Alright so I'm curious about peoples feelings and, ideally, actual facts on the existance of minimum wages.

Common economic theory says there is a demand curve and a supply curve for labor. Add a minimum wage and you get unemployment and things are worse for everybody.

However minimum wage isn't just some theoretical construct. Apperantly it exists in over 90% of countries.
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/pr...sheets/w-1.pdf

In my limited knowledge there hasn't been the predicted wave of unemployment as a result of this. I've heard the UK came out fine. And here in the US if I decided to say screw it to my career there are a handful of stores I could walk over to from where I live for a crap job.

So the question is what's going on?

One argument I know of is the effects of industries acting together to create monopsonies. Or similar effects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony

Another is that since there are usually exceptions to minimum wages (waiters, some agracultural jobs) the result of a minimum wages is to raise wages for a wide range of workers but the exceptions provide jobs for full employment.

Finally I would imagine that in the no skill labor market lost jobs would be represented more in the form of hours availible to work. So maybe people are only working 30 hours for $6 an hour when they could be working for 60 hours at two separate jobs if they would take $4 an hour.