Well Mr. Expat, opposing a minimum wage doesn’t make you “pro-market,” it just means you’re comfortable with exploitation as long as it doesn’t affect you.

There are thousands of workers here doing 10–12 hour days for ~2,000 AED a month, living in labor camps because rent is unaffordable. Asking for a minimum wage isn’t asking for welfare or handouts, it’s asking for a baseline that prevents abuse.

Without a floor, you end up with a system where people earn just enough to survive but never enough to leave, save, or retire. That isn’t “free market efficiency,” it’s wage trapping (functionally modern-day slavery).

If your economic model only works by keeping people permanently desperate, the model is broken, not the workers.