Is the federal minimum wage constitutional?

[Mikem]

I really dont care if it is constitutional or not, it shoule be abolished.  If you cant do a job that someone is willing to pay you enough for, then I guess you are out of luck.  Why should the employer have to pay some arbitrary amount for your work when it isnt market value?  It isnt the companies fault you cant to more valuable work, it is your fault.  Maybe I am cold-hearted but the way I see it some people just dont have any skills worth paying for.  Making a mimimun wage for nearly worthless work produces inflation and screwes up the market.

[Mikem]

So Mikem what would you have these "unskilled" laborers do.  What is your viable alternative.  Should they become criminals? Should they sell their organs or their children?  Should they work $100 hour weeks just to stay in debt?  Should they become subsistance farmers and live off the land? Or should they just die? Would you have them die? What would you have them do?  I agree with Lunar the minimum wage goes a long way in checking that destructive aspect of capitalism but it does not even provide enough to keep many people out of poverty.  I don't think that many people on this site truly understand the distopia that they would create if they were in charge of things.  You may not like the idea of the minimum wage, the concept may offend your finer captilistic tastes but we live in a real world where we have real problems that we have to deal with and eliminating the minimum wage does BUBKIS in fixing those (actually it would probably make things a lot worse as far as Standard of Living goes).

Personally I dont care what they do, I just dont think they should be overpaid for their work.  I do agree that this would cause a crime problem though.  My main problem is that we should not be trying  to pull people out of poverty by centrally raising their wage.  Some people will always be below the poverty line, that is just the way the economy works.  All that raising the wage higher is going to do is produce faster inflation, so that the real wage will be normalized to near what is was before the hike.  Then you have to raise again, and again, and again. 

[Mikem]

Then those people would fall under Congress's jurisdiction, but not someone working at the local 7-Eleven.

so basically you are saying that workers that travel over state lines should be paid a minimum wage, but others would be at market rate.    A state labor tariff is essentially what you are saying.  This would gouge population mobility and be extremely detrimental you interstate commerce.