> Minimum wage is not the problem as this article seems to imply. People move up from those starter jobs, they don't stay there forever.

[citation needed]

The phrase 'starter job' may indicate where you're coming from, attitudinally. For many people, of all ages, there aren't starter jobs - they're the only attainable jobs. And I suspect many people bounce around between different similarly-poorly-paid jobs, without significant moves up. We're talking about people for whom 'the grind' is just surviving, and for whom the American dream of self-improvement through hard work has died - if it was ever alive in the first place.