How much the price of a meal will be affected by that? If the wage were lowered from $1.70 to $1.00 how much "good" would it do?
a minimum of $3.83 an hour will likely annual increases thereafter...
plus tips
Why not just pass a law that makes us all rich? It worked real well in the USSR...
Wages should be set by the market and not artificially by the government, especially nationwide. Presumably the $1.70 rate is the market rate and the menu prices are computed using that rate. If you lowered the rate to $1.00, you would be hard-pressed to hire someone who would be williing to work for that amount.
If one employee works six tables in an hour and, conservatively, there are two at each table, that's twelve meals. It works out to a little more than $.10 a meal.
OTOH, when you factor in all the other expenses per employee like workmans comp, unemployment insurance, etc., it comes to $5.23 per meal. Aproximately.