Fast food also has a uniquely difficult business structure for workers to achieve better wages and working conditions.

Businesses generally deal with minimum wage increases by finding efficiencies in their business practices or slightly increasing prices if they have to, not cutting jobs. Of course: because they need staff to make their businesses run!

The free market hasn't done a very good job "figuring out" how to pay workers enough. If it was solely up to the market, the people with the least power would be paid pennies ... or less.

Today, the gap between productivity and compensation for the typical worker is larger than at any time since World War II.

Most fast-food workers can't easily join a union, because they don't work directly for their parent company, such as McDonald's or Subway. Instead, they work for individual franchise owners, ensuring that each individual fast-food outlet would have to organize and win union recognition separately. So there's not one central employer to bargain with, as in a traditional union campaign.

When families can afford the basics, they can reinvest in their communities, and higher wages means a broader consumer base for businesses.

People decide what markets should do - they are not a force of nature.