I think something is missing from this equation, which is the balancing act. The value of labor is dynamic, it depends what people are willing to pay, and what

I think something is missing from this equation, which is the balancing act. The value of labor is dynamic, it depends what people are willing to pay, and what is the price of other costs. How I see it, labor cost have been cut, while rent has gone up and prices have gone down. If you increased minimum wage, it would put pressure on prices to go up and rent to go down, both would increase the value of the labor itself. I think this whole dynamic is way way harder to model and predict how it'll play out then everyone makes it out to be. None of people's simple projection account for it all. Even economists with fancy models backed by simulations, math, and all that can't figure out the real outcome and often disagree with one another on what would happen. It's not as easy as saying, half the restaurants are going to shut down, and leave empty all those commercial space. What happens next? Maybe some customers start to be willing to pay even more to get back some of the great restaurants they lost, or their proximity to them. Maybe landlords have to lower their rent for something else to fill in the vacancy, etc. Maybe everyone is happy with only half of the restaurants remaining, and each of those restaurant is making twice as much now allowing them to hire more staff and pay even higher. There's a lot of balancing act that could happen.