A Minimum Wage Story

Lin Zinser offers a great story that speaks against the raising of (or even existence of) minimum wage laws. How would anyone in the scenario given be better off if they had followed the minimum wage laws?

But she also raises an interesting point regarding interns. People can work for free, but they can't work for $5 an hour in the US. Volunteers are one thing: they work for free out of charity or for some other reason. But interns are willing to work for nothing to earn skills and experience that will make them hireable in the future. So they are receiving value in exchange for their labor, just not in the form of money. But add to that value they are receiving, by paying them $5 an hour, and all of a sudden the business owner becomes a criminal who is breaking the minimum wage laws. Or fail to provide them benefits required by law, and the same thing is true: even though both parties are freely contracting to mutual benefit, you are breaking the law.