A few thoughts:
-If minimum wage jobs are for teenagers entering the workforce, who is serving your Big Mac at noon when school is in session?
Further, just how many 16-18 year olds do you think are in the workforce? There's a minimum wage job every ten feet. It's simply not sustainable to only hire high school kids and people starting out. You talk about businesses closing, restrict all of those places to only hiring the people you think work there and see how many are open tomorrow.
-McDonalds CEO was paid $1.2 million, plus a $1.4 million bonus in 2001, plus stock options. In 2019, the same position paid over $18 million dollars. Have Big Macs gotten more expensive since 2001? Has minimum wage changed? Is the CEO doing a 10x better job or working 10x more hours than he was in 2001?
-If you're frustrated by people choosing not to work, it seems a job paying more than $290/week before taxes might encourage that. Why would you work 40 hours at a miserable job to still be broke when you can be broke and not work? All of these stories about working three jobs to be lower middle class doesn't make the character statement you think it does.
-Maybe consider that some people might find it advantageous that you're mad at the guy next door on food stamps that costs you twenty cents per check so that you don't notice that the Walton's increase their wealth by $70,000 per second (that's a real number). And will charge you extra for paper towels and blame it on having to give their workers an extra dime.
Just my thoughts on it, and at this point I'm not as concerned about the min wage increase since technology is ready to implement and automate most of those jobs away, although some industries will still be impacted.
- Not just high school, college, retirees, very unskilled. I also see where employees with mental challenges are working as well. I think it's great for them, since it's introducing them into a workforce. All of these demographics can be significantly downsized with technology improvements.
- It's the competitive labor market at work, there are only so many CEO's to go around (successful ones that is). In 2001, the market cap for McDonald's was around $27/share, today it's $213/share. $19 million to lead that kind of success and growth is a drop in the bucket.
- When I graduated college, I had no job and debt, and a tough time getting a job. I told myself that if I was awake, I was going to be working because $5/hr was better than no dollars an hour, so I was working three jobs at one point. I knew eventually things were going to shake out if I kept working. I paid of my debt, then got a "real job" about 9 months later, but never complained about it. So I really don't have alot of sympathy for that crowd.
- The only reason I get mad at the person on food stamps, are the ones that live off food stamps and do nothing to try and get off them. Granted, there's circumstances like disability, etc, however just for the lazy person, which I think there are alot, it rubs me the wrong way. I have no love for wal-mart, they will be able to absorb the increase no problem. They are a leader in automating at the retail level and will continue to do so. They also squeeze the hell out of their vendors.