Your assumption that the business will fail was the assumption I initially challenged. That assumption isn't well backed by data. As I pointed out, small businesses often actually get benefits from a minimum wage increase and people that get wage increases spend more money so it isn't a slam dunk that small businesses will be worse off much less automatically fail.

The evidence is contradictory.

On one hand: https://minimumwage.com/2023/12/minimum-wage-hikes-are-leavi...

On the other hand: https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/03/14/even-in-small-businesse...

I suppose both effects exist, and which prevails likely depends on the kind of business, local or industry-specific tax regime, etc.

Yeah. Economic effects are rarely cut and dry and the actual impact of a minimum wage increase is highly dependent on a lot of factors so pretty hard to say one way or another. But one thing is clear, minimum wage increase do help the employees. So we have one clear benefit to employees, no clear benefit or detractor to employers and a clear benefit to me personally (which is what I really care about) in that I don't have to subsidies bad businesses. With all that in mind it looks clear to me that increasing the minimum wage to a living wage is the right answer.