If I'm understanding your post correctly (and correct me if I'm not), you're saying that removing wage laws would allow companies to pay as little as they want and the workforce would naturally increase the salary based on the difficulty of the work?
This would work in an ideal economy, but the problem is that we are currently in an employer's market. There is a surplus of potential employees out there, and if we didn't have wage laws, employers could easily pay whatever they wanted, even if they weren't liveable wages, specifically because so many people are out there looking for a job. Someone would take the job, internship or not, that pays scraps because it's something, do it for a few months, and when they became experienced enough above their paygrade, their employer could sack them and get a fresh new person for the same pay.
Salaries would never increase. Employers have historically found ways to decrease employee costs, and without government regulation, they would use every loophole imaginable.
You make the assumption than an employer would pay more to have a more experienced employee. But if you find a more experienced employee willing to do it for less (and in this current market, they will), then they will have the best of both worlds. Pay very little and get desperate people needing jobs.
I'm a small business owner and I see this all the time among other small businesses down the street, cutting corners everywhere they can. I can only imagine what it's like at the corporate level.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. I'll tell you why it would work. First of all, you are correct, but only if we assume all other things are equal. Eliminating wage laws would balance out the ratio of potential employees vs jobs available.
Also, if what you're saying is true about companies cutting costs to extreme levels and being able to find people to do work for so much less if it weren't for wage laws...then why do companies hire people at above minimum wage? My first job after college for example...the company wouldn't have needed to initially offer me $17 an hour to agree to work for them if there were people out there willing to do that job for $4 an hour....because with minimum wage laws, they could have gotten those people (and more) to agree to do the job for minimum wage. But they didn't. Why do you think that is?
No one would work for $4 an hour except for teenagers in school or cheap labor from outside the US. ---
"In the name of the future moon I shall punish you"-Chibi Moon