The first thousand USD/mo a person earns has a different meaning to them than the second thousand, and the third thousand, and so on with diminishing returns. The point of minimum wage should be that no one is constantly fighting for their life, because a person in that situation is usually a harm to everyone.

Granted. But that means that there are negative effects to at least some hikes of the minimum wage. So now the discussion can be had about what the effects are and when which effects kick in and how much.

The point of minimum wage should be that people can only be exploited to a certain level by their circumstances and requirement for food and shelter.

There is of course still a black market

Compensation for work comes in the forms of money, working environment, flexibility, etc.

A minimum wage is a ban on certain baskets of compensation for work.

It doesn't prevent 'exploitation', whatever that means. Companies fiercely competing for labour is what you want here.

>A minimum wage is a ban on certain baskets of compensation for work

No, it's not.

That's literally how a minimum wage works legally: you can have the nicest work environment and biggest flexibility and awesome training (or not), but if the money part of the job is below some minimum, the job is banned.

Maybe try working one. Minimum wage jobs literally have among the worst working environments.

I would have to move countries to do that. There's no minimum wage where I live.

In the gastro industry it’s extremely common (at least in my country) to be employed illegally (as in cash in hand directly).

Most restaurants you go to to eat would have to close if they needed to employ their workers legally. Same thing applies to bars and similar venues.

Source: worked in that industry 10+ years

> Most restaurants you go to to eat would have to close if they needed to employ their workers legally.

And then there would be much more demand for restaurants, then there is supply, causing the prices to rise until they could afford to pay the workers legally.

we could just gradually keep hiking it until it starts impacting employment and then stop.

stage 1 is it hammers profit margins <-- for 95% of businesses we are here.

Stage 2 is then it increases prices <-- only affects very low margin businesses which are a small minority.

Stage 3 is it triggers job losses <-- to my knowledge it's never been raised high enough to make this happen. maybe $50 / hour would be the threshold.

> stage 1 is it hammers profit margins <-- for 95% of businesses we are here.

Businesses adapt, raise prices and do more automation to keep their margins, which have been remarkable stable if you look back. The losers are consumers and workers, because everything costs more and salaries don't rise as fast.

> Stage 2 is then it increases prices <-- only affects very low margin businesses which are a small minority.

Every mom and pop shop is a low margin business. Most business are low margin, only a few have a really high margins, the ones we all know and talk about.

>Stage 3 is it triggers job losses <-- to my knowledge it's never been raised high enough to make this happen. maybe $50 / hour would be the threshold.

I can only recommend you expanding your knowledge. It's like saying why do we need car seats for babies, because when we were younger we didn't have them and did just fine. Of course those that didn't make it aren't here to tell their story.

> we could just gradually keep hiking it until it starts impacting employment and then stop.

Why are people so focussed on employment? Employment is only one area that minimum wage affects, and as you say, with moderate minimum wages and an otherwise functioning economy, employment effects are relatively minor.