should be no minimum wage. If I'm willing to sell my labor for $6.50/hr, and you're willing to buy it for $6.50/hr, the government is not doing either of us a service by making that agreement illegal. Not every job provides $7.50 (plus associated costs of employment) - and certainly not $15++ - of hourly value to a business, and nobody is going to hire someone for negative ROI (or if they are that's not a very stable job, because that company is likely going out of business).

I'm also not suggesting that anyone who is only willing to pay someone $5-6/hr (or even $7.50 for that matter) should be surprised if they have very high employee turnover rate. You SHOULD want to move up from a minimum wage job.

So ... to the extent that we should have minimum wage laws (and I don't think we should), I'd much prefer they be locally mandated in high cost of living areas where there's truly not enough hours in the week to work if you want to get by on $7.50/hr.

For Example:
$7.50 x 50 hours (you work 2 jobs) is $375/week or maybe $1650/mo.

For a single 18 year old person starting out in Suburban Ohio, take $500 out to rent a bedroom in a group house, another $250 for a car payment on a $10,000-$12,000 car + car insurance and you still have $900/mo ($200/wk) to spend on bills, gas, groceries, and entertainment. That's by no means desirable--you're not going to be socking anything away in savings, but it's livable. You can look for a better job without worrying about your next meal. You can afford a data plan...

For a single person in NYC, take $1500 of that $1600 and spend it on a bedroom of rent in a group apt. Use remaining $100 for subway (nvm you can't afford it... walk) and meals. Assuming you don't already work at McDonalds, that's very inconvenient, because it's the only place you can afford to eat.

And FWIW, we don't pay anyone less than $10/hr ... most of our hourly staff makes 11 or 12 ... and our instructors make 25-100/hr. So I'm not really coming at this from a selfish place as much as a political/normative. We WOULD have tough decisions to make if $15/hr became the legal minimum, though ... probably just end up cutting working hours for hourly staff and working in the business more ourselves.