I know, and agree paying sub-minimum wage is inhumane, but I actually did a paper in college on this and I need to bring up some things from strictly American problems. This is an American law after all.

First, while this has been abused, like all laws in America when it comes to corporations, it actually has an important purpose. This really only applies to lower functioning individuals. If you can care for yourself, you are not going to be paid these wages. These are literally meant to be programs to allow low functioning adults some socialization and to feel like they are providing something to society (totally different argument all together). This is literally not supposed to pay a living wage, which goes into my second point.

Second, these people are supposed to be people who are living in care homes and who are severely dependent on government programs. If they were paid at minimum wage they would lose their housing, their communities, and very likely their expensive health care coverage. They would lose their care workers who drive them to their jobs, who take them shopping, who help them with daily tasks. American safety nets are a cliff where if you make just a dollar above the threshold you lose everything. It's a trap for functioning people, it's literally the lifeline for severely disabled people.

So yes, this is a problem, but the problem is deeper than just paying them higher wages. These are programs that just give them some agency. If they got jobs that paid above, they would lose everything. We need to fix our healthcare and safety nets in America or else we will ruin some of our most vulnerable people.

If you want some historic examples there's the closing of insane asylums (they were awful) and how it led to our rampant homelessness and mental health crisis. Or even the demise of circus freaks which involves people outside fighting against the shows for political correctness causing people who are already ostracized by society to lose their job, stability, and communities.