California progressives raise minimum wage to $20, fast food jobs go up in smoke, man loses long career just like that

 

“Between last fall and January,” Ohanian wrote, “California fast-food restaurants cut about 9,500 jobs, representing a 1.3% change from September 2023.” By comparison, overall employment in California during that period fell just 0.2%.

More.  

Michael Ojeda, a Pizza Hut driver for eight years in Ontario, Calif., received notice in December that his last day would be in February, according to a letter from his former employer. Pizza Hut franchisee Southern California Pizza offered $400 in severance if he stayed through February, but Ojeda, who said he made hundreds of dollars a week in wages and tips as a delivery driver, went on unemployment instead.

 “Pizza Hut was my career for nearly a decade and with little to no notice it was taken away,” said Ojeda, 29, who previously supported his mother and partner on his Pizza Hut delivery wages.

Southern California Pizza didn’t respond to requests for comment. Pizza Hut said it was aware of some of its California franchisees changing their delivery services. 

-- The Wall Street Journal reported.

California fast food now more expensive since minimum wage hike

nbclosangeles.com

California fast-food prices are up as much as 8% since minimum wage hike

Helen Jeong, Amber Frias

April 18, 2024

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Since California’s new law went into effect to raise the minimum wage of fast-food workers, who are employed by chains of 60 restaurants and more, from $16 to $20 an hour, some fast-food chains have raised their food prices, according to a new study.

Kalinowski Equity Research said that menu prices at some restaurants have gone up as much as 8% since April 1. 

Wendy’s is leading the price hikes at 8% while Chipotle’s food prices have gone up 7.5%. 

As Starbucks’ food items are now 7% more expensive, customers at Taco Bell and Burger King are now paying 3% and 2% more respectively.

Starbucks confirmed its price increase, saying it was largely due to the minimum wage increase in the state. 

Wendy’s, Chipotle’s, Taco Bell and Burger King did not respond to NBC Los Angeles’ request for comments and confirmation. 

In response to the price increases, the California Restaurant Association said they were the “entirely predictable” results of the minimum wage increase. 

“Since it took effect, job losses, reduced working hours, restaurant closures and higher prices for California’s inflation-weary consumers have been ongoing,” the group said. 

Southern California who frequented fast-food restaurants for convenience and affordability said they are feeling the squeeze.

“I used to pay $10. Now it's $13. Over time that’ll be like $6 more or  $9 – it just keeps going,” Owen Peralta, a Chipotle customer in Brea, said. “If I'm going to start paying restaurant prices, then I'm going to have to go somewhere else.”

Specifically in the case of Chipote, its chicken burritos are now 8.3% pricer while steak burritos will cost customers 7% more.

Other customers hinted the rising food prices are changing the way fast food is perceived and consumed.

“[The rising prices] probably won’t stop me, but I’ll probably eat out less,” Cindy Tran, a Brea resident, said. 

“I’ll decide not to eat out probably a couple of times a month,” Mike Larson added.

Drudge must pay federal minimum wage to some dolt to write these illiterate headlines

 ARTIC BLAST SET FOR USA...

The minimum wage of $0.40/hour from 1938 adjusted for inflation to today

 $8.71

Cry more.

Nancy Pelosi made sure the increase in the federal minimum wage to $7.25 in 2007 didn't apply to then-tuna capital American Samoa, and they still don't make it 15 years later

 

Fox News knucklehead: Colombian government proposals "would likely exasperate inequalities"

The government’s proposal to slash the minimum wage, salaries, and pension funds would likely exasperate these inequalities and was also a driving force behind the uprising.

More here about the recent massive anti-government protests.

Another knucklehead here just very recently had Colombia on the top ten list of best places to retire in the world.

Trump shill Andy Puzder complains of non-existent labor shortage, suggests more legal immigration while 3 million teenagers sit idle

Labor Shortage May Imperil Growth:

[T]he tight labor market is the elephant in the room. ... In July, the most recent month for which we have data, job openings stood at 7.2 million—nearly 1.2 million more than the number of unemployed. ... [A]t some point the economy will need more workers to meet that demand.

That means job training is increasingly important, particularly for discouraged workers who want to re-enter the labor force. ... Higher levels of merit-based legal immigration—as opposed to immigration based on distant family connections—could also relieve some of the pressure.

Both business owners and jobs data tell us the same thing: To sustain the recovery, the U.S. needs more workers.

