add up the additional costs of paying for housing, medical insurance and food...foor is so expensive here that it alone would eat up much of the 'living wage'.
sorry for being insulting, i forget that you aren't aware of the high cost of living here in the US.
Believe me, cost of living on an island with a population of 5 million is not cheap. Petrol prices are $2 per litre here for basic 91 unleaded (be around $8 per gallon).
Those costs grow independently of minimum wage regardless. A minimum wage sets up a minimum that employers should pay those who work for them. They can pay more if they choose, nothing prevents that, it simply means that people are paid enough to get by while working those jobs.
The cost of living worldwide has gone up dramatically over the last 20 years and the mandated minimum wage has not increased with it.
In a lot of peoples minds, it is far more reasonable to justify a CEO making 20 million per year being given a 1 million pay rise every year than giving 100 employees a $10,000 dollar per year more salary which simply doesn't make sense. Noone denies the CEO doesn't work hard, but trickle down economics simply doesn't work. The top half get richer while the bottom half continue to scrape through while working full time.
Some people are born into poverty, that alone means that they often do not have access to the same opportunities for education and jobs or homes. That's the poverty cycle. It is much harder to claw yourself out of poverty than people realise because you dont have the safety nets a lot of other people do.
Imagine giving those who need to start at the very bottom a further kick in the teeth because you refuse to want them to be independent of relying on the govt. We should be encouraging them to get into employment which gives them enough to pay bills and save some coin, rather than saying "if we pay them too much, they'll stop relying on the govt for support".
There will always be poverty, but those who go out and work should be allowed economic freedom to participate as a functioning member of society, not kept down by everyone else