I live in London. In the UK we have a statutory minimum wage (like the federal min wage - we are having almost the same debate in the UK) and a voluntary 'living wage' that is higher than the minimum wage and set to a minimum level that you can raise a family on with some degree of comfort. Its meant to be a signal for UK businesses about what kind of wage is a 'good wage' for low skilled work that treats their employees and their employees' labour with dignity.

The living wage in London is £9.75 and everywhere else its £8.45. Nobody says the living wage council thinks that people outside of London are second class citizens. People think that the living wage council is wise to recognise that living costs are much higher in cities like London, and areas outside of London have a business cost advantage for locating operations outside of London because people living in smaller towns have lower living costs and hence can enjoy the same living standard on less income.

Don't be a jerk by taking the least charitable interpretation of a policy when you know full well that it's bollocks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

Clinton prefers a $12 minimum wage because outside of cities small business wouldn't be able to keep up with $15. Clinton wanted $15 minimum wage to be passed in cities that can handle it, and has explicitly supported people organizing those efforts.

From the primary debate:

"While Clinton believes $12 an hour is the right federal minimum, she is not steadfastly opposed to the idea of a $15 hourly minimum nationwide. On Thursday, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked if she would sign a bill from Congress setting the federal minimum at that level (something that would be politically improbable). "Well, of course I would," she said."

The $15 minimum wage would have devastated the countryside.

I'm all over something like a minimum basic income that would effectively do the same thing as doubling the minimum wage, without putting the cost burden on businesses that can't afford it.

The perk of a national $15 minimum wage is to remove any incentive US only businesses that may consider relocating to less expensive parts of the country. I'm sure it seems perfectly reasonable in a high cost of living area, but outside of that it's a jaw droppingly bad proposal.

The problem with a straight-up $15 minwage is that it goes against what is becoming a huge force in this country: inequality. Minwage is meant to somewhat try to address inequality. But in fact, the difference between rural and urban cost of living is huge. So minwage needs to be sensitive to this.

The issue really needs to be completely depoliticized, and the minimum wage should really be set to some kind of local/regional indicator, and indexed to inflation.

But if we did that... politicians wouldn't get to flip this card out every 10 years to play it.

Personally, I think the minimum wage as it exists isn't very useful. I'd replace it with a federal base level minimum wage where the local (county) minimum wage is composed of the base federal + COLA (which gets reevaluated yearly, like SS.) and it'd apply to all workers, public, private, local, state, federal.

Raising the costs of employing people isn't always the best way to get more employed.