Who said by the workplace? You have money shoved down your throat by school, society(family/friends), and the media. The biggest consideration most people have when considering careers is how much money will they make. The media constantly pushes things like a getting a higher paying job means you'll be happier and will be like a different person because of the stuff you'll be able to have. You need only look to see the emphasis on money being most important, the reason to do things, all around us.

I agree that it's foolish to think of money as an incentive, but that's my point. Our society today pushes money as the biggest incentive for anything. I'm not saying money isn't necessary or isn't required to do what you want, but it's bad at motivating people to do things worthwhile. Money alone does not make something worth doing. It makes more sense too when you think about how corporations justify things based on money, by pushing money as being important and reason enough to do anything, it helps society accept corporations using money as justification and reason.

Raising the minimum wage does not reduce poverty. I do honestly wish it was that easy. Minimum wage helps in the short term at best. Your links don't really prove anything in the bigger picture as the first only looks at the restaurant industry which is more more inelastic than other industries. Raising the minimum wage does make it harder to employ people, especially when it's a small company. Look at the affect of people getting laid off because of obamacare's health cost increase. More costs per employee means less employees being hired. Of course you also need to consider how it will affect jobs being outsourced. The higher the min wage, the more outsourcing that will occur. That said, we should be increasing the minimum wage at least along with the rate of the CPI increasing. If that isn't done, the minimum wage effectively goes down each year.