Fredo and I were not the only ones to predict this result…

It has now been a year and a few weeks since Assembly Bill 1228, the stupid (but typical, for California) law that raised the fast food minimum wage to $20 an hour in the Golden State, went into effect after being signed into law by Gavin Newsome. Shortly after that idiocy, I wrote in part here,

“Certain laws of economics are immutable: if someone’s skills and the value of their labor are not worth the amount they demand in compensation for it, then eventually no one will be willing to hire them….The U.S. Chamber of Commerce charged me with examining just this issue in my role as head of the National Chamber Foundation, the Chamber’s public policy research arm. I hired an independent economist….and he concluded that indeed, raising the minimum wage cost the most vulnerable American workers jobs every…single…time. ..Never mind, though: 21st Century progressives seem to care about virtue-signalling and fealty to socialist cant more than actual results or, to put it another way, reality. Naturally California, one of our extreme leftist kamikaze states, arguably the most reckless one, has adopted this attitude…Governor Newsom signed into law a $20 an hour minimum wage hike on the fast food sector for the “benefit” of fast food workers… Everything we have learned about minimum wage hikes indicated that this would be a disaster, but advocates of the move in the Democratic party pooh-poohed the objections as more proof that conservatives are cruel and greedy.”

In June of that year, Ethics Alarms reported that “Fast food outlets in California…have slashed almost 10,000 jobs in response to the state’s newly implemented $20 minimum wage…Major chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King and In-N-Out Burger have increased their prices to compensate for the wage hike…. Many have reduced employee hours, and others are accelerating the transition to automation.” I added, “Mistake, stupidity, or insanity? …[T]here is no question that the progressive Democrats who voted for this irresponsible law and the governor who signed it knew exactly what the results would be, knew that it would be a disaster, and did it anyway…But what mattered, you see, was looking virtuous. Showing they cared. Following the dream. Moving forward. Progress! Facts didn’t matter; facts seldom matter to those who prefer the abstract to reality.”

The one-year mark stats according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Employment Statistics (CES) show that 22,717 fast food jobs have been lost in the past year when seasonally adjusted. The Berkeley Research Group also found that fast food prices in California have gone up by 14.5% since a year ago – about double the national average of 8.2%. And that’s not even getting into the 89% of all restaurants in the state reducing employee hours to offset rising costs, with 87% planning additional cuts over the next year.

California Globe reports,

Fast food restaurants face one of four options in an uncertain 2025 – raise prices, cut hours of employees, fire employees, or just shut down entirely.

“In the highly competitive world of small business ownership, the deck is already stacked against Latinos—and this 25% wage hike has made it even harder,” said Latino Restaurant Association CEO Lilly Rocha in a statement on Tuesday. “Local restaurants have been forced to make painful decisions—raising prices, cutting hours, and laying off employees—just to survive. This policy unfairly singles out an industry that has long been a pathway to small business ownership for marginalized communities. The Fast Food Council should know that another wage hike would be the final straw that forces many Latino-owned restaurants to shut down.”

“One year after California’s $20 minimum wage for fast food workers took effect, the impacts are undeniable: thousands of jobs lost, higher food prices and growing uncertainty for family-owned local restaurants,” added Molly Weedn of Weedn Public Affairs.

Wonderful. As I wrote at the conclusion of the May 2024 post, “All of this was so predictable that it required deliberate contrived ignorance to pursue the increased minimum wage provisions on the grounds that they were a means of ‘social justice.’ The truly revolting feature of this debacle is that Democrats passed the law to cater to the warm, fuzzy feelings their supporters have for socialist policies, and the devastating results it would have on the most vulnerable was low on their list of concerns.”