Getting $7.15 a hour blows...

Smith faces a problem of dualistic properties. On one side, we have the laborers: lower class men who must toil under the commands of a master to support himself and his family. On the other, we have the masters: men of high power who control regimes of men to conduct manual work. Now, while each works in mutualistic symbiosis, each side wishes to exploit the other. Workers want more, while masters want to give less. With a minimum wage law, both can be ensured so that even the lowest of laborers are ensured enough money to support themselves and their families, while labor that should remain cheap stays cheap. It works when applied and revised to be able to support any and all who work in the lowest ranks. After all, masters may be trying to undercut their workers as much as possible, but as seen in the Industrial Revolution of America, workers need some rights or they become pseudoslaves (or worse if they receive too little). in today's society, where the top 1% get rich while the rest of us are condemned to deal with an economy gone to hell, our minimum wage law of around $7.15-7.25 a hour will soon not be enough to survive on. Smith recognizes that masters are trying to undercut their workers; who doesn't want to save money? But in our current situation, Smith would be much more concerned about the laborers. If the labor isn't able to support itself, masters are left alone with no one to do the labor for them. So someone like Smith, who recognizes the dependency of both sides to each other, would argue that it is not only in the best interest of the workers, but also for the masters to ensure they don't dig their own grave.