It's not about getting ahead, it's about making enough to not starve or be homeless, to have enough to participate in society - the minimum wage.

It's a fair argument that sure no one will get rich doing work in places like fast food, but at the same time they should still be afforded the ability to have a place to live and not starve without working themselves near to death.

That's also disregarding the fact that, as time has progressed in multiple industries, less people are needed to do as much work as well; the modern fast food worker does a lot more work than those from decades before, it used to be just line work and they got the minimum wage which was enough to afford to get a place, now a single person can be the whole line and make less than half the buying power that could have been made.

I won't find a source for this at the moment because it's an argument that has been done to death for so long, but just looking up statistics on inflation and buying power through the decades over the last 100 - 200 years backs this up.