Who is affected by this change?

This will not affect any of my employees or future employees because our starting salaries are higher than this, but it will affect MD.  The current minimum wage is $6.15 in MD. 

The lowest rate we pay is $10.50/hour (in Minnesota) and so this will not affect us.

We have one group that will be affected: new hires in their first week of employment.  It's not a big deal to us and the post-training-graduation raises are substantial.

The typical rants I see about the effects of raising the minimum wage come from the assumption that the minimum wage is already at or above the equilibrium wage for a broad category of workers but the doomsayers have never been right (at least with respect to their projected short term expectations of financial collapse and unheard of inflation).  All of the fast food places around us pay $7.00 or higher.

Does anybody think the coming increase (or any of the others slated) will push that one big button that brings down the financial house of cards?

I don't think that these increases in the minimum wage are really going to help the situation.  There will be some people that get an increase but I don't think a lot will. 

I live and work in a very high cost of living area. Most of the hourly starting wages are already above $7.00 (most above $8/hr) but people still can't live off that. They have to have more than one job to make ends meet.  I have a brother and sister n'law that live out of state (in a much lower cost of living area) and want to move back here. Unfortunately, they make good money where they are living (and can live comfortably), but when they look at the wages for compariable jobs in this area, the salaries really aren't that much higher (a little but not a lot) for them to be able to afford the difference in the cost of living.  They can buy a very nice house for $300k in their area that would cost over $600k in my area.  The salaries are not keeping up with the changes in the cost of living.  It is unfortunate.  My President wanted to only do 3-5% raises earlier this year.  I was able to convince (with the help of one of the other managers) that we needed to do more for some based on performance.  We were going to lose some good people if we didn't do more because they need more money to make ends meet.  I am talking to more and more candidates that are leaving jobs for two reasons - 1.  closer to home so spending less money in gas commuting and 2. to make more money so they can pay all of their bills that have increased dramatically.

I really hope that Congress gets their head out of the sand and realizes that more and more people (even some making more than 100k a year) are living paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet.  Most of Congress has either come from money, made lots of money or whatever so they really don't understand what it is like for the "average" US Citizen.  I know that is wishful thinking, but we can all hope that it will happen!