I see what you’re driving at, but all employment is exploitative. There’s always a measure of the work that any low-level employee does that they will not get compensation for, that’s how business operates. That’s profit.

Whether someone is able to work at a position full-time or not, isn’t really the point I’m making here. Long gone are the days of the minimum wage being a living wage, no matter how much we try, we’ll never catch up to the inflation that’s happened since the minimum wage was set. Companies won’t let it happen. As minimum wages go up, so will prices, and you’ll always be in a never-ending cat-and-mouse game of raising wages, vs raising prices. The two will never be at the same ratio of earnings again. Minimum wage earners will never have the same buying power that they did when the minimum wage was put in place.

Our buying power will continue to be eroded away, in small amounts, forever. Minimum wage positions will always be, by definition, more exploitative than other positions, but all jobs are going to continue to exploit the work that people do. That’s capitalism in a nutshell though. I’m not proposing a better system, just stating facts. That fact makes a lot of what you’re driving towards, apply to a much broader group of people than just the exploited minimum wage, impoverished workers. The lowest earners will always need to be supplemented by something, whether that’s a food bank, food stamps, rent control, government programs to reduce costs, taxes, or other fees associated with living, or by the income of another person. I don’t think Minimum wage earners will ever be able to be financially independent, even if they could have been at one point or another.

By cutting any job, you’re shrinking the pool of jobs available for entry level workers. A pool that’s continually shrinking already. I will happily do whatever I can to reduce how much that’s shrinking as often as I can.