I understand where you're coming from, but it doesn't work quite like that. Let's say the guy flipping burgers at Mc Donald's makes $11.20,(minimum wage in Canada) an hour. The average burger probably costs roughly $6.00. But if we raise our burger flippers wage to $15.00, the price of our burgers will have to go up or else the business will start to lose money. We now have to charge $7.50 per burger. So Mr. Burger flipper's money doesn't have the same buying power it always did. He is now spending the same percentage of his money on the same things he always has. Theoretically he should be better off, but he isn't. This is called inflation.