Minimum wage simply transfers money from one entity to another.
If I go to my hardware store to buy a pressure washer, and the pressure washer is now ten dollars more than it was last month before a minimum wage hike, how did that economically better society?
In case you haven't noticed, we are in a wage war with other countries. Thanks to unions and other factors, we priced ourselves out of the world market. We won't even buy our own stuff.
So you increase minimum wage to $15.00 per hour. What you have done is created a domino effect. In other words, the people that were making $11.00 per hour are not going to sit easy being back to minimum wage. They will want at least $4.00 more than minimum wage to stay at their job. So the employer will have no choice but to nearly double that workers previous wage. What do you think the effect of that would be on the services or products he sells?
The negative effect on the market from raising the minimum wage depends on how it is done. If it is raised gradually over a few years and is indexed, the effect is smaller if you raised it all at once. Meaning, yes prices would go up, but it wouldn't offset the extra $500 dollars or so a month a worker would be making. He could easily afford the increase in price of services and products. Meaning, he could easily afford the extra $10 he would pay for that washer. Not only that, but if people have bigger paychecks, they are spending more money. That helps the overall economy. Businesses in general will do better.
Not really because it still creates inflation. Or let me put it another way:
Let's say we had an autocracy, and in this autocracy, I will be the leader.
To address our financial problems, I create a law that everything is worth half of it's current value.
If you have a $200,000 home, it is now worth $100,000. If you were paying $6.00 for your Big Mac combo, it now only costs you $3.00. If your wage is $22.00 per hour, your wages are now only $11.00 per hour.
Sure, if you had your eyes set on that $300,000 home, it will now only cost you $150,000. Or perhaps that car you wanted that used to cost $30,000. It now costs $15,000. But on the other hand, you are only making half of what you used to make and your bank account is also cut in half.
After you do all the calculations, you would say to me "Ray, yes, everything costs half of what it used to, but I also make only half of what I used to as well. In other words, I'm no better off today than I was yesterday."
To that I would reply correct, you are no better off today than yesterday. You're right at the same place. The only difference is that jobs will be coming back to America by the millions.
Where I live, if you make $20.00 per hour, you can do okay on that wage. You can rent a nice apartment, own a fairly comfortable house, and can go out from time to time. Not so if you make that wage in New York city, or many of the NE states. Even in places like California that wage is near poverty. Why? Because the cost of living is so much higher in other places.