Sorry for being a bit late to the punch here, but there was something I wanted to say.
I have read, i don't remember where, that if the minimum wage had increased with inflation it would be aground $20 per hour.
And that is the lowest estimate.
But if we were to scale the minimum wage with inflation, then it would make inflation rise faster. God help us if it spirals into hyper-inflation.
I guess revolutions are good for resetting the system, but not so good at replacing it.
Inflation is dependent on a hell of a lot more than what the lowest strata of workers earns. While it's true that the minimum wage will have an effect on inflation, inflation has a lot more to do with things like government spending, the economic trade situation, and lots of futzy factors like confidence in the currency, or the relative trading value of other currencies.
Increasing the spending power of the lowest wage earners might increase the demand for certain goods, but it won't increase demand equally across the board. For example, a worker earning subsistence wage will typically consume the same amount of food as someone who is earning slightly more than subsistence, they might buy more quality food, but their demand for food has not increased in proportion to what they earn, instead they'll be spending more on smart phones, TV's, gym fees, trips to see their family, or whatever. So the idea that you'd need to keep raising the minimum wage because the minimum wage increases inflation is a bit ridiculous.
What the minimum wage does have a big impact on is the cost effectiveness of employing someone, which leads to employers making less of a profit, which means they have less spending power, and perhaps motivates them to move what they can of their business overseas to somewhere with a lower minimum wage.
I would also argue that the money is actually better served lower down the food chain, because increasing spending power in the lower strata increases the circulation of money lower down, trickle down economics is kind of BS, most of the money the richest people spend tends to go more into the pocket of other rich people, rather than the poorer strata's that would hypothetically be employed by them. Some of it does trickle down, but the wicking up effect is far more powerful, in addition a lot of the wealth that "trickles down" is trickling down in other countries, which is sort of bad in terms of the microcosm. Wealth lower down will circulate more locally, and since this is all basically about trying to keep a "healthy" circulation...
I think that's all I really have to say right now, I gotta get back to work.