The effects of raising minimum wages are twofold: long-term businesses will invest more in automation as it will be more profitable; short-term they might fire one or two people who might make sense at 12 but say now at 15 it does not. Actually think about how it affects different size business, large corporations can easily afford the automation, fire many people as they have many others. A small business having to fire someone is more drastic. In the end, you might have big corporation owners doing better, and impoverished small business owners, while not really improving the situation of the employees.