A debate on "The Minimum Wage" please?

I have to disagree with Starship. Individuals should not suffer for the benefit of businesses. There are other ways of reducing costs and its sad that the first thing to happen in a recession is redundancies and pay freezes. The minimum wage is low enough as it is and should be raised to something more substantial in line with the cost of living these days although it would be impractical to introduce a standard wage for everybody. No one would go and get themselves educated if they were guaranteed a 20k salary to start!