Just to interject, minimum wage, high unemployment, and low income issues are currently more of an issue of artificial and distance-based borders suddenly collapsing due to globalization, nothing more. In short, the minimum wage suddenly went from what someone in your country was willing to work for and need to earn to live, to what anyone in the entire world is willing to work for and needs to earn to live. In this world, the only thing that a minimum wage will accomplish is make sure that all types of work that are below that wage get shipped overseas, and everyone who was at that job level is now either required to learn new skills to compete and get higher wage jobs (competing with everyone else who was laid off), or starve (go on SSI). Only real political options are to keep increasing the minimum wage and force more jobs overseas, or allow local citizens to compete globally, and allow the global low wages to increase all together (outsourced work wages in China and India are growing really fast btw, so that shouldn't take long)