It's not like you need "skills" and "experience" for most minimum wage jobs. You just need to be able to take hard work, crazy hours, and living on near (or below) substinence levels. The churn rate is quite high anyway, for experience to matter one iota.

>creating a vicious circle as they can't get experience without employment. If I have to pay $10, I'll seek to employ people who are worth $10+.

Most people that make minimum wage work their asses off. That's with regard to work amount. As for their benefit to the company, that's more than their salaries anyway.

A lower minimum wage will not stop unemployment (whose reasons are completely different than wage demands). It's not like the pressure on companies is wage costs, and since minimum wage is the same in an area, there's no competition to businesses (e.g burger flipping, gas stations, cleaning, etc) from other companies as they all have to pay the same minimum wage.

>Youth unemployment is 34.6% in California[0] - the next generation of workers can't afford this.

That's because of lost business/industry/etc jobs, and not because businesses couldn't afford the tiny minimum wage that was already there. So the increase wont change anything.

Not to mention: economies can also die because greedy owners pay their employees less. That saves some money short-term creates a death spiral of diminishing incomes and less spending all around.

There's a reason Henry Ford wanted his pay his employees so that can "afford his cars".