Raising the minimum wage allows business people to stop thinking about workers simply as costs to be cut and allows you to start thinking about workers as customers to be cultivated.

The most pro-business thing you can do is to help middle-class people thrive.

The overtime threshold is to the middle class as the minimum wage is to low-wage workers.

But can we please stop insisting that if low-wage workers earn a little bit more, unemployment will skyrocket and the economy will collapse? There is no evidence for it. The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics is not the claim that if the rich get richer, everyone is better off. It is the claim made by those who oppose any increase in the minimum wage that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. This is nonsense.

Raising the minimum wage allows business people to stop thinking about workers simply as costs to be cut and allows you to start thinking about workers as customers to be cultivated.

Raising the overtime threshold - something that is about to happen. This is more complex so not as many people understand it, but it's equally consequential.

The person earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 isn't going out to eat at restaurants. They're not taking piano lessons. They're not going to the gym or the yoga studio. They're not sending mom flowers on Mother's day. What good is this person in the economy? If you raise it to $15 an hour, they're doing all of those things. And all of a sudden, not just business thrives, but small business thrives.