Minimum wage increases won't make poor workers $7/hr. It would make them unemployed. The correlation between wages and productivity is 0.996 - about as close a correlation as you can get. If they can't produce $7/hr, they won't be paid $7/hr.
Notice that the main champions of minimum wage laws are unions, whose members already make well above minimum wage. But if wages for unskilled labor (aka. unions' competition) are forced up, the unions can charge higher wages.
Think of it as Outback Steakhouse and the like lobbying for the government to set a minimum price of $8 per pound of meat sold by a restaurant. In that case it would be clear that they were trying to force fast food restaurants to increase their prices to unreasonable levels, eliminating them as competition.
Minimum wages do the same thing to the labor market that this minimum food price would do to the restaurant market - overpricing the low-quality goods to reduce competition against the high-quality goods.
Minimum wage increases won't make poor workers $7/hr. It would make them unemployed.
Are you so worried about the unemployed? I think paying $7 is not going to create unemployment, only higher prices on the fat cat "foremen" who are making $60/hr, and too cheap to pay the low level workers $7/hr.
The correlation between wages and productivity is 0.996 - about as close a correlation as you can get. If they can't produce $7/hr, they won't be paid $7/hr.
A $1 pack of cigarette and a $1 gallon of gas have doubled, I cannot imagine why the poor dish washer's effort is not worth $7/hr to you. Is it because he is too slow, and unable to speak English to fight for his rights? I do agree that labor union have been corrupted, however, we can clean the unions rather than allow the boss to enslave the workers.