$15 an hour in Seattle is probably the same as $7.70 in St. Louis.

Sadly, this is not true, at least where I live. In Puerto Rico a lot of employers have that "do more for less" attitude, and it has worsen thanks to the economic crisis . I work for a Microbiology laboratory and I'm in charge of the whole administrative area of it.  I only earn $7.25.  The company has the ability to pay wayyyy more to its employees more but my boss is a cheapstake. 

:( damn this is bad, endure, my friends.

Yeah, reading into it makes it look like he's using minimum wage as a scapegoat for the fact that his business failed. 7.70$ is the same as about 5€, that is ludicrously small. Even at 40 hours a week, that only equates to about 10,000€ per year. That is not enough to pay a mortgage or rent in a city, let alone buy food and pay electric and heating bills.

Either way, if he is not doing good enough business to hire staff, then it is up to him to do the work himself, and to be productive. It sounds like he's one of these guys that wants to make money of the sweat of other people's labour while he sits back and skims the profits. Otherwise, he just has a bad business plan.

You're aware that waiters aren't expected to make their money from wages, but from tips? I know there's plenty of complain about in the culture or expectations of tipping for service, but that's the current climate for resturants in the US. It's an expectation that you tip 15-20% every time you go out.

In fact, most waiters I know make $2-3/hr from their employers, but with tips they make very good money.

The rule is simple - If I can rape them, I will rape them as much as I can.

The employees have a choice of other employment or entitlements. They aren't slaves. The comparison doesn't work because no force is used against them and no one owns them.

Well, when a large chain pushes wages down to push profit margins up, they can afford to charge so little for their products.

Combine that with the subsidies that only multinational corporations can secure, and you have small businesses that can't compete with their prices.

In a time when people looking for jobs outnumber the amount of available jobs, the force that motivates people is the fact that menial wages are better than no wages. For a system without minimum wage to work, there needs to be a surplus of jobs which have to compete for laborers to drive wages upwards. Otherwise, the forces of supply and demand drive wages downwards until you find the person who is willing to work for the least amount of money. 

That doesn't mean that higher minimum wage is better, it means that a middle ground should be reached which provides reasonable wages leading to reasonable costs for companies. Going too far on either end is potentially damaging. 

I'm pretty sure this is sarcasm. Otherwise, have fun learning about inflation