You guys act like labor costs for all small businesses is over 100%. Have you guys ever ran a business? Most businesses aim for a quarter of that. If your business runs on over 30% labor, and you are paying minimum wage to everyone, you should definitely be looking at changing how you run your business. Minimum wage has been the same for 12 years. It's definitely time for an increase.

A 2x pay increase to minimum wage employees in a business at 30% labor would only equal a 15% increase to items for the same amount of profit. Aka, $4 cheese burger is now $4.60. $10 movie ticket is now $11.50. You might see an additional increase due to a slight rise of costs of ingredients from distributors, but overall it is very manageable.

You know what doesn't really change with minimum wage? House prices, oil prices, electricity prices etc. Most of the prices are literally based on global supplies or from supply and demand. Not everything will raise in price, but the amount of money flowing through the economy will increase. This will increase the amount of customers as people will have more time since they aren't working 2 jobs, or more money since they are getting paid more.

I feel like the biggest opponents of raising minimum wage are people that make more than it right now, but not after a bump to $15. The excuse of, "If minimum wage was $15, everyone would just quit their job and work at McDonald's." Exactly. Use that argument with your employer. If you are a valuable employee, your employer should pay you as such. If they don't value giving you more money or you are easily replaceable, find a new job. An employer that just views you as replaceable doesn't care anything other than their bottom line. If you don't care about your job to not be replaceable, then you deserve to make minimum wage.