These points have generally been ignored or misunderstood in the debate about raising the minimum wage.

Before I get accused of being a fascist, I'd say I am absolutely in favor of helping very low income earners.  Direct subsidies are a more efficient solution.  And, maybe, minimum wage maybe should be raised--I just think these counter-points are largely misunderstood:

1) The fact that a company is enormously rich or profitable does NOT necessarily mean that it can afford to pay each individual worker more.  If a worker only generates $9 of value, no company, no matter how rich should employ him for $10 an hour.

In many cases it is very easy to calculate the additional gross profit of an employee.  I bet Walmart, for instance, knows exactly how much extra they earn for each additional greeter they have working a shift.  I have no idea if that number is $12 or $50.  If it's $50, I'll agree they can afford to raise the wage.  If it's $12, then a $10/hour minimum wage will suppress employment.

2) Not all business owners are insanely rich.  I don't know that supressing the income of the lady that owns the small cafe down the road to the benefit of her high school or college kid employees is a victory for social justice.

3) Don't minimum wage workers have some responsability for their situations?  Based on my experience with employees in a place like Walmart that has minimum wage employees, I would think not talking on your cell phone, not being rude to customers or bosses, and not being totally and obviously apathetic would mark you as the top 1% and in line for a promotion pretty fast...or at the very least set you up to hold down a job at a place like Costco that doesn't pay the minimum wage.

(Irrelevent but interesting data point--in supermarkets, employees steal a higher percentage of the revenue than the owners get to keep as profit.)

4) People say that the earned income tax credit and food stampts are a subsidy to employers who pay low wages.  That is false.  They are a subsidy to the workers whose market value, and perhaps the value they can deliver to businesses, is below what we think is a decent wage.

For example, if someone with no education can really only deliver $7 an hour of value to my business, me paying him $7 an hour and him receiving $3 an hour from the government is not a subsidy to me.

5) On the other hand, based on my experience, I suspect that the minimum wage does serve as an anchor number for businesses and workers, which don't have perfect information.  I don't know exactly how much someone is worth, but I can kind of figure "well this job seems like it requires more than minimum so I'll pay $9 an hour."

This argues for keeping the minimum raising at the amount of inflation (or perhaps it argues for eliminating the minimum wage.)