Minimum wage has been around for so long (1938) that no one longer remembers what it was like without it. Pick up a history book, and you can see it was bad.

What you know from a history book is century old information about USA. Take a look at many countries that have no such thing as a minimum wage. Some of these countries are much better off that USA or they have seen massive economic growth and increase of the standards of living.

Chile
Monaco
Norway
Singapore
Taiwan

Some other well off countries with very low minimum wage which is actually tend to be lower than the market rate (meaning employers would have a hard time fining anyone to work if they were only paying the minimum wage - Which means minimum wage isn't doing much help to begin with)

Estonia
Georgia
Hong Kong
South Korea

Source: https://www.minimum-wage.org/international

You cannot conclusively link higher minimum wages with improved standards of living.

Who benefits from lower wages?

Businesses + Everyone who buys stuff who end up paying less. The poor won't benefit much from lower wages to those who work on luxury brands. But in many cases everyone would benefit. Minimum wage actually hurt small businesses far more than large multi-billion dollar companies like McDonald and Walmart.