"The crux of the issue is at the end of the day, the true "market value" of most 0 or near 0 skill jobs is close to 0$. This is especially true in the case of y

"The crux of the issue is at the end of the day, the true "market value" of most 0 or near 0 skill jobs is close to 0$. This is especially true in the case of your hypothetical homeless person for whom any employment represents a significant percentage marginal increase in income (hard not to beat 0)." I don't think that's true at all ... as a Californian, I am surrounded by zero skill tasks related to agriculture that pay well more than zero. I pay workers in my vineyards and orchards for zero-skill tasks like weeding, mowing, digging, etc. over minimum wage. Granted, this is in a coastal area (Marin County) but even in the central valley the value of zero-skill labor is much more than zero. In fact, I will bet that anywhere in California a worker that can show up on time and work hard for a full shift will consistently be paid over minimum wage for this zero-skill labor (absent employer trickery). The real problem, in my opinion, is that there is a great social migration taking place towards high-priced cities with low housing stock and lots of wealth driving up prices of all goods and services in these areas. So it's not that zero-skill work has zero value, but rather: zero skill work cannot meet basic living standards in an expensive city - and these days, all of the cities are (relatively) expensive. We are talking about Seattle, after all ...