Yes, they can, and yes, throughout history, they have been; and this fire sale involves selling the labour for less than it costs to produce, where the production cost is equal to the cost of food and shelter sufficient to keep the worker and his family alive and in reasonable comfort. (Not luxury, mind you, just comfort).
This leads to clear humanitarian problems (historically, slavery was a major one), and I’m pretty sure that the entire point of the minimum wage is to avoid said humanitarian problems by making the fire sale impossible.
It is NOT generally true that slaves were “paid” below a living wage. That would mean that healthy slaves were brought in, not fed enough to stay alive, and then died. In fact slaves were fed not only enough to stay alive but enough to breed and to feed babies, and their babies grew up to be slaves,
Slaves were not paid enough that they would voluntarily do the jobs they did. But they were paid enough to stay alive, and even to reproduce.
I am sure that many, even most slaves were in fact paid enough to stay alive (more specifically, they were probably fed and housed on the job); just not enough to stay alive in what I would consider reasonable comfort. And, in at least some cases, not at all once they were too old to work. (Some would have, I’m sure, been brought in healthy and than starved and died, through sheer incompetence on the part of the owner if nothing else; but those would have been the exception rather than the rule).
It is NOT generally true that slaves were “paid” below a living wage. That would mean that healthy slaves were brought in, not fed enough to stay alive, and then died. In fact slaves were fed not only enough to stay alive but enough to breed and to feed babies, and their babies grew up to be slaves,
Slaves were not paid enough that they would voluntarily do the jobs they did. But they were paid enough to stay alive, and even to reproduce.
I am sure that many, even most slaves were in fact paid enough to stay alive (more specifically, they were probably fed and housed on the job); just not enough to stay alive in what I would consider reasonable comfort. And, in at least some cases, not at all once they were too old to work. (Some would have, I’m sure, been brought in healthy and than starved and died, through sheer incompetence on the part of the owner if nothing else; but those would have been the exception rather than the rule).