If a business can't provide a living wage, then whoever is running it is bad at doing so or chose the wrong business model. They should close. Why do you want poor business operators to remain in business?
Never was minimum wage equivalent to a living wage. A living wage is an ill-defined term. Does it mean I can afford the smallest apartment and afford just enough food to survive or are we adding small luxuries to this?
None of the Nordic countries have a minimum wage --on the other hand they don't have a large undercurrent of illegal labor undercutting the minimum natives will accept as a minimum wage.
That said, I don't have a horse in this fight. I don't think business have a "right" to cheap labor and if they can't survive without it, then so be it. Of course people have to understand their services and goods will go up in price and they should be okay with that. Maybe they stop depending on someone else doing and making things for them and start making their own stuff at home.
“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country." - FDR, who signed for and pushed for the initial minimum wage legislation in the US.
It's really sad to see people repeat this take which is historically completely false.
This is, generously, misleading. In Norway for example the statutory minimum you can pay somebody in a particular sector like fast food will be negotiated with a union for that sector.
Norway has minimum wage for some sectors (including unskilled labor), these minimums are also due to strong unions and collective agreements which have become law.
Denmark, no minimum wage but strong unions and collective agreements.
Finland has no legal minimum wage but also collective bargaining mandates minimum salaries.
All of these countries have strong social security nets.