By the way, in case anyone hasn't figured it out yet, a big part of the push for higher minimum wages is a *deliberate* effort to destroy jobs and drive up unemployment. That's not a bug - it's a feature.
In addition to the hand of organized labor, you've got the left-wing goal of increasing the size of the welfare state by diminishing the workforce. They WANT to make it harder for the poor to enter the workforce and climb into the middle class.
Conservatives often assume left-wingers are fools for not seeing the job-killing effects of higher minimum wages, especial when it's as obvious as it is today. No, they see it. They know EXACTLY what they're doing.
It's no coincidence that much of left-wing policy targets entry-level work for destruction. They want to pull up the ladder that leads up from dependence on the government. A smaller workforce paying higher taxes and eternally outvoted by the dependency class is the dream.
The secondary goal is to transform employers into agents of the state themselves, dispensers of welfare through a heavy burden of mandated benefits and inflated wages for low-skill work.
This also has the effect of making upward mobility more difficult. It's harder for employers to reward exceptional effort. Expensive bottom-tier labor causes the next tier up to become smaller.
The result is that people from the dependency class who want to work their way into the middle class are checkmated. They're trapped in lowest tier of work, where they can be kept resentful and dependent on government benefits. They stay "working poor" instead of middle class.
Thwarting their efforts to climb higher also prevents them from developing attitudes and habits unhelpful to the left, such as appreciating the value of hard work, developing the entrepreneurial spirit, and appreciating the power and freedom of capitalism.
The last thing the left needs is for people to climb out of the lower class and start learning how business works. Inflated minimum wages reduce both the level of employment and the ease of promotion.
Pumping up the minimum wage also helps to make everything more expensive, which is also an economic goal of the left. They want people to feel poor even when they get jobs and earn more money. Higher prices also help to conceal the cost of Big Government.
So: you know the saying "a rising tide lifts all boats." The left wants fewer people on the boat, and they want to keep those who manage to climb aboard stuck on the lower decks. High minimum wages help to accomplish both goals. /end
