What happens when pay rises are mandated by the state

I like to remind people that in the end, every single law, every single tax, every single regulation is enforced at the point of a gun. There is no free market where 2 parties come to an agreement, an accomodation that somehow satisifies all parties.

In the free market, all exchange is volunatary. You don’t like the terms, you don’t exchange.

Austrlia’s economic quagmire is in many respects the result of a growing state. More people pointing their guns and producers and for more innovative reasons.

Which brings me to the Democratic Repubic of California and their recent minimum wage increase. It’s not really a minimum wage because the minimium wage is and will always be nil. Its the statutory wage.

Many a story has been written about the employment destruction cased by every one of California’s minimum wage increases but never to be disurbed by evidence, California’s governor Newsom again recently increase statutory wages in California.

This is the reporting:

California’s fast food industry shed more than 6,000 jobs after Democratic lawmakers passed a bill mandating a $20 minimum wage for most fast food and counter service restaurants in the state, according to a new analysis of labor data.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that between September 2023, when California governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1228, and June 2024, Golden State fast food employment dropped from 570,909 jobs to 564,743. That’s a loss of 6,166 jobs, or 1.1 percent, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Employment Policies Institute.

During that same period a year earlier, California fast food restaurants added 17,528 jobs, a 3.1 percent increase over those ten months in 2022 and 2023, the data show.

A loss when previously there had been a significant increase.

And who lost their jobs? Certainly not the well off who dine with the governer at the French Laundry. Those who lost there jobs were the young, the low skilled, the poor. Those who can’t afford to lose their jobs.

So what will happen. More automation. Fewer jobs for the young, low skilled and poor.

Who will feel better. The bureaucratic dilletentes who don’t have to leave as large a tip.

Economic Destruction 101. Or per our Treasurer’s language - Values Based Capitalism.

Are we on the road to Venestralia or Califstralia?