What perplexes me most is the idea that hiring someone at a low salary is bad because it will cause bad outcomes, presumably because the employee is not as well-off as he would be with a higher salary. But in my view, the result of not hiring them at a low rate is that they will be worse off than they would be making the low salary, so the bad outcomes are even more likely. You could create a post asking this question and use the #askhubski tag. And, just to be clear, I did not suggest the $25k/yr. interviewees not be hired, I merely pointed out that, depending on how they answered the questions, they may end up being problems. You can avoid some of these problems by hiring any candidate, including some of the ones asking for a starvation wage, at a living wage. If you interpreted it otherwise and this was what caused you to run off on the "denying someone a wage" track, then I probably should have been more clear."Is it inherently unethical to pay an employee a low salary?"