The problem with minimum wage going up is that it creates a work force whose pay is hard to maintain. A business who employs 3 girls who work for $11.35 an hour (the new minimum wage since you seem to be in BC) work for a total of $34.05 per hour… But if you raise the minimum wage all the way to $15 an hour, suddenly that's $45 an hour, as if they were employing four girls at the $11.35 wage (which is still more expensive than the previous $10.85 wage that made those 3 girls cost $32.55). That's PER HOUR. And if all three girls are working full time, with each girl working 5 days a week at 8.5 hours a day, that works out to $96.48 a day per girl. That's $482.38 a week per girl. Which amounts to roughly $1929.52 a month .. per girl. That's $6000 a week at $11.35. Now we raise those wages up to $15.
$127.50 per day, $637.50 per week, $2550 per month. $7650 for all labor in a single month. Now the question becomes how much does the business make? Can they afford all three girls now? Maybe instead they need to cut the girls down to part-time and only allow them to work 4 days a week. Or maybe make them work 6 days a week and cut out one of the girls.
This is not an ideal situation for either the business or the girls, because either the business might begin to sag under the weight of those wages, or the girls might get hurt either by one losing their job entirely, or all three girls getting their hours and thus their wages cut.
If they work 4 days a week each, that's still only $2040 a week. Which makes the same wage affordable once again, but now the problem is that the business might be short-staffed. It's easy to alternate the days off for 3 girls working 5 days a week. Try to alternate the days off for 3 girls working 4 days a week that doesn't leave the business poorly staffed. Certain nights of the week have more business, so it makes accommodating those days downright ghastly.
Some guy is like "well if we raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, that means that they'll have more money to spend, so more people will go and they won't have to cut hours." That's horseshit, for one and two that means that the $15/hr isn't going to help anyway because if people frivolously spend that extra capital that means that they still aren't benefiting from the almost $5 hike.
This is just an example for a restaurant, now imagine other businesses. Mom and pop shops, corner stores, 7-11s… Smaller places that might do nice business, but might reconsider how many employees they have when they have to pay half as much more per employee per hour. This effect only really hits places that pay minimum wage as is, and the reason those businesses work for a lot of their employees is because it's minimum wage. They might lack the experience needed for higher wage jobs, they might be total fuckups who can't do anything at a higher pay grade, etc.
There's already an unemployment rate of roughly 10%. I expect that this change could actually increase that number by more than the dollar value that the wage will increase by. At least 7%. 17% unemployment. Places that hire 3 people might choose to go with 2, places that hire 6 might choose to go with 4, etc.
The thing about the minimum wage is businesses pay that much to their workers because they can. They can afford to pay for those workers because it doesn't hurt their bottom line. But once you raise the minimum wage by one half, that means that they can't afford to pay for those workers anymore. Either these people have their hours cut, so they don't see the benefit to a minimum wage cut, or people get laid off and then the minimum wage hike didn't improve their lives at all, it actually hurts them both in the short and long run. The only way you can really make a standard of living improvement is by paying people a guaranteed income, and then allow them to work on top of that. And then you have to raise taxes.
See, there's no fucking magic bullet in all of this. Even if you manage to come up with a strategy that makes a wage of living work, and you come up with a tax system that makes income tax on top of that work .. you still have to somehow manage to keep certain variables from fucking it all up. Keep the inflation down, keep your currency strong on the world market so you don't end up with people using money as fuel for the fire to keep warm (like they did in Germany after National Socialism aka the Nazi party were deposed and removed from power and their money lost all its value).
And then figure out how to protect your country from the likes of George Soros, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump bankrupting you.
Pic slightly related.