it is more cost effective than having to lie for means tested welfare.
a cost savings.
A cost savings at the price of a segment of society never becoming productive members of said society. Seems a bad payoff.
and, higher paid labor pays more in taxes and creates more in demand.
what part of the laws of the demand and supply, do you right wingers, not get?
I assume this part is about the minimum wage. It is you that does not understand supply and demand, if you did you would know that supply and demand sets wages where the market will absorb them, no higher, no lower. If there is a lower supply of labor, wages for in demand jobs go up.
To try and game the system with an artificial minimum wage merely means that the employers have to raise the cost of their goods/services and thus those using them, to include the employees themselves, are paying more and there is no change in demand at all, unless demand goes down as people do not wish to pay more for the same product/service.