I understand your point, but it just highlights the need for entitlement reform. Short term help is help... Long term help ends up as a hindrance to a potentially productive citizen. Minimum wage mandates are long term welfare. When welfare and the stigma it carried became entitlement, we severely lost our way as a country. For the last 30 years, we have allowed large swaths of illegal, low skilled workers across the border which is one of the largest forms of corporate entitlement. The jobs market is simple supply and demand and politicians rarely bring that up. They just keep opening the gate and then wonder why businesses don't pay a "living wage".
Wages would find their appropriate level if the government just stayed out of it. Raising the minimum wage provides little benefit for the bottom third. Jobs that don't require skill pay very little for a reason... they are meant to be stepping stones to a better job. Wage mandates only increase costs for all consumers and reduce the number of low skilled jobs available per capita. Businesses ultimately find a way to pass on the cost, reduce expenses, or both. If they don't, they cease to be businesses and the low skilled job pool shrinks further.