$20/hr

[Hovannes]

Fast food places are shutting down left and right here in $20/hr California
If it's hard to make ends meet working a minimum wage job imagine the raw deal after learning that you're going to bring home $20/hr
finding that the Foster's Freeze you work at is now padlocked.

This isn't going to turn out well.

[FredS]

CA also hurt "gig workers" (think of side jobs like food delivery, ridesharing, web designers, fiver artists) recently when state law reclassified many workers from independent contractor, to employees. Of course employees are more expensive than contractors who don't have benefits. Everyone knows it's impossible to support a family on low wage gig jobs, but people (including my daughter and son in-law) do these jobs on the side, as a hustle to pick up extra cash, not as their sole means of income. Even an idiot can see these "well-intentioned" laws will mean many jobs are priced out of existence as consumer prices rise to a point that customers won't be willing to pay. Surely CA legislators know full well what will happen and choose to act anyway. Who are they really looking out for? Phone apps and self-serve ordering kiosks have already replaced many counter workers in fast food joints. Cashiers have been removed from grocery stores and home centers because it's too expensive to pay $20/hr to a teen-aged girl or retired grandpa to scan purchases and accept credit card payments.

[Del]

CA also hurt "gig workers" (think of side jobs like food delivery, ridesharing, web designers, fiver artists) recently when state law reclassified many workers from independent contractor, to employees. Of course employees are more expensive than contractors who don't have benefits. Everyone knows it's impossible to support a family on low wage gig jobs, but people (including my daughter and son in-law) do these jobs on the side, as a hustle to pick up extra cash, not as their sole means of income. Even an idiot can see these "well-intentioned" laws will mean many jobs are priced out of existence as consumer prices rise to a point that customers won't be willing to pay. Surely CA legislators know full well what will happen and choose to act anyway. Who are they really looking out for? Phone apps and self-serve ordering kiosks have already replaced many counter workers in fast food joints. Cashiers have been removed from grocery stores and home centers because it's too expensive to pay $20/hr to a teen-aged girl or retired grandpa to scan purchases and accept credit card payments.

It is very difficult to discern if this is intentional malice or mass idiocy. Over half of the legislature voted for these policies! That's either a lot of mobsters or a lot of lemmings, but either way it is a lot of rulers who really ought to know better.

I remember back in college (early '80's) when my econ prof explained the obvious: When the legislature raises the minimum wage, the primary result is an increase in teenager unemployment. Nobody can afford to pay a kid more than he's worth, and that makes it hard for enterprising youths to find that all-important first job. If I knew this as a 20 yo college kid in 1981, how can modern professional legislators excuse their blithering ignorance?

We already know how this ends.... Soviet Russia did the experiment. The economy of California will be held together by a significant black market economy.

The corporate fast food joints will disappear, but there will be a significant growth in Burrito Ladies sending their kids to job sites, office buildings and street corners with coolers full of hot tacos. Street Food trucks will pop up everywhere, unlicensed and unregulated and illegally parked, and the cops won't bother them because that's where they get their lunches. Pods of day laborers will assemble wherever work is likely to be found. Airports, bars, and campuses will have bulletin boards full of "Need a Ride?" offers with tear-off phone number tabs.

A great many small businesses will be tempted to step off the grid, paying employees cash. Between the illegal migrants, the unemployed teens, and the folks who are just looking for some side-gig cash, there are a lot of people who want to work for whatever they can get.

Naturally, Newsom will never see a dime of tax revenue from half of his state's workforce.

[Jocose]

Read through the comments

[FredS]

I can afford the 3-4% increase shown in Jo's In-N-Out menu post. But this will mean that that special once-a-month treat of a fast food burger for a single mother and her three kids is probably out of the question. The do-gooders expect that business owners or franchisees will eat that cost to keep their prices low so as not to hurt sales, but I know some restaurant owners and they're already running thin margins. When you're making 8-10%, that extra 3-4% is a business killer. Add that to the pressures caused by regular old inflation under Uncle Joe and they might as well go flip burgers for $20/hr (which is over $40k a year after all) for someone else.

