The minimum wage is a price floor, and thus raising it will cause deadweight loss in the sense that any employer who would’ve been willing to hire a candidate for a wage less than the minimum wage is no longer able to do so. A job that otherwise might’ve existed — say an apprenticeship to an unexperienced high school grad for $5/hr — is no longer available.
Yes a higher minimum wage will incentivize an employer to automate the job, but there’s not necessarily going to be a robot or alternative available to make up for the lost work for the same price.
I’ll take a job guarantee over nothing, but the reason I prefer a UBI is:
1. It would most likely be incredibly wasteful
2. Who has the authority to tell people what they should be doing with their time? Wage slavery is wage slavery, even if the boss is the government.
That being said, if it were operated in a way such that jobs in the STEM fields were emphasized, particularly in important fields like curing cancer, renewable energy and energy storage, ending aging, etc, that’s something I could get around. In fact, even with a UBI, I’d like to see something like that in order to encourage people for pursuing the work that benefits humanity.
