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Assumes facts not in evidence. Suppose Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice all work for Google. They all make eleventy seven gajillion dollars a year. The minimum wage is eleven dollars a year. Neither Bob, nor Carol, nor Ted nor Alice are experiencing wealth distribution.

Well, it would come from Google Inc. if they had a minimum wage workforce, but they don't. It's a targeted redistribution that only hits those employers with a minimum wage workforce. It's a type of legislated redistribution, but not a universally applied one. Maybe that's an arguable upshot of minimum wage? It's a tax that doesn't fall on high-skill labor employers (place-making).

I agree that it is partially about lifestyle protectionism, but that's not exclusive to redistribution. It can be about both. A Federal minimum wage of $10.10 does approach or equate to a living wage in a number of places, but even where it doesn't it could reduce the overall need for other subsidies, and the proposal is to adjust for inflation, so it won't erode (as fast).

Costco is a nice corporation. IMO the minimum wage is in part an attempt to force other companies to be as just as Costco since it doesn't seem that the workforce is rational or mobile or organized enough to make it untenable for employers to do so. Predatory corporations can't employ kids anymore and they have to provide safety equipment. No doubt some places did so before they were compelled, but that doesn't mean that compelling the rest was unnecessary.

But what of a living wage? Is that what an employer should provide?