Minimum wages were initially created as a way to price people of color out of the job market. They still disproportionally effect people of color. Creating a fl

Minimum wages were initially created as a way to price people of color out of the job market. They still disproportionally effect people of color. Creating a floor on earnings prevents a large section of the population from ever getting ANY work experience. If they can't ever get to the first rung of the career ladder they're unlikely to ever get beyond that. There's some weird obsession of hoping that businesses (or the free market) are going to solve all of the problems of society. That's clearly not the case, but instead of the government stepping in to address those issues, they hope that creating things like earnings floor mandates will solve the problem. Those patchwork implementation generally end up having unintended (or in the case of minimum wages, actually intended and racist) consequences.