Minimum wage hikes aren't offered "from above"- they are offered from below, from grassroots working-class activists. And the fact is, raising the minimum wage hasn't cost jobs in any of the places where it's been done.

BTW, if you're going to complain about proposals to raise wages, you can't also complain about welfare- because in many, if not most cases, people on welfare are employed humans who earn so little that they are still eligible for benefits. Welfare is mostly a wage subsidy now, so you can't oppose both raising wages and offering benefits that make life survivable for people on Walmart-size wages. It has to be one or the other.