There's more to that quote if you click through to the source. Before it was this: “I want everybody who works hard and plays fair to prosper," Rowe said. "I want everybody to be able to support themselves. But if you just pull the money out of midair you're going to create other problems.”

“There is a ladder of success that people climb,” he continued. “Some of those jobs that are out there for seven, eight, nine dollars an hour, in my view, they're simply not intended to be careers. They're not intended to be full-time jobs. They're rungs on a ladder."

"[Those jobs] are ways for people to get experience in the workforce doing a thing that might not necessarily pay you as much as you'd like, but nevertheless serves a real purpose,"

And picking up where it left off: "So to me, the brightest line needs to be drawn between skilled and unskilled work. We need to encourage more people to learn a skill that's actually in demand."

Given that the minimum wage was last raised in 2009, and even until then was always raised in arrears, I'd argue more that it's irresponsible of business owners to not be saving for an expected increase at some point in the near future (hopefully). It's not "pulling money out of midair" - these employers have been able to effectively "underpay" employees since then.

> Some of those jobs that are out there for seven, eight, nine dollars an hour, in my view, they're simply not intended to be careers. They're not intended to be full-time jobs.

This is a huge conservative talking point - the federal minimum wage was intended to be a liveable wage, not "for teenagers/high schoolers/part timers" - this whole spin of "these jobs are not meant to be liveable" is a wholly after-the-fact revisionism.

fulltime jobs that are not livable should not exist.

jobs that are not meant to be livable should never be fulltime.

people stuck in a fulltime non-livable job don't have the time or resources to upgrade.