There are a few issues with the minimum wage, which is a price floor in the labor market.

Price floors generate a surplus, where there is insufficient demand to clear the market at the artificially increased price. This surplus in the labor market is unemployment. Empirical studies have shown mixed results, but generally an inappropriate increase in the minimum wage will cause reduced employment.

The minimum wage is also poorly targeted-- percentages here are out of workers paid an hourly wage. Only 3% of workers over the age of 25 make the minimum wage. But 15% of working teenagers aged 16-19 make the minimum wage. Only 2% of full time workers make the minimum wage, but 10% of part time workers do. Of households in poverty, I believe only 12% make the minimum wage.

That means that there are better ways to decrease poverty. Forty-nine million Americans are food insecure. A negative income tax replacing all current entitlements would decrease poverty.

The minimum wage should track the PCE and should be increased on a state by state basis, and perhaps on the national level, but increasing the national minimum inappropriately is bad.