy to meet their labor needs.
The only thing that government meddling in the laws of of supply and demand does in the long run is cause people to find a way around it. It creates additional costs to doing business in the marketplace but the market will always prevail. A simple example is the CAFE standards that removed the family station wagon from the American landscape. The market responded with the huge growth in ownership of SUVs. Would we be better off with people driving Vista-Cruisers or SUVs?
The governmet's role is not to ensure that everyone earns a specific wage, but that playing field is level. Discrimination is wrong and is also not economically viable. There are also laws that prohibit that practice. The governemts should not be taking the role in determining outcomes, only that the rules are consistent for everyone.
I would say that dismissing the concept of "living wages" as "socialism" is one of the mantras of the idiot right. I shouldn't say idiot. Its an inertia thing. Most right-wingers just haven't thought much about it or parrot what they hear smart guys like Milton Friedman say.
What defies the basic laws of economics is not paying a person enough to live. I tried to explain that once here with chickens. If you don't feed a chicken enough to live, it dies. Freepers still wouldn't listen. But, never giving up, I try again. The same would happen to American workers except that the gov't steps in and pick up the pieces. Forget "altruism" for the nonce, and forget simple human compassion and basic logic. Forget fairness and equity. Just think GREED. Why should the gov't(the taxpayers) pick up the difference between crap wages and what it costs for food, housing, and medical care? Make employers pay a floor wage that is livable and save your own pocketbook parsy the really logical freeper.