There are significant misunderstandings of the "benefits" of minimum wage.

In the May 1996 Joint Economic Committee Report to the United States Congress, they state "All credible research has come to the same conclusion: raising the minimum wage hurts the poor. It takes away jobs, keeps people on welfare, and encourages high-school students to drop out." They go on to say that "It is important to recognize that the jobs lost are mainly entry-level jobs. By destroying entry-level jobs, a higher minimum wage harms the lifetime earnings prospects of low-skilled workers."

To keep things in perspective, someone earning Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour in 2010, who works 40 hours per week would be earning $15,080 per year. The 2010 Federal poverty level (except in AK and HI) for a family of one is $10,830 and a family of two is $14,570. Effectively, someone earning minimum wage is barely above the poverty level and if they are a single mom with one child they are essentially at the poverty level.

The report additionally states: "Proponents have been able to muddle the debate by pointing to a study done by two Princeton economists, David Card and Alan Krueger. These economists claimed to find that raising the minimum wage does not lower employment. 1 In one paper, they succeeded in casting doubt on 200 years of economic research and theory. Economists took their challenge seriously and attempted to recreate their results. It could not be done. Economists who attempted to replicate their work demonstrated conclusively that raising the minimum wage destroys jobs. 2

Repeat: Economists who attempted to replicate their work demonstrated conclusively that raising the minimum wage destroys jobs.

Then "Secretary of Labor Robert Reich often repeats the fact that forty percent of minimum wage workers are the sole source of income for their families. This is misleading because it relies on lumping single, non-family individuals with families. Only 2.8 percent of workers earning less than $5.15 are single parents. 4 Only 1.2 percent of all minimum wage workers were adult heads of households with incomes less than $10,000. 5 Fifty-seven percent of minimum wage workers are single individuals, many of them living with their parents." In other words, it's 16 and 17 year old teenagers who are mostly impacted by minimum wage.

When minimum wage is increased, middle-class-stay-at-home moms or stay-at-home-retirees, as an example, who otherwise wouldn't consider working, are suddenly faced with the prospect of earning a wage that is worth the effort to take on a job to pay for an extra nice vacation or a daughter's elaborate wedding. They effectively take the job away from non-skilled labor (teenagers) who truly miss out on the desperately needed opportunity to learn what it's like to function "in the real world," or Mom's trying to break the welfare cycle, or unskilled laborers who are otherwise homeless.

The Joint Economic Committee Report went on to say that "Dr. Peter Brandon of the Institute for Research on Poverty studied how raising the minimum wage affect the transition from welfare to work. 7 He found that raising it keeps welfare mothers on welfare longer. Mothers on welfare in states that raised their minimum wage remained on welfare 44 percent longer than mothers on welfare in states where it was not raised.8"

1 Card, David and Alan B. Krueger, "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry In New Jersey and Pennsylvania." American Economic Review. September 1994: pp. 772-793.
2 Neumark, David and William Wascher, The Effect of New Jersey's Minimum Wage Increase on Fast-food Employment: A Re-evaluation using Payroll Records. National Bureau of Economic Research: Cambridge, MA, 1995.
3 Washington Post, April 26, 1996, p. F1.
4 EPI Edge, Employment Policies Institute, April 1996.
7 Brandon, Peter, Jobs Taken by Mothers Moving from Welfare to Work and the Effects of Minimum Wages on this Transition. Employment Policies Institute: Washington, DC, 1995.
8 ibid.

In their conclusion, The Economic Joint Committee cites that lowering taxes is the answer for helping poverty stricken citizens, not increasing minimum wage.

Taking this the next analytical step, everything economic is based on supply and demand. Eliminating minimum wage could be predicted to cause the wages for some jobs to go down, while other jobs would rise. For example, a pizza delivery job may only be worth $6.00 per hour (plus tips) while the pizza order taker/cashier might be worth $8.50 per hour. Skilled jobs would most likely not be effected at all by the elimination of minimum wage as in addition to the laws of supply and demand (only so many engineers or accountants or fast typists), there is already a well established threshold for the value of skills, and it is so far removed from the poverty level (in most cases) that the lowest paid worker wage is simply a world apart, ergo one does not effect the other. By eliminating minimum wage and thus allowing businesses to pay appropriate wages for tasks, it would actually increase jobs because excess wages now required to be paid for, say a parking lot attendant (not cashier, just a sticker checker sitting in a beach chair under an umbrella at a park), could be funneled to another job.

Perhaps the most telling part of the Joint Economic Committee's report was it's conclusion that lowering taxes would be a much more effective way of improving unskilled labors lot than increasing minimum wage.

I know money, but I am not an economist . . . take my predictions with a grain of salt if you wish.

