California’s continued journey to economic suicide under Gov. Gavin Newsom has shifted into high gear. The state’s insane legislature has increased the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 an hour, which goes into effect this April. In a move that shouldn’t surprise anyone, fast-food franchises have begun mass layoffs ahead of the increase. Instead of helping the people the law was intended to help, it is hurting them by getting them fired—not to mention the ways in which it hurts the public since there are suddenly a lot fewer places to get lunch in California.
The Democrat supermajority in California’s legislature originally tried to raise the minimum wage to $23 an hour. That was passed into law in 2022, despite the CEO of McDonald’s warning Gavin Newsom that there would be no more McDonald’s restaurants in the state if that became law. There was so much pushback against that law after it was signed that the legislature went back to the drawing board.
The compromise that the government struck with the labor unions representing the people running the French fry machines was $20 an hour minimum wage, with annual pay increases tied to Joe Biden’s federal inflation. Keep in mind that California already has the highest minimum wage in the entire country, at $16 an hour. But fast-food workers are apparently so special that they deserve an even higher starting wage.
Some fast-food restaurants have already pulled the plug. If you drive past them, they’re already boarded up with plywood in the windows, and a For Sale sign out front for the building. Too bad, fast-food workers! You could have kept making $16 an hour, but now you get to make $0 an hour. This is known as “liberals helping you.”
Does anyone know why there are so many homeless people in California? Someone should do a study on that!
In anticipation of the upcoming wage hike in April, the two largest Pizza Hut franchisees in California have fired all their delivery drivers. People will now have to call Door Dash or GrubHub or some other service if they want Pizza Hut delivered. More than 1,200 workers are getting the axe between now and February in order to help absorb the massive increase in labor costs.
The delivery drivers being fired are in Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, Ventura, and San Bernardino counties.
Other restaurants are already raising their prices to pass the labor increase onto consumers. That’s a self-defeating circle of doom, however. The people who were more likely to rely on fast food, such as the working poor, would no longer be able to afford to eat out. It already costs a family of four more than $60 to eat at McDonalds in California. Remember the good old days when you could feed the entire family for less than $20 at Micky Ds? Those days are long gone.
We’re about to see a harsh truth revealed when the fallout from this fast-food minimum wage boondoggle plays out. That truth is: The real minimum wage is always zero.
McDonalds is already setting up franchises that are entirely run by robots. You place your order on a screen, the food comes out after being prepared on an assembly line, and that’s it. There are no more workers requiring $20-an-hour minimum wage if you just get rid of all the workers. This also hurts future generations of workers. How many of us had our first entry-level job as teenagers at a fast-food joint? Probably most of us. Those jobs won’t exist at all in a few more years, if the liberals keep trying to help.
