BS! Workers are paid according to their value to the employer. If you are making french fries at a fast food restaurant you paid according to your value as a french fry cook. The reason many areas already pay higher than minimum wage is the employer is competing for workers. I coached a young lad in soccer, who took a job at a fast food restaurant and started at $12 per hour. The restaurant is open 24 hours so it needs staff and is willingly to pay a little more for the odd shifts. He is being paid his value to that restaurant owner. If you force a minimum wage increase, entry level jobs will disappear. Why would I pay a teenager $15 an hour when I can hire an adult who may be more reliable and I get $15 worth of work out of them per hour. What will a $15 minimum wage do to unemployment insurance? When I last applied for unemployment, my scale was based on my income prior to being out of work. I was a federal contractor and I was paid a lot, I got the max. If they raise the minimum wage even to $9.25 that will increase the amount of unemployment compensation, will it also affect the amount an employer has to pay in unemployment insurance per worker? If I am a landlord, who survives the RATS policies this year, I will adjust rent according to the local demographics including annual income in my area. Increase in minimum wage will see increases in rent and the cost for services. If for no other reason, I have to pay the college student and/or laborers working around the facilities more money. You have to look past stage one thinking and see what effect a policy has on other areas of the economy.
While everyone is worried about illegals, and Indians taking our tech jobs, you better watch what the left hand is doing. AI is about to hit us in a big way. It is only a matter of time before customer service will be totally AI. It is even cheaper then using customer service people in Manila. There is one company that claims it will start producing 10,000 AI life like robots for face to face customer service work in the next couple of years. You already talk to an AI customer service rep when you call companies like AT&T. As AI becomes more advanced, next ten years, you will never know if you are speaking to a AI or a human. Millions of jobs especially in government will gradually disappear. It is only a matter of time before you speak to a machine at McDonald's. They already do not need cashiers, it is just cheaper to hire a cashier then to buy a machine. That will change soon enough.
So by all means artificially inflate a workers value via government dictate, watch as jobs disappear to be replaced by AI because they do not need insurance or collect unemployment.
Cashiers are not needed when you buy the big mac meal on your phone.
Macdonalds has finally implemented the system in use in China for years. You get the Mcdonalsd ap, place the order. the ap takes payment from your credit card and pays mcdonalds. You show the transaction on your phone and get your food.
Theire is no”machine” there is a server in the cloud