To a living wage, and grow the economy.
If you bump up the minimum wage to an actual, living wage the businesses it effects will try to make it look devastating.
First, businesses will create ever changing work schedules... Any business open and operating on a regular, recurring schedule, week to week, should be required to have a regular, recurring work schedule for all their employees.
Business will cut back on an individual employees work hours as a perceived form of punishment. This will only knee cap the business, because they'll still need the same number of total hours worked to support the normal volume of activity in the store or office.
These dramatic overreactions will bite businesses in the butt, because they still need to satisfy, or lose, customers.
When more people can afford to spend money into the economy, the economy will grow and thrive. There's few, to no, places where one can live in modest comfort with a wage of less than $22 an hour; for at least 40 hours a week.
Business leaders, trying desperately hard to look stupid, will say even the poorest Americans can afford a car. Well, there are very few places in the USA that have sufficient public transit, so folks must have a car to get to work. Second, most (40% of American families: epi.org; UnitedforALICE.org) are barely making ends meet; can't afford $400 for car maintenance... Can't afford preventative, standard or emergency, medical care costs either.
The USA is the only OECD country where one can be bankrupted by medical expenses.
When more folks can afford to spend money back into the economy, while saving and investing, the economy will grow and thrive; period. Only the narcissists and megalomaniacs will be unhappy.
