For the problem of lifting as many as possible out of poverty there aren't really any good answers so I think it comes down what each person's preferred trade-offs are. No minimum wage is good because it lowers the barrier to potentially gainful employment as well as making it easier to meet the work requirement for certain government benefits. High minimum wage is good because if you can get a job you'll make enough to not need benefits and it puts a floor on how much value a job needs to actually produce to be worthwhile and orients the economy around more skilled work.

But both options kinda suck. No minimum wage when wages can be depressed below CoL creates a decay in its own way.

My preferred ideal is setting minimum wage not by rule but via a standing government work program available to anyone that pays above CoL for the area. Then private employers can compete on price or by offering easier less-stressful work.

Democrats are the party of “wouldn’t it be nice if?”

Republicans are the party of “yeah, but…”

We need both types of thinking, and it’s a shame there isn’t a party that actually merges the two instead of this crappy tug of war we have going on. Practical progressivism, or something.

Not really. If this were true, one might expect to see, say, deficit spending temper when Republicans control both houses and the presidency.

Republicans just like to put debt into different things, like tax cuts for the rich.

Plus a good deal of the “wouldn’t it be nice…” is real-world tested and proven and the “yeah, but…” is nonsense.

[edit] this notion is a hold-over from when it was sorta, kinda true, when both parties were still basically trying to make government work well and largely working toward similar goals and differed largely on approach—but that was more than 50 years ago. Reagan’s campaign is the demarcation line.