They won’t pay that much for a burger and fries. Few will. And the burger joints will go out of business.
That just happened to a local pizza joint. GREAT pizza. But between minimum wage increases and higher flour costs (no doubt due to corn being grown for ethanol rather than wheat) - he went out of business. And he said that when he had to pay his inexperienced help more (min. wage), he felt that he had to pay his experienced people more as well to keep them around.
Same thing here when Santa Fe, NM put their minimum wage up to the 2nd highest in the country just behind San Francisco.
Yes Santa Fe, NM has a minimum wage as of 3/1/2013 of $10.51 per hour! It has been terrible for small business owners because even though employers with less than 20 people are exempted, how do they find employees that will work for less than that?
Santa Fe’s city council felt that minimum wage should provide a “living wage” for a family of 4.