Santa Fe, NM. And trust me, it has not adversely impacted quality of life here.
For those of you who know nothing about history, let me tell you about Henry Ford and his decision to pay $5.00 per day, when all the other car companies were paying about half that. You recall the outcome, right? Ford went out of business and the lower wage prevailed. Wait, that's not right. Okay, deep breath. What actually happened? Ford prevailed. He paid his workers enough money so that they could afford his car (and if you come across the idiocy about why Boeing doesn't pay enough for their employees to afford to buy an airplane, you can ignore those things) and created the middle class as we know it.
At the beginning of my working life, minimum wage was $1.25/hour. Which is what I made. It enabled me to live a subsistence existence. I could pay my rent. I could buy food. I could buy clothing. I was never going to be able to save very much money, but I could survive. At the time I was 18, 19 years old, so a family or saving for retirement wasn't really on my horizon.
Then the minimum wage went up to $1.40, and not long after to $1.60. I was in hog heaven. A year or so later I got a job where my hourly wage was $2.50, and I was practically rich.
Here's the point. The more money I made, the more I could spend. And THAT'S exactly why minimum wage needs to be a living wage. If you have money, you spend it, especially at the lower end.
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