A lot of people say that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is a good way to address income inequality and poverty. Additionally, a lot of people say that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would be bad for the economy, and small businesses in particular.

Using some anecdotal evidence from the recent thread in /r/AskReddit, as well as logic, it can be said that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would put a burden on small businesses to the point that they would either have to cut jobs or hours, in which case some employees might be encouraged to transfer to a large company (thus hurting the small business), or lose profit (thus hurting the small business).

There are other ideas that reduce the burden on the working class, including raising the cutoffs for the low tax brackets (raising the EITC) and subsidizing workers' wages, that put the burden on taxpayers rather than employers.

What is the motivation behind choosing the $15 minimum wage as the best of these options? I think it's a good idea to consider all the options and look at the pros and cons of each one; let's do that here.