[Talanes]

"And presumably when that $8 per hour worker gains experience and can provide more value, he either gets a raise or goes to another job that will pay what his skills are worth."

That's a mighty strong presumption to make. What skills exactly does one build up sweeping floors? And who is going to be incentivized to give out raises, when they could just hire a new person at the base wage?

[listenallyall]

Every year tons of new Javascript developers graduate from colleges and bootcamps. Why do any of them get raises when companies could just hire at the base wage? Sweeping floors may not be very exciting but you can learn skills - perhaps purchasing (supplies), handyman work (path to union labor), maybe the CEO notices the floors are freaking spotless and this guy has never been late once in the past year and decides to give him more responsibility...

[lumost]

JS developers are entering a growing market that constantly needs dramatically more developers than currently exist. This is not going to be true for cleaners of restaurants in 2020.