Thats an interesting point. As insane as it might sound there ARE circumstances where this could come up.

The only options today are working under the table like this or doing it totally volunteer wise.

No they aren't, nor are they likely to be. You are assuming a level of price discrimination which does not exist in most markets.

In order for equilibrium to exist only the final employee needs to be paid where the marginal cost of hiring him matches the marginal revenue. Marginal cost will only equal wage, when the wage offered attracts a surplus of employees at that level, otherwise, you will need to increase the wage offered in order to attract additional employees, this will result in a marginal cost which is much higher then the wage of the final employee.

For example consider this scenario:

A widget factory factory is hiring employees, faces increasing costs, decreasing returns, and cannot keep the wages a secret between employees

For the same reason you can't run an national bank with a reserve ratio lower then the Federal Reserve specifies, or run a bank in Connecticut without being FDIC insured, and why you have to obey fire codes when running a business, you can't collude to fix prices, nor can you collude to reduce competition in the market or tie products. Certain parts of the economy have regulation, get over it, laissez faire is just as disproven as marxism.

Exactly.
One situation would be entry-level workers. A 14 year old who has never held a job before might be worth only $4/hr. Most employers will not take the risk at $5.15/hr, and many more will not take the risk at $7.25/hr.

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"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

What do you mean when you say laissez-faire is disproven? Do you mean it has been disproven because it hasn't worked? If so, when has this happened?

And when you say "for the same reason", what reason is this?

__________________
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

In equlibirum, there is no proft/no loss.

__________________
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

No, in a perfectly competitive market there is no economic profit in the long run, even in a perfectly competitive market there is still accounting profit in the long run, and economic profit in the short run, and not every market is perfectly competitive. Further this model doesn't account for anything except the cost of labor and the productivity because the rest of the elements are not relevant to this discussion.

In the industrial revolution... Oddly enough people don't like working in dangerous, deadly, toxic and otherwise harmful environments. They don't like companies which encourage TB in meat because it allows them to sell more food. Laissez Faire does not suit the needs of the people and the only way it can hold on is if it keeps the people down and strips them of their rights by force, this can be seen throughout the history of the labor movements in the 19th and early 20th century.

Because economies do not perform well in extremes.

This is interseting. People hated working in these factories so much that they...worked in the factories. If they really didn't like to work in bad conditions, they wouldn't, and factoires would either close, or change.

What extremes? How is it extreme if I agree to work in poor condidtions?

__________________
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

I remember playing this game in another thread. One can cherry-pick and over-simplify an example that proves the sky is purple, but that doesn't change the macro-level effects of minimum wage laws. Sure, there might well be businesses that end up Hiring due to the wage increase. But they won't offset those that fire, forgo hiring, or go under.

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Today's forecast: Government corruption.

Tomorrow's forecast: 100% chance of more 'politics as usual'

Maybe it's finally time to vote Libertarian

Really ?

That's not what SOME would have us believe.

I agree BTW

No, statistical analysis proves the macro-level effects... Most of the evidence from the con-side consists of a "look, once in year x the minimum wage went up and employment went down" or "people at the bottom of the pay scale tend to have high unemployment, ergo minimum wage did it". The pro-side has at least attempted to do cross-state analysis.

those businesses would be any company which does not face a perfectly competitive job market.

Quite frankly if a nudge to the minimum wage causes a company to go under, then it would have otherwise. No company will operate that close to the edge and survive.

Dude, I'm on your side in the minimum wage debate, but this is completely fatuous. That's like saying that black sharecroppers enjoyed sharecropping so much that they kept doing it. Child laborers and people working sixteen hour days in grueling conditions during the Industrial Revolution had a choice - work or starve. They couldn't decide they were fed up with their boss, leave Circuit City, and apply at Radio Shack. There was generally only one outfit in town, it owned all the land, and, by default, all the citizens. The early IR was pretty much like a feudal system with serfs, except more efficient and with worse working conditions.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Anyone who wants to understand this issue will go to the 'Economic Policy Institute, 'Minimum Wage- Facts At A Glance' to see that it will diectly help 11% of the American Workforce, and indirectly aid the other 89% by raising the base-wage, which has fallen some 30% since 1973.

And they decided that working in poor condtitons was better than not working at all. Where is the force?

If none of the workers wanted to work in these bad conditions, then the factories would be forced to change. Increasing the quality of working condidtions is like increasing wages. So, if workers quit due to poor conditions, and there were other workers who took their place, nothing wrong has happened. Forcing factories to effectivly increase wages would cause ineficency. We want eficency.

And with respect to your point about working or starving, how has business regulations changed that? According to this argument, you could justify every type of regulation imaginable.

__________________
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address