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I believe that the law is there to prevent companies from calling ordinary employees "interns" for the sake of getting around minimum wage laws.

• dpatru 17y ago
  Turning the perspective around, minimum-wage laws can be seen as having the purpose of preventing low skilled people from learning on the job. One of the best ways to learn is take a job is the field you want to learn in. You get paid to learn. This is better than having to pay to learn. Unfortunately minimum-wage laws make this option available only to people who already have enough skills that they can produce at least minimum-wage value while learning. So an MBA-level person can take a manager's job in a restaurant for low pay to learn restaurant-managing skills, but a high-schooler may not be able to take a cook's job to learn basic job skills like showing up on time, being diligent, following directions, etc. because the high-schooler may not be producing enough net value to justify even minimum wage.
• jessriedel 17y ago
  But the idea behind minimum wage (as I understand it) is to ensure a living wage to people who are supporting themselves with the job. If you aren't getting paid anything, then you clearly aren't supporting yourself with the job; you're investing in yourself, just like going to school. That's why I assumed it would be legal to pay people zero but illegal to pay people less than minimum wage.