This is a common argument, and it makes sense in theory. (I don't mean "in theory" snidely, I mean it in the real sense -- it's a defensible theory.) But here's

This is a common argument, and it makes sense in theory. (I don't mean "in theory" snidely, I mean it in the real sense -- it's a defensible theory.) But here's the thing: there are states across the country that have higher minimum wage than the national minimum, and cities that have higher minimum wage than their states. This has been true for more than a decade in most of these places -- so there's been enough time for us to gauge the effects by now, right? If the theory was correct, most of those localities should have measurably higher unemployment rates in low wage jobs than surrounding localities, and most of those rates should not be able to be linked to other factors beyond the legislated minimum wage. As it turns out, there's no substantive evidence this has happened. California does not, it seems, have a statistically lower number of minimum wage jobs per capita available than other states. That's true even in San Francisco, which has the highest minimum wage in the country. In fact, there have been studies done on this. A lot of them. Generally they show either no effect on employment caused by raising the minimum wage, or at worst case a small negative effect. There's a fair amount about what economists think at this NYT article, including links to a few of those studies: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/what-economists-think-about-raising-the-minimum-wage/?smid=tw-nytimes http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/what-economists... While the polled economists are rather evenly split on whether they think raising the wage is likely to be overall negative or positive, there was stronger agreement that "benefits of raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation outweighed the costs."