One of the issues is that it isn't just ponying up an extra $2/hr.

If a company already has, say, 10 employees at the $12/hr price point, they won't be too thrilled about a peer coming in at $14/hr. Most likely, in the short to medium term, they will have to be bumped to $14/hr, too.

So rather than being an extra $2/hr, it's actually an extra $2/hr + (10 * $2/hr) = $22/hr.

that's interesting, but has anyone asked the question of whether the business can actually remain profitable if the rate was $14 rather than $12?

I mean lots businesses become viable if you only have to pay $1/hr.

The current system sometimes seems designed to fail.

Consider externalizing costs, almost no one has a servant pump gasoline for them, I would imagine you have to be very old for "self service gas station" vs "full service gas station" to mean anything to most Americans.

Another option is political corruption, I'll donate $ to your re-election campaign if you create a property tax free zone for my business.

This is largely because the cost and labor of operating the pump has been externalized by pushing onto the car operator.

Retail business do this with cash registers. How many of these jobs will simply disappear? What else can be fully automated?

As soon as the supply of people needing jobs is low enough that businesses have to pay more to hire...they will do so barring alternative options.

And if your competition is foreign you're usually even better off -- wages in China have been rising a lot faster than wages in the States.

Just a bit though. There hasn't been some sort of sea change like a lot of people seem to think.