a tiny, fairly homogenous country with a culture quite unlike ours.

I heard women actually leave their babies in carriages outside on the sidewalk when they go inside to shop or eat! How horrible and irresponsible-- here we would often arrest a woman who would dare do that. At the very least fill Facebook with images shaming her.

My father remembered it, and there are old movies that show it too. I know it's the movies, but people did leave their babies outside in the carriage. It was normal back in the 20's and 30's.

by 200%?

I can live with that.

Truth is, people work better with higher morale when the money they earn gets them the things they want. It's called the income effect, and it's a totally standard Econ 101 concept.

Business most assuredly cannot just raise their prices at will, regardless of what their costs are. If they could, there would be no reason to keep costs down at all, just pass it on.

So would much higher minimum wages put some awful, low-price, greasy slop-houses of business? Very likely and thank God.

Would more people be able to afford to eat at much nicer places, even though more expensive, eating better ingredients and more fresh stuff? Yep.

Total, all-in cost including labor for a Big Mac was 28 cents. We were selling them for $1.25. The restaurant owner raked in the rest. I can't see that it would have changed that much.