Can someone answer my question about the minimum-wage hike?

[abelenkpe]

37. There's a corner in my neighborhood where businesses always fail

Several buildings with retail space. Shops open and close all the time. I've seen furniture stores, hairdressers, clothing shops, florists and financial advisers at this corner. It's not because of employee wages. It's prime real estate in an affluent area where the owners demand insane rent for the shops and where there is no parking for customers. It's just a couple blocks outside the main shopping area where so many tourists and out of towners come to walk around and shop. So no parking, odd location and high rent kills every shop and business that tries to make a go of it on that particular corner. The owners don't care. They inherited the building from parents who bought during the depression and so they wait and wait and wait until some poor fool tries to make a go of it there. No one lasts more than two years tops.
Anyway you can check the links provided in earlier replies. Raising minimum wage leads to improved business and economy not the other way around. If you have to pay your employees so little to survive you have no business doing business at all.