Thoughts on Getting Around Minimum Wage Laws

In my wildest dreams, I am a graduate student in Economics at George Mason University, and I write my thesis in microeconomics on the craft business.

My basic idea is that the craft business is a way to (legally) get around minimum wage laws. People whose time is not productive enough to make minimum wage, for whatever reason-- maybe the time they have in which to be employed comes in too-small chunks or at odd hours, maybe they are splitting their time between working and tending children, maybe they are disabled and can't sustain a regular job-- these people go disproportionately into making and selling crafts, and they make very little money doing it. My argument is that no matter how vociferously they claim this is due to skinflint neighbors, evil box stores, or Chinese imports, they are in fact working and getting paid according to their reduced productivity-- and it's all totally legal in the United States.