1 year out.
Employment would go up by a spectacular degree. Happily in the middle class, I could hire a maid if I wish. New jobs would be created all over the nation. The elimination of minimum wage is seen as a great thing, those who predict brewing trouble are dismissed as "Chicken Little"

New businesses spring up, but the effective ones are quickly swallowed by hugely profitable large companies.

2 years out.
Why would my employer continue to pay my current wage when they can pay less? Time to fire my maid. No one wants to be the lowest paying employer, but then again few would try to be the highest, and you would have a slow crawl to the bottom as employers try for mid-low pay to satisfy investors. The rich get richer. Unions get a bit stronger but people are afraid to strike.

"Average" quality drops, people can afford less for products so cheap is what sells.

3-5 Years out
If you are really, really, lucky you can end up buying a meal with 5 hours of pay. People get enraged and politicians promise to help.

At this point I can imagine that it would be reinstated, or if the rich control too much of the government and attempts to bring it back fail.

Without minimum wage it is easy to replace the middle class with the working poor, on the bright side there are winners in every economy and this one will have new rich and and people who were just rich will now be super rich.

This is an interesting question, as most of us have been taught in school that all business owners are dastardly mustachioed men in black top hats whose only goal in life is the subjugation of labor, and the heroic labor unions have saved the American worker from an otherwise bleak existence. The truth is, when a spending increase is forced on a business, whether through taxation or mandatory wages, the business owner won't just absorb that as a loss of profit, he will be forced into one of two courses of action: either raise his prices or fire some of his employees. Thus it can be said that minimum wage laws contribute to unemployment. Additionally, with mandatory wages and wage increases that are not determined by market supply and demand, prices must necessarily increase, and subsequently, the purchasing power of an individual's capital decreases.

A discussion of minimum wage laws is not complete without a discussion of unions. Importantly, unions cannot raise wages for all workers, they can only raise wages for a subset of those workers. As just discussed, this drives unemployment in those particular fields. This enlarges the supply of labor elsewhere, and in order for these workers to be absorbed into these new lines of work, wage rates in these areas must go down.

Thus, effective removal of minimum wage legislation would have to occur along with removal of pro-union legislation and policies. The argument that employers would decrease wages to obscene levels is ridiculous. This idea ignores a basic principle of economic freedom, the idea the an individual is in possession of their own labor. If wages are too low, the laborer simply moves to a place of employment where they feel they are better compensated for their labor. If no such place exists, new business will simply be created, provided they are free of arbitrary spending demands. As demonstrated above, elimination of minimum wages would drive employment as well as an increase in the purchasing power of an individual's capital. Employers, with a greater supply of labor and more money can produce more, or invest in greater means of production, supply of product increases, prices fall, everybody wins. Plain and simple.

If minimum wage was eliminated, I would see lots of problems. They created minimum wage so people wouldn't get ripped off. If they got rid of it, many people would be working for less money. The only good part would be that we might see a drop in prices because they wouldn't have to pay people so much. If you only made 2$ an hour, you wouldn't work very hard. The quality of things would go down.

If minimum wages were to be eliminated, the future would become extremely bleak for everyone, young people would be paid pennies on the dollar per hour. Undereducated would become hungry and poor, working at fast food restaurants for pocket change. Businesses would hire you even with an education for less than minimum wage, why pay more, there will be millions of people who will take pocket change because they are hungry and poor. The rich would get much richer, the middle class would go hungry and the poor would be reduced to survival techniques. Crime would become a way of life, organization of that crime would become a problem, the police will look for a way to eliminate that problem, and some smart politician would propose a minimum wage for employees. So I believe if minimum wage is eliminated it would be back very soon.

A couple of possible predictions would be.

1.) We would see a growth in unions.
2.) We could possibly see a price reduction since labor does come into factor for setting prices in all markets.
3.) We would see a possible growth of employment but it would be most likely high turnover people would still be upset about salary if it didn't prove.
4.) I see more illegal activity occurring.

Those are just 4 predictions, knowing what would happen is only at best guess. What I would be more concerned about isn't losing minimum wage is changing from US currency to a new one which is being debated.

Theoretically, employers could pay their employees as little as they feel like, Take serving for instance, everyone knows that a server only gets paid $2.33, before taxes and tips. The demand for these positions are still pretty high, that's why the wages haven't changed in a long time.

Employers could wait until they have someone that they could pay cheaply to hire. This could lead to lower quality work. Employers could also fire someone, simply because they are getting paid too much, and hire someone at a lower rate (I've seen it happen).

The unskilled would take the jobs of the skilled, because they would work for less. Wages would come down, as well as productivity.

Workers would revolt, and the government would be forced to reinstate it.

The same thing that happened before it was invented, people would pay less.