Should the minimum wage be raised in the U.S.?

The general concept is that if you are willing to put in a 40 hour work week at a job you should be able to support yourself but the catch is that it is too expensive to do that at current minimum wage.

The general opposition is that the minimum wage should be terrible to encourage people to want better, the catch here is that it is too hard to escape the bottom tiers of the pay scale, the idea of mobility that America is supposed to represent is fading away. The counterpoint here is that unemployment should be low but minimum wage should be a living wage (on average this would be close to 12/hr in many places).

The usual way this discussion goes is the rich people want to demonize the poor people as being lazy as a reason to justify not raising the minimum wage, however this argument doesn't hold water when we are talking about people putting in a full work week already. The other opposition point is that it will be bad for businesses, and reduce hiring. History has proven that this is not true, but it is still used as an argument somehow.

The people who are for a raise want to demonize the rich people because they aren't willing to share the wealth that labor creates. Minimum wage has been stagnant while productivity has risen, resulting in a huge disparity between the laborers and the owners and the owners reap significant benefits without giving back to the community via better wages (which is what the economy needs to work properly) even though we get more "stuff" produced.

The heart of the argument is the failure of trickle down economics, nothing trickles down. The fact is the businesses that make the money have the choice of keeping the all of the profits or giving some extra to employees so they have a living wage. They aren't taking money from people (so it isn't literally a zero-sum game), but they are taking away opportunity for growth and claiming that the mere fact that they bother to employee people should make society worship the greatness of the gesture and promptly shut up.

The real solution is not just raising minimum wage, but also fighting to bring down costs so that more people can afford to survive AND buy stuff AND save to get ahead in life. Right now people can't afford to buy things, can't afford to save and can barely afford to survive, if even that all the while being told that they are worthless, lazy people who should praise their highly profitable employers for allowing them the pleasure of struggling to not be able to survive.

If we want a country with a real middle class, we have to make the middle class possible again, instead we see companies laying off and re-hiring at wages that are much lower and keeping many positions below a living wage yet above the minimum wage in order to reap greater profits.