Chiming in a little late here, but here goes.
Over the last five years here in Ontario Canada we have seen minimum wage rate climb from $8.50/hr to $9.25/hr to our current rate of 10.25 an hour and now coming on June 1, 2014 we're expected to see the wages climb once again to $11.00/hr because of the campaign to raise minimum wage to a living wage over the next 6 years. In 6 years we'll have a minimum wage of $16.25 an hour.
This is a very scary situation and I'll give you an example why.
Pre 2010 we had a minimum wage of $8.50/hr
pre 2010 we could buy a loaf of bread from any supermarket (NoFrills,Lawblaws,FreshCo,Walmart Supercenter,The Great Canadian Superstore... ect) for about $0.89/$1.19 depending on the quality of the loaf and brand (lets just assume I mean standard white bread)
As the years progressed and the minimum wage climbed rapidly, here is where we are.
current 2014, we have a minimum wage of $10.25
A loaf of bread now costs on average of $1.97/$2.39 for the exact same loaf we bought 4 years ago.
Now lets break this down an increase of wages from $8.50/hr to $10.25 is a 17% increase in wage, roughly.
that bread has at minimum doubled in price......
And thats not on just bread, this can be seen with everything in the grocery store, the little man gets a bump in pay, the cost for all goes up astronomically disproportionately to all goods.
As mentioned before in this thread, when minimum wages go up - it only directly benefits the ones getting that wage. My wage of doesn't go up in acordance with what a minimum wage employee gets, however I am now stuck paying over double for that loaf of bread while I'm still on the same wage I was.