You and the above, completely don't get it.  It's oh so painfully obvious.  Go start a business and then start talking. SMH.

I don't think a lot of these posters realise that it's not just a wage that you pay people. There's payroll taxes, training, mandated benefits, paperwork, insurance, etc.

When you hire an individual, you take on all those costs as well as a salary - up to a third of the salary goes in additional taxes alone.

Back in London, if you're a software engineer in the Wharf, you can choose two ways of going about it: as an employee, or as a individual contractor. Being a contractor, you forgo all the mandated benefits, and the employer can skip out on a lot of the taxes. The net result is contractors end up earning 40-50% more than the regular employees. To the employer, the cost is essentially the same whether you're contracted or employed.

It would hurt businesses to keep the minimum wage higher.  Full stop.  There's plenty of evidence that suggests it.   Wages aren't charity either. They are earned through working.   Go create a business, go create jobs for people, go invest everything you have to make it happen and then we can talk about business acumen.

It's quite simple supply/demand economics - when prices go up on just about anything, people will buy less of that anything.  If you have the government artificially inflating the base wage cost (prices go up),  businesses will buy less of them. 

let the market decide the wages. there will always be HS kids to flip burgers for video game money for 6 bucks an hour.

I don't think you get it.

The bulk of consumers are low-income and middle-income earners, If the minimum wage is increased, everyone earns more. Which means everyone can spend more. Which means more chances for your business to profit.
My country has a $17.70 minimum wage, small businesses do perfectly fine, in-fact, they employ the majority of people in my country, which completely destroys your belief.

https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017/01/03/minimum-wage-goes-up-and-so-does-business-thats-what-this-fast-food-ceo-says-happened/
http://www.valuesandcapitalism.com/what-actually-happens-when-you-raise-the-minimum-wage/
https://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/small-business/employee-motivation/raising-hourly-wages.aspx

It also means more people can afford your ridiculously overpriced education and healthcare in the USA so they can have more opportunities in life.

That guy thats paid 7$ a hour... he cant afford to buy anything but the necessities.

Guess what? that means he most likely wont buy anything from your shop.

Now multiply that by however many millions of people are payed those slave wages.

Then imagine if they where suddenly payed a respectable amount instead..... what happends? they get money they can spend in your shop.

So minimum wages go up ----> sales everywhere in the country go up (well not on expensive luxury items), but you get the point.

Increaseing minimum wages everywhere can lead to more buying power, which can lead to better profits in stores.

And not only is your shop doing as good as before (even if your paying higher wages), the workers are better off for it too.

Theres a balance to be made, underpaying workers isnt the solution.

Also how many of those guys that run bussinesses they move to china (because wages are 4$ lower there), dont afterwards give themselfs a pat on the back and themselves 1-3million $ bonus ?

The problem with bussinesses moveing oversea's is the rich bastards that run these companies dont give 2 sh*ts about their own country men.

Isn’t that great. We let people with money tell us what is best for us. We assume because they have money they must know what is best.

Your country also has lower purchasing power relative to it's nominal GDP so having more 'money' does not necessarily mean you have more buying power when we consider the fact that as wages grow so will the demand for goods and services. The cost of goods and services will normalize with respect to the amount of bank notes that are available ... 

Maybe in your country you can't live off of $10/h but in America you can make ends meet in the right places and most residences have 2 people living together ...

I do take a look at countries that have higher minimum wages than us but it seems to be somewhat offset by the fact that most of those countries have less buying power per capita than their nominal GDP per capita aside from an oddball like Germany which has a relatively strong export based economy and a strong manufacturing sector too ... 

High minimum wages have an affect alright, at least a negative effect in productivity when we consider that China is the biggest winner in terms of net exports so their nation as a whole reaps massive profits. If you wanted better living standards you would've asked for more available goods and services instead of cash since money is not a fixed value asset ... (same goes for just about any assets too I guess but at least with more goods and services living costs would be cheaper when printing twice the amount of money means your cash is now worth 2x less than it was before)

Money is like a placebo to drive our growth in productivity and I guess that's what it was intended for when it was invented ... 

Even when you "normalize" all the costs etc'. As a country. We are still ahead of the USA.

Except... A higher minimum wage doesn't mean there are more bank notes in circulation.

It does mean that the divide between the rich and poor is less.

You could live off $10 an hour in Australia. But living near the poverty line is not living.

You might have more Purchasing Power. But guess what? You also have to pay for your own education, dental, health... Our systems are completley universal and covers everyone. It also costs each individual significantly less overall, that kind makes up for allot of ground.

We also don't really have a manufacturing sector, we transitioned away from that, we do have a strong services and resources sector though, which allowed us to glide through the entire Global Financial Crisis without ever entering recession.

China is on top of the world as far as Manufacturing is concerned, they displaced the USA. The USA needs to take note and transition it's economy to more valuable work.

But we have a higher living standard anyway.

Higher disposable income = Price raise on common commodities ... 

The transfer of wealth affects the supply and demand of goods in uncanny ways ... 

Sure it is, people just choose not to accept lower living standards ... 

Actually the education system is state subsidized and covers K-12, now if you meant post-secondary education you might have a point but most degrees are not worth subsidizing. (And I also question if it's even worth subsidizing the vast majority of K-12 too.) We don't need dental care either for the vast majority of the population as that is an artifact of the past from the fact that we had very few inexpensive ways to maintain our dental health but with modern toothbrushes and toothpaste we don't need to worry so much about tooth decay anymore unless you consume a lot of acid. Australia is able to afford universal healthcare because it's population is less than 1/10th of America and that the citizens over there have relatively good health conditions and habits too. America is eating itself into diabetes and cardiovascular diseases which puts a huge strain on the health system and that ends with us hiring foreign doctors looking to make big cash off of us. The biggest winners of healthcare is arguably Japan since they pay the least for the highest life expectancy of the super developed countries but had their citizens have been in similar circumstances to American citizens they would probably rethink on subsidizing healthcare. Make no mistake that an American citizens health is a big liability in itself since we're leaders in terms of chronic condition rates LOL ... (I don't think any subsidized healthcare system can help with that.) 

It's not a good idea to totally transition away from manufacturing since you can't reap living cost benefits without that sector or become a net exporter which is equivalent to a net profit for a nation. Even Germany keeps manufacturing around or at least high value manufacturing and their doing great cause they can't rely on having precious valuable resources like Australia since their nations reserves aren't as big ... 

You need a strong manufacturing sector to be internationally competitive and to keep living costs down as we see in both cases with China ...