It would be great if all minimum wage did was 'prevent exploitation.' But the simple fact is: minimum wage cuts jobs.
Minimum wage also transfers money to low-wage workers, who tend to spend every cent they're given, which acts as an economic boost for the area, and creates job.
All the research I've seen shows that there are two conflicting effects, and even well-educated experts, who have spent long periods of time studying it, have a very hard time determining if the effect is net positive, negative, or neutral.
Fortunately, minimum wage cuts very few jobs; market rate is usually significantly higher than $7.25 an hour. However, when you pass a minimum wage higher than market rate, you do have significant effects. Take American Samoa, for example, which recently lost several thousand tuna canning jobs to the recent minimum wage hike:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Ask-Americ...
None of that demonstrates that reasonable minimum wage laws, in the aggregate, cost jobs.
When it is below market rate, it has no effect on jobs (or wages); it is essentially a law saying "keep doing what you are already doing".
So tell me, what is the purpose of minimum wage laws?
So basically, an insubstantial increase in minimum wage hides the harm in statistical noise. On the other hand, the (also insubstantially small) benefits will be completely visible.
Sounds like a political win to me: an invisible cost but a visible (albeit small) benefit.
Simply put, the economic effects of modest increases in the minimum wage floor are sufficiently complex that it is difficult to conclusively prove that there is a negative aggregate effect on unemployment.
Further, a useful analysis of the matter would also consider effects on labor force participation, distribution of wages, the poverty rate, entitlement expenses, the cost of living, incentives to attain education, incentives to work, consumer expenditures, prices, etc, in addition to unemployment.
Minimum wage laws cannot be usefully discussed by saying "increasing the minimum wage increase unemployment, it's that simple." Because it's not that simple. And even if that one variable did change that simply, it still would not be a useful policy analysis.
That said, I no longer get paid for presenting or analyzing policy, and your personal opinions have no effect on me, so I'm going to go spend my time doing something more useful and profitable.
It's just a fantasy to suggest that it isn't harmful to marginalized workers like minorities.
Econ 100 -- Keeping all other variables the same, if the cost of wages goes up, demand for workers goes down.
Econ 600 -- When wages go up, the other variables do not remain the same, so a useful comparison must analyze the second-order effects to determine the change in aggregate demand for workers.