I'm not an economist, so I can't speak to a magical dollar amount or a percentage. While I am usually a free market-leaning guy, you have to view everything in context. Viewing the current minimum wage in context, realizing that the minimum wage is actually 16% lower than it was under Reagan, I have to break from my usual "free market" stance and admit that the minimum wage needs to be raised.
Not only is the minimum wage worth less than it was under Reagan, but income tax rates are lower, there are more loop-holes (or at least more loop-holes than after Reagan's 1986 tax reform (which was a great piece of legislation), and all of this is happening while the Dow and corporate profits are at or near all time highs. There is nothing in this paragraph that is in factual dispute.
Thus, to continue to rally for lower taxes and no minimum wage reform is to fail to understand how class economics have shifted in the last 30 years or so. These factors, along with good things that do unfortunate things to unemployment such as 3D printing, make the middle class an endangered species. People assume the middle-class is just a given, and it isn't. Before the industrial revolution there was no middle class: if you weren't in business you farmed. There were laborers, but not at the level we think of today. The simple fact is we cannot all go back to farming, there are too many people now and we don't give away land anymore. The increases in poverty and unemployment, if not checked,
will lead to higher property crime rates... people do not go hungry quietly.
The obviously problem is that this doesn't work for most small businesses. McDonald's could afford such a pay raise, but the mom-and-pop diner down the block? It would break them. One of the reasons we never get anything done in this country is that our legislators argue against moving forward because of the effects one move will have on another issue. All that to say: the minimum wage hike needs to be bundled with tax breaks and credits for small businesses, a marginal tax increase, a draw-down in tax loop-holes, and some sort of policy package to give new ventures more tax flexibility.
The knee jerk reaction is to call me a "socialist," but once you understand the numbers, what I am really calling for is a world that looks more like Reagan's
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...-obama-says-minimum-wage-was-higher-during-r/