If the minimum wage is increased to $9/hour, I will have to increase prices immediately. There is tremendous pressure to lower costs. An arbitrary increase in the cost of labor, and it would be nearly across the board for unskilled labor, would have immediate impact on profits. Material costs would also increase.
The president seems to think that everyone is trying to rob the other guy, but what actually happens is that when labor prices increase, your profit goes down except in industries that do not have to compete. When your profit goes down and my profit has been going down for 5-years, you begin to question whether or not it is all worth the effort. If you are wealthy, you may choose to just stop participating in the race. Many businesses will have no choice and they are the ones that will suffer. Regardless of what "they" say about passing on costs, it doesn't happen quite like that. It would probably take a good year before you might be able to pass on your extra costs in the form of fees or markup. Until then.. you sweat and wonder if you are going to be able to survive.
As far as indexing the minimum wage to inflation, that is what has caused a lot of the problems with the federal budgets and entitlement programs. And yet... they want to do it with the minimum wage.
A visit to the gas station or the grocery store demonstrates what has happened to prices. Bread for example... Walmart sells their cheap wheat bread here for about $1.29 per loaf. It used to be $1.05/loaf only a couple years ago. More premium bread lines have gone up and up in price. Bread is only the example... these increases are happening eveywhere on basic costs to subsist and materials used. That is the argument for the minimum wage increase. The reality is that a substantial increase in minimum wage will cause businesses to close their doors and cut back on labor. Where I might have used 4-5 workers, I would use 3-4 and I probably would get the job done almost as quickly. I use extra people to help them. Those "hand outs" will be cut immediately. The remaining people would have to work harder or loose their job because there are lots of people around willing to work for $10/hr.