[FredS]

A great many small businesses will be tempted to step off the grid, paying employees cash. Between the illegal migrants, the unemployed teens, and the folks who are just looking for some side-gig cash, there are a lot of people who want to work for whatever they can get.

Naturally, Newsom will never see a dime of tax revenue from half of his state's workforce.

This is another consequence. While Newsom et al work with the right hand to get work permissions for migrants and get them "into the system" to pay income tax and receive wages, health insurance premiums, unemployment compensation, and SS paid by legal employers, they work with the left hand to make employers less likely to put them "on the books". Joe's Plumbing will have a few guys on the books and a few off. Same for Joe's Roofing and Joe's Cementwork. They need a few official guys to put on their government jobs or those run by contractors with nosy union workers, but everyone else will be under the table. Joe's Landscaping will have a fleet of a dozen trucks with exactly one guy on the books and that's Joe himself.

[Del]

A great many small businesses will be tempted to step off the grid, paying employees cash. Between the illegal migrants, the unemployed teens, and the folks who are just looking for some side-gig cash, there are a lot of people who want to work for whatever they can get.

Naturally, Newsom will never see a dime of tax revenue from half of his state's workforce.

This is another consequence. While Newsom et al work with the right hand to get work permissions for migrants and get them "into the system" to pay income tax and receive wages, health insurance premiums, unemployment compensation, and SS paid by legal employers, they work with the left hand to make employers less likely to put them "on the books". Joe's Plumbing will have a few guys on the books and a few off. Same for Joe's Roofing and Joe's Cementwork. They need a few official guys to put on their government jobs or those run by contractors with nosy union workers, but everyone else will be under the table. Joe's Landscaping will have a fleet of a dozen trucks with exactly one guy on the books and that's Joe himself.

there is already a strong incentive to pay workers illegally, just to avoid the payroll taxes.... especially in high-rate states like California. Mandates like this just push more employers off the ledge of trying to stay legal.

Eventually, there comes a tipping point where so many independent contractors are operating illegally that the risk of enforcement action becomes diluted. At that point, illegal hiring becomes the norm and nobody can afford to operate in legal compliance. Everybody scoffs the law, and everyone runs the risk of being collared by the secret police for glancing the wrong way.

That general mood of lawlessness brings its own set of problems.

As I mentioned before, the Soviet Union did this experiment already.

[SlowToke]

Since the pandemic debacle, the restaurants that could hang on have already done the two things they could to survive which is lower expenses by decreasing the quality of ingredients in the food they serve and raise their prices. This will be the nail in their coffins. I've been working in California a good bit this year and have been watching it happen in real time. San Francisco is a shell of the city it once was. The other thing I've noticed is that many have shortened their hours of operation. They open later and close earlier.

[Hovannes]

Read through the comments

Something is fishy. Burger King Whoppers are pushing $10 for just the sandwich.
Here's whats happening in my 'hood:

[FredS]

"I never thought leopards would eat my face" sobs the woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

I keep circling back to natural (not unforeseen) consequences of voting for liberal or progressive legislators. The three biggest costs for restaurants are labor, food, and rent (or interest rates and property taxes if the company owns its building). CA voters have very intentionally voted for lawmakers who have increased costs in ALL of those areas. I can only suppose the voters expected someone "at the top" to bear those costs because they've bought the line that "the rich don't pay their fair share" and they don't understand that Joe who owns the ice cream shop isn't rich. Neither is Joe the Plumber, nor Joe the Cobbler, nor Joe the Bodega owner, nor Joe the Mechanic, or Joe the Roofer, or almost every other small business owner. Joe may drive a new truck and live in the 'burbs rather than ride the bus in the hood, but he's likely not getting rich selling ice cream. Maybe he's not living paycheck-to-paycheck, but he's not lighting his cigars with twenty dollar bills either. You start taking food from Joe's table and he's going to close shop and leave. Liberals give poor people a pass when they steal and loot because the system is stacked against them and then get surprised when business owners close shop because the system is also getting stacked against them? People are going to push back and those at the bottom are the ones who's face's get eaten by the leopards.