It is my estimate that virtually all voters favor this law at some level. That is, perhaps at most 5% of those who cast a ballot favor wiping this enactment entirely from the law books.

The former, in sharp contrast, consist of at most a few hundred people, perhaps 1000 at most. It would consist of all the senators and congressmen who passed this legislation, the judges who rule in its favor, the police who arrest those who violate it, and the jailers who incarcerate them.

Assume, arguendo if you must, that the effect of this legislation is not to raise anyone's wage. Rather, it is to create unemployment for all those whose discounted marginal revenue productivity is less than the level stipulated by law. At present, federal law requires that at least $7.25 be paid to all employees. But there are some people, mainly young, minority group members, the mentally and physically disabled, whose productivity is less than that. If this law is boosted to $15, it is likely that far more people will be consigned to lives of permanent unemployment. The minimum wage is not akin to a rising floor, which raises pay scales. Rather, it resembles a hurdle over which the worker must "jump" with his productivity to obtain a job in the first place and keep it thereafter.

Remember, we are positing for the sake of argument that all of this is true and that arguments to the contrary are complete balderdash.

Assume now the entire absence of any minimum wage law (the first one in the U.S. was passed in 1938; before that, it just did not exist.) Suppose I purchased a big powerful weapon with an indefinitely large amount of ammunition and had not only nine lives like a cat but millions of them. I then went to every potential employer of unskilled workers and made the following threat to them: employ any of these people, and I'll shoot you. I also traveled to the inner cities and other places where unskilled workers are to be found and threatened to murder any of them who became employed.