Arguments in favour of a minimum wage mostly hang on the idea that firms have a responsibility to ensure that their workers earn enough to live on. If a firm can’t pay its workers enough to live on, then it isn’t a viable business, because it is dependent on wage subsidies. Of course “enough to live on” depends where you live: the cost of living in London is considerably higher than it is in, say, Newcastle, so a minimum wage that would give a reasonable standard of living in Newcastle is starvation level in London. The campaign for a voluntary Living Wage tries to persuade firms to pay above the current UK minimum wage, which is perceived as being below the real cost of living.
Abraham Lincoln came into office a bit prior to the civil war and remained in office until past the end of it until he was assassinated.
Thomas Hobbes revived the idea and it was developed in different ways by John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant
