Time and time again, Uber has shown that undercutting their competitors in pricing is not done through smart technology or better business models, but by avoiding regulations and getting away with inhumane wages.
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Which is that in some cases it is better to have some unemployed people and some (ideally a lot more) people earning a good wage, versus both groups earning a crappy wage. Combined with a welfare system.
There are, of course, paid professional conservative economists who will tell you whatever their bosses want them to in support of pro-billionaire economic policies.
A 2004 study of available literature, “The Effect of Minimum Wage on Prices,” analyzed a wide variety of research on the impact of changes in the minimum wage. The paper, from the University of Leicester, found that firms tend to respond to minimum wage increases not by reducing production or employment, but by raising prices. Overall, price increases are modest: For example, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage would increase food prices by no more than 4 percent and overall prices by no more than 0.4 percent, significantly less than the minimum-wage increase.
In a 2010 study published in Review of Economics and Statistics, scholars Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester and Michael Reich also looked at low-wage sectors in states that raised the minimum wage and compared them with those in bordering areas where there were no mandated wage changes. They found “strong earnings effects and no employment effects of minimum-wage increases.”
A 2012 paper published in the Journal of Public Economics, “Optimal Minimum Wage Policy in Competitive Labor Markets,” furnishes a theoretical model that lends some support to the empirical insights of Krueger/Card. The paper, from David Lee at Princeton and Emmanuel Saez at UC-Berkeley, concludes: “The minimum wage is a useful tool if the government values redistribution toward low wage workers, and this remains true in the presence of optimal nonlinear taxes/transfers.” However, under certain labor market conditions, it may be better for the government to subsidize low-wage workers and keep the minimum wage relatively low.
https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/inequality...
https://mises.org/library/yes-minimum-wages-still-increase-u...
http://clas.berkeley.edu/research/brazil-progress-and-pessim...
http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic...
Regardless, there are two possible outcomes from minimum wage:
(1) inflation
(2) unemployment
Your cited articles support the former; others think it will be the latter. In either case, I doubt the market manipulation helps overall.
Whereas rich people tend to shop at more upscale places where the minimum wage is not a binding constraint (ie people make more).
Instead of effectively taxing poor people to pay for other poor people via induced price rises; why not tax rich people with eg an income tax and distribute the proceed via a social safety net or a basic income to the poor?
Workers take their compensation in a variety of ways. On the high end, Google famously offers perks like food and nap pods.
But even on the low end, people are interested in things other than immediate cash on hand. For example, learning and mentoring to grow their skillset and move up in life.
Some of these opportunities come for free, and even immediately bring benefits. Other costs the business money.
Without a minimum wage, employees and employers are free to choose different trade-offs. And especially young people early in their career might be willing to put quite a premium on mentoring.
With a minimum wage, a big part of the space of possible trade-offs is unavailable.
Now---this isn't just idle talk: there's a bunch of studies about how one effect of (increasing) minimum wage is decreased social mobility and people getting stuck at the bottom. (Sorry, not enough time to look them up now. But can do, if there's demand.)