Comment by ineptech

Comparing someone's wage to the value they produce is a fine way for a company to decide whether to hire someone, but I didn't think that was the question you were trying to answer, was it? Perhaps I misunderstood, but I thought you were asking something like, what policy would help people who are at the margins, which is an economy-wide question that can't be answered from one employer's perspective. Workers may only be "worth it" at some wage, at some point in time, but that wage is subject to supply and demand just like everything else. A policy intervention like raising the minimum wage will alter that supply/demand curve.

For example, suppose janitors all make the minimum wage. If we increase it, there might be some company at the margin that will go without janitorial services, but most companies will pay their janitors the new wage, which (from the "a worker costs $X and produces $Y" model's perspective) will look a lot like the nation's janitors suddenly started producing more value. Ergo, it's not to say that that model is wrong, just that it's not useful in answering a question like should we increase the minimum wage.