I feel like this is a perfect example of people trying to apply a "one size fits all" band-aid to a complex issue because it sounds nice on the surface. Obviously, Johnny French-Fry would be better off making $15/hour, but there's more to it than that.
I don't believe the salient impact here is "job loss", but rather "wage erosion" at other levels within the organization. There is a zero-sum game at play here, and I think both sides of the argument can probably agree that the trickle-up financial impacts won't make it anywhere close to the executive level. I also don't believe that noticeable impacts will make it back to the consumer in the form of higher prices, or that companies would even consider letting it impact their profit margins. The easy-win here is for execs to restrain or chip away at the wages and benefits of employees currently making ~$30-$65 an hour (these employees are typically paid via "yearly salary", but want to keep everything in context). This issue will likely be compounded by employees currently making ~$16-$30 an hour demanding raises since they feel like they "just missed out" on a pay raise (especially since these individuals are typically in closer physical proximity to minimum-wage earners -- imagine how the fast-food manager will feel when Johnny French-Fry is now only making $1 an hour less). Then the same people arguing for a minimum-wage hike turn around and complain about the wage-gap. I agree that wages should be higher, but simply increasing the MINIMUM wage isn't a viable solution. Need to consider the 2nd, 3rd,...(n)th order effects.
People (including researchers) always use data from mega corp retail shops to measure the effectiveness of minimum wage while ignoring the thousands of other industries and lower end of the market of small companies who are not hiring at all and can’t be easily recorded.
I’ve seen a number of studies justifying minimum wage that only looked at major chain restaurants then used that to justify the hammer being justified on every company size, industry, full time/part time/temporary workers.
These are easy things to lie with statistics and cherry picked data.
I don't believe the salient impact here is "job loss", but rather "wage erosion" at other levels within the organization. There is a zero-sum game at play here, and I think both sides of the argument can probably agree that the trickle-up financial impacts won't make it anywhere close to the executive level. I also don't believe that noticeable impacts will make it back to the consumer in the form of higher prices, or that companies would even consider letting it impact their profit margins. The easy-win here is for execs to restrain or chip away at the wages and benefits of employees currently making ~$30-$65 an hour (these employees are typically paid via "yearly salary", but want to keep everything in context). This issue will likely be compounded by employees currently making ~$16-$30 an hour demanding raises since they feel like they "just missed out" on a pay raise (especially since these individuals are typically in closer physical proximity to minimum-wage earners -- imagine how the fast-food manager will feel when Johnny French-Fry is now only making $1 an hour less). Then the same people arguing for a minimum-wage hike turn around and complain about the wage-gap. I agree that wages should be higher, but simply increasing the MINIMUM wage isn't a viable solution. Need to consider the 2nd, 3rd,...(n)th order effects.