Step one in analyzing a situation: do not use anecdotal evidence to try to prove your point when there are wide-ranging statistics that prove otherwise. The fact that you all are harping on this minimum wage argument is foolish for multiple reasons:
(1) On average, your wage is not determined by what you can convince your employer to pay you, to assume that is to assume that the worker has some semblance of bargaining power, they do not. That was the entire basis behind the labor relations act and minimum wage laws, just because it's possible in some isolated circumstances does not mean it is widespread overall. In fact, people who make 6 figures salaries are often stuck within a lockstep salary structure themselves. But even more so, the idea that "unskilled" people are the only ones working at Starbucks, waitressing, etc. is a joke. I thought I dispelled that yesterday, I have no idea why we're still talking about.
(2) the minimum wage has not risen according to inflation, so basically you are all tacitly supporting a status quo that takes advantages of the law to depress individuals.
(3) You take the elitist tone that someone working at Wal-Mart is lesser than you and thus they should not have the opportunity to support a family whatsoever because they are working a job that many others are capable of working, meanwhile you ignore that the entire middle class was built up in the manufacturing sector with people doing jobs we could all be trained to do.
(4) You have this magical belief in the market somehow distributing fairness and paying people what they're worth. Well let's look at China's market or anywhere else we export work too. The baseline for what one can be paid in this country rose due to the minimum wage laws and labor unions. Left to their own devices, employers will pay players nothing.
(5) The idea that someone working at a fast food place does not deserve to be paid a higher wage and that it will cripple the industry is ridiculous. In Las Vegas, as of 2004, hotel housekeepers generally earned $11.95 an hour. That is equivalent to making 46,010 a year in New York City or over 22 dollars per hour. It is because the workers were unionized, and the business was doing so well they decided to be magnamimous. A company like McDonalds could easily afford to do the same thing and adjust wages according to where the person is located. So inactuality, 15 dollars per hour isn't asking for much in comparative terms, and obviously McDonalds would not have to pay that amount to workers in the South and other places. The idea that McDonald's prices would HAVE to go up, by a significant amount is not necessarily true. (I don't have the time to go look up what percentage of their expenses come from employee salaries).