I agree with you that a minimum wage law is effectively a ban on pay for very unproductive work, but I disagree with you on what that implies. If someone can't

I agree with you that a minimum wage law is effectively a ban on pay for very unproductive work, but I disagree with you on what that implies. If someone can't support themselves, then I believe that the wider community should help. The two groups of people which I have in mind are: 1) those who can't produce enough value to support themselves, and 2) those who can produce enough value to support themselves, but who are not paid a large enough fraction of that value to actually do so. My understanding is that X is set high enough so that people in group 2 will get a large enough share to support themselves (so it moves people from the poverty-stricken group to the somewhat-poor group at the cost of company profits) while still being low enough such that anyone who produces less would fall into group 1 anyway, and would therefore need other more direct help, independent of any minimum wage laws. Is your position that for any X, some people will be forced into group 1 who would otherwise consider themselves self-sufficient, and that the cost to them outweighs the benefit to those in group 2?