1. Who or what the economy is supposed to be for, anyway.
2. What the situation is when it's not trivially possible to create increased value through exploitation of labour. That speaks to some problems with the production function.
3. The possibility of positive externalities and/or public goods (also of negative externalities and rent-seeking).
4. The relationships between wealth and political or negotiating power.
I'll give you a hint on that last. "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." Smith again.
I have, years ago in college (Econ concentration and some justice/ethics courses to go with engineering major).
I am speaking on a micro-scale. Individual people with low skills and no capital. It's not at all clear to me that minimum wage laws and social safety nets with sharp claw-backs or cliffs (where money earned doesn't help at all or not much) help this class as a whole. Sure, minimum wage laws probably prop up many in the class who have jobs but harms those in the class who don't.
For me, I've run two small businesses and now am a happy employee. It's amazingly aggravating to deal with having employees and it's perfectly proper to me that my employer makes more profit on my labor than I take home. They should: they take all the risk that I'm a lemon employee and provide the structure whereby I can concentrate on where I can add vale and all the stuff I couldn't care less about (HR, Finance, Legal structure, IP, etc) they handle.
If I start a third company, it probably won't have any low-skill workers at all, certainly not if there's a min wage law that makes it uneconomical to hire them. On a micro scale, I'm deciding what's best for my company, not for the economy or for society.
Edit: I should also clarify that in my GP post that I was referring to the payment of minimum wage at a rate higher than the value creation as a form of "charity", not that all low-skilled work (paid at free market wages) is charity. One of the appealing aspects of most UBI proposals is the "U" in that they don't scale back benefits as punishment for gainful employment.
I'd also inquire as to:
1. Who or what the economy is supposed to be for, anyway.
2. What the situation is when it's not trivially possible to create increased value through exploitation of labour. That speaks to some problems with the production function.
3. The possibility of positive externalities and/or public goods (also of negative externalities and rent-seeking).
4. The relationships between wealth and political or negotiating power.
I'll give you a hint on that last. "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." Smith again.