The real elephant in the room is idle teenagers.

In 1978, 8.1 million American teenagers aged 16-19 had jobs, on average. That was 48.5% of their population of 16.7 million teens at the time.

In 2018 just 5.1 million teenagers worked on average, out of an equally matched population of 16.8 million aged 16-19. That's just 30.4% working.

Apply the 48.5% rate to today's average teen population and presto! 3 million more instantly working than are.

We don't need more immigrants. We need parents to kick their kids' butts, kids who increasingly fail to launch because they are in desperate need of job experience to help them grow up, become responsible and fly straight.

And it would also help to eliminate the minimum wage. What grocery store wants to pay some kid $7.25 an hour to corral shopping carts, restock returns and take out the trash? And adjusted for inflation from 1938, the minimum wage in 2018 should be closer to $4.45 an hour anyway, nearly 39% less than it is.

The higher than it should be minimum wage is a tax on teenage employment. And as with all taxes, the more you tax something the less of that something you get. That's one reason high levels of illegal immigration remain so persistent. It's a natural response to an unnatural situation created by hypocritical politicians who claim to believe in the free market but don't really.

And it's nothing new. We just hoped Trump & Co. would be different. 

       

Newsweek's communist spin machine calls Bernie Sanders' cutting the hours of staff in order to pay $15 an hour "better hours"

Bernie Sanders Campaign Responds to $15 Minimum Wage Controversy with Better Hours for Staff:

Bernie Sanders will limit the amount of time his organizers can work to guarantee that no one is making less than $15 per hour

Tucker Carlson says there's nothing free about this market, falls short of calling it an expression of global fascism

But who knows, maybe his forthcoming book connects the dots between the multinational corporations and their revolving door governments, and the central banking system which mediates the operation.

Here:

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: 

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is worth about $150 billion. That’s enough to make him the richest man in the world, by far, and possibly the richest person in human history. It’s certainly enough to pay his employees well. But he doesn’t. A huge number of Amazon workers are so poorly paid, they qualify for federal welfare benefits. According to data from the nonprofit group New Food Economy, nearly one in three Amazon employees in Arizona, for example, was on food stamps last year. Jeff Bezos isn’t paying his workers enough to eat, so you made up the difference with your tax dollars. Next time you see Bezos, make sure he says thank you.

Same with the Waltons. The Walton family founded Walmart. Collectively they’re worth about $175 billion. That’s more than the entire gross domestic product of Qatar, the oil-rich Gulf state. The Waltons could certainly afford to be generous with their workers. Instead, they count on you to take up the slack. In 2013, taxpayers sent more than $6 billion to Walmart’s workers, for food stamps, Medicaid, and housing assistance.

And if you think that’s shocking, meet Travis Kalanick. He’s the youthful founder of Uber. His personal fortune is close to $5 billion. His drivers, by contrast, often make less than minimum wage. One recent study showed that many Uber drivers lose money working for the company. That’s not a sustainable business model. The only reason it continues is because of your generosity. Because you’re paying the welfare benefits for Uber’s impoverished drivers, child billionaires like Travis get to keep buying bigger houses and more airplanes. He’s someone else who definitely owes you a thank you note.

If you can think of a less fair system than that, send us an email. We’d love to hear it. It’s indefensible. Yet almost nobody ever complains about it. How come? Conservatives, like us, support the free market, and for good reason. Free markets work. But there’s nothing free about this market. A lot of these companies operate as monopolies. They hate markets. They use government regulation to crush competition. There’s nothing conservative about that, just as there’s nothing conservative about most big corporations. Just the opposite. They’re the backbone of the left. Pick a leftwing cause that you think is hurting the country. Check the donor list, and you’ll find the name of some corporation. Often many corporations. Corporate America enables the progressive lunacy you see every night on this show. They’re funding the revolution now in progress.

That’s why liberals say nothing as oligarchs amass billions by soaking the middle class. Because they’ve been paid off. For example, you probably assumed the people who founded Walmart were conservative. Most of their customers certainly are. Yet the bulk of the Walton family backed Hillary Clinton in the last election. They gave the Democratic Party more than $700,000 during the 2016 cycle. Almost every billionaire in Silicon Valley did the same. In return, they got immunity from criticism, and you got to keep paying their employees. Not a bad deal for them.

There is one person in Washington who’s offended by this arrangement, and we’re sorry to