Good question - it has a partial answer: minimum wage is to provide a living to a single young person for a shortish period.

Not a family. Especially not families with - for other reasons- only one breadwinner.

The problems of poverty (to the extent the US even experiences it) are broader than demanding someone make uneconomic decisions with their investors capital.

Why not?

I know several people supporting families on minimum wage.

Do they not deserve to be paid more?

> Good question - it has a partial answer: minimum wage is to provide a living to a single young person for a shortish period.

This is false and not at all the reason why the minimum wage exists. It was created to bust sweatshops. You are making the same argument as the people that were defending sweatshops. It may be the argument proponents make now to argue against raising it, but it was not why it was created. Roosevelt literally said that the intent was that any business unable to provide a basic living wage for their workers was one that should not exist.

I may make a similar argument, but you go too far sir to imply I am aligned with evil people defending sweatshops.

I agree with Roosevelt that businesses should provide a living wage for their workers. Mine does.

I'm happy to have both: "minimum single-income with extended-family obligations wage" and "young, single individual minimum wage".

You just won't find a lot of the former.

This is actually the policy argued for by the Catholic Church in various documents; but it results in an obvious inequality that makes many angry - two people doing the exact same job, and the single man is paid less than the married family man.

(The reality is we pretend we don’t have that, then rebuild it badly with bandaids - child tax credit, earned income tax credit, daycare credits, MFJ deductions, healthcare, etc).