It's a lot more complicated. Sometimes staff is set by the budget. Sometimes a business needs a certain amount of staff to function and can't get away with empl

It's a lot more complicated. Sometimes staff is set by the budget. Sometimes a business needs a certain amount of staff to function and can't get away with employing less. In a lot of cases, staff is set by the latter, and raising the minimum wage cuts into profit margins. It's potentially inflationary if product prices go up in response to higher costs, but often product prices are very demand sensitive and raising them will result in suboptimal net revenue. There is a reason a lot of studies show that increasing the minimum wage by small amounts has negligible effects on employment: there are many other factors to consider. That being said going from $7 to $15 in the US is an experiment for which there is little to no data, especially for rural effects (since only big cities seem to have tried it). I personally favor not having a minimum wage but only in a society with a UBI so you don't have people needing to make a living off what they earn in the labour market exclusively. In such a society people who's labour contributes negligible value to society can choose to do something other than work if they feel it would be a more valuable use of their time. People who earn a lot in the labour market still face a strong incentive to work. In current society the low-end employers appear to have oligopsony power which results in distorted downward pressure on wages, and many people are forced to take badly paying bad jobs in order to live.