This bad argument is everywhere. If someone's labor adds only $8/hr in revenue, an employer having to pay $15 is losing $7/hr on that person.

So the "viable business model" is to stop hiring low-skilled workers, rather than lose money on them. And that doesn't help the workers. https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1390714323119624198

Put differently, the issue isn't the business model, its some workers who don't add large value.

And a "viable business model" doesnt often include financing their own welfare system, paying workers far above their labor's value & taking responsibility for their family finances.

(I don't mean to keep picking on Robert Reich. Its just that so many economic fallacies I see circulating across Twitter can be traced back to his account).

The repliers and others asserting that no workers in a competent business could actually be worth less than $15/hr are ... interesting.

(Spoken as a former teenage restaurant dishwasher, grocery bagger, and newspaper delivery boy)

Ultimately, much of the case comes down to a belief that wages in Biloxi, MS should be determined in large part by the housing-driven cost of living in San Francisco (ie, the national minimum "living wage" threshold), rather than the worker's productivity. Silly.