Minimum wage is just a shiny object governments wave around to convince some people they've discovered a magic bullet to solve everyone's problems and it was only a minimum wage increase all along. All actions have consequences, if people think the status quo will continue except a bunch of people have more money, then they flat out don't understand what they're doing and shouldn't be making decisions about anything. You're going to see a rise in youth unemployment, a rise in senior unemployment, a reduction in full time employment, a rise in part time employment with no benefits and an accelerated use of automation for low skill tasks. And that's just the obvious things. But hey, as long as the general job number doesn't decline and the public sector picks up the slack, you'll win your $500 bet. Ever stopped to think why no government has thought to just make the minimum wage $50/hr? Then we'd all be rich right? Nobody would lose their job your studies say so.