I should add that re: the idea of "if I want to accept less pay, why can't I" ultimately creates a bad precedent where if you're willing to take $15/hour instead of $17, then no one will pay employees more than $15/hour, and then the next round of layoffs or whatever, and it drops to $12/hour and so on. So you're not really dropping just your pay, you're basically dropping everyone else's too. And if you're only making $10/hour to start, going down to $8/hour could really screw you over.

It's not always going to do this, but if employers know they can hire people for cheaper, they will, and then we start running into the same problems that required instituting a minimum wage.