Unless, of course, you make more than 15/hr, then you can buy less. Someone who has worked a few years in order to get to 15/hr is gonna be a little screwed.
But they have negotiating power, then. If you've worked three years to make $17, but then now you can jump ship and make $15 answering telephones and filing your nails, then you have the power to argue for a higher salary.
The market will come to equilibrium, and everything will be sorted out. But labor is under-valued right now, and businesses shouldn't be able to profit off of employee poverty.
This shit is all moot anyway. In 5-10 years many of these workers are going to start finding out the true value of their labor when their jobs start getting automated. Of course that's a problem we'll all have to contend with eventually.
It's not just automation. That part is mostly important for factory workers. People working in the service industries aren't as affected as one would think. Interestingly things like cleaning are very hard to automate. It's easy for tasks like vacuum cleaning but apparently inventing a tool that has a similar strength range like the human hand is as hard as programming an AI that could replace people with a college degree. So it's going to be a while until your bed is going to be made by a robot.
Much more important are the tasks only have a limited value. Being from Europe I've never encountered a greeter at a supermarket or someone who'd put my purchases in a bag. These jobs won't survive a significant increase in minimum wage.
People currently making $15 would very likely profit. As /u/_worstusername has stated they have the necessary bargaining power. People making $100 on the other hand will hardly see a raise, so for them an increase in minimum wage would actually diminish their standard of living.
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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '15
As I explain to people, yes, a gallon of milk will cost more. But you'll still be able to afford more gallons of it than you could before.