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don't blame them. you need the white house, the house, and 60 votes in the senate to get most legislation through and into law.

If that were true, we'd expect to see red states with higher minimum wages than blue states, no?

The Federal Reserve has mandate to ensure employment doesn't get too high, which is high enough to cause inflation. By increasing interest rates, unemployment increases because it costs more to pay people.

Wages rose when unemployment was low because inflation was running away. The Fed was behind on its mandate shortly after the pandemic. Because interest rates were low, it was relatively inexpensive to hire people, and that's what businesses did, especially after firing so many of them during the pandemic. But, ya know, the pandemic gave people more time to consider what was important to them...and working was pretty low on that list. Thanks to the low interest rates, businesses could pay them more as an incentive to come back to work. That whole "Great Resignation" thing was about workers finally having some bargaining power. And wages rose because workers could demand more.

But now interest rates are having some pressure on inflation. It costs more to hire people, and it costs more to keep people hired. The bargaining power workers had is basically gone. The demand for employees to literally come back into work and stop working from home is evidence that business managers have regained the upper hand. And so, now there's no reason to pay people more. Just threaten to fire them and watch them dance.

So, basically, the need for a minimum wage is because there is no incentive to raise wages themselves but there's every incentive to lower them. And the Fed has other methods of dealing with low unemployment that will kick in before businesses start raising wages to attract workers in most cases. The post-pandemic era was "unprecedented", after all.

The unemployment rate does not take into consideration people who are under-employed or people who are working multiple jobs to get by. You could be working 3 part time jobs (none of which offer benefits) and still not make enough money to pay your bills. The "unemployment rate" is a load of bullshit and should largely be discarded in favor of tracking how many people are living above the poverty line.

Because an employer paying minimum wage is their way of saying “I’d pay you less if it were legal”, because your employer’s interests are in direct competition with your own. A store manager is not only in direct competition with the store across the street, he is also in competition with his own employees. It is in his interest to ensure he maximizes his own profits, but it is in your interest to make as much money as you can aswell.

If worker unions were required by law then I would agree. The issue is that companies will corner the job market to suppress wages. The government applies some pressure the opposite way via minimum wages to help force progress. Self checkouts and various other automated processes don't occur without some kind of selection pressure.

Think of minimum wages as forcing weaker companies out of the market.