Democrats and the left, as is often noted here, are not good at messaging. One mistake they make is to allow misinterpretations of real issues sit without a good rebuttal. One example is the new IG report on Jan 6 insurrection, where the right claims that the 26 FBI paid informants being present proves that it was all another hoax, fomented by the Deep State against poor King Donald.
Here is another one: California last April raised the minimum wage on fast food workers to $20 bucks an hour. The right of course predicted disaster and I have seen several articles since where they seem to prove it with stats. Not so fast. Here is in The Atlantic is a good article by Roge’ Karma totally debunking it: The California Job-Killer That Wasn’t
Its behind a paywall but here are a few key excerpts:
The story seemed to fit into a familiar theme: naive California progressives overreaching and generating a predictable fiasco. “Let me give you the downside,” Donald Trump responded when recently asked whether he would agree to raise the federal minimum wage during his second term. “In California, they raised it up to a very high number, and your restaurants are going out of business all over the place. The population is shrinking. It’s had a very negative impact.”
Except it hasn’t. Since California’s new minimum wage came into effect in April, the state’s fast-food sector has actually gained jobs and done so at a faster pace than much of the rest of the country. If anything, it proves that the minimum wage can be raised even higher than experts previously believed without hurting employment.
And
That narrative, however, was based on a statistical illusion. The 10,000-jobs number originated in an article by the Hoover Institution, a free-market-oriented think tank, which analyzed raw employment data from September 2023 through the end of the year. But as the anonymous blogger Invictus and the Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik have pointed out, the fast-food industry always sheds jobs during the fall and winter months, simply because people go out to eat less. (It then gains those jobs back during spring and summer, when demand recovers.) According to “seasonally adjusted” employment numbers, which are widely considered more reliable because they account for these regular ups and downs, California’s fast-food industry gained more than 5,000 jobs during the period in question.
Finally:
That doesn’t mean raising the minimum wage had no negative consequences. Reich and his co-author, Denis Sosinsky, found that the higher minimum wage caused menu prices in California fast-food chains to rise by about 3.7 percent. That number is far lower than the “$20 Big Macs” that critics of the law warned of, but it’s still significant at a time when many consumers are deeply upset over the post-pandemic spike in food prices. Even so, Reich points out that this number pales in comparison with the 18 percent raise that the average fast-food worker received because of the new law. (The authors calculated that about 62 percent of the wage increase was absorbed through higher prices, while the rest was likely absorbed by a mix of reduced turnover and, crucially, lower profits for franchisees—hence the massive industry resistance.)
So, a 18 percent pay raise for seriously low income workers only resulted in a 3.7 percent price increase. That sounds like a fair deal to me.
Another thing to point out: even with our so called liberal media, almost all the stories about issues like this come from the perspective of the businessperson owner: how much are they damaged. They talk about price increases and restaurant closings and the laments of the poor poor franchise owners. I have seen only one article talk about the actual positive effects that were the entire purpose of the law, how workers lives were improved. How about some followup with them someone? How they are more able to now afford life’s extravagances like paying the rent, seeing a doctor, or buying groceries. Maybe some were even able to now afford to buy some fast food or, horrors, take a day off or two.
There is a good chance this story will be revived if Gavin runs for national office or when other states try to raise wages. So keep in mind that it was a success in the Golden State .
