Do low wages make for prosperity?

The Republicans oppose the raising of the minimum wage, saying it would hurt the economy. The desire to gain the fruits of another's labor w/o paying a decent price is an example of the pervasive welfare/slave-holder mentality in our country; maybe it is human natiure? What has been the benefit of our decreasing minimum wage, allowing for inflation - increasing numbers/percentages of people in poverty and near-poverty, with the resulting lack of retail sales.

During the late 1990's, there were thousands of computer workers fixing the Y2K problem. This was a necessary endeavour to leep the economy from crashing, but added lilttle value to companies (except for the occasional hitherto unknown bugs we found as part of the extensive review of all programs). That was also a time when the economy was doing well. Once the Y2K conversions were done, and large numbers of people were laid off at the beginning or early in 2000, the economy immediately slowed.