The national minimum wage is a crime against the poor of this country as it forbids them from accepting any compensation below the floor set by the government. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that some people who could be working are not employed because of the minimum wage.

That is one way to look at it. The other is that it artificially forces up the price of labour and thus reduces the demand for labour. This law of economics has nothing to do with power dynamics, gender discrimination, racism or concerns about equality. Those issues, as far as I can tell, exist in the minds of certain academics working for institutions such as Wits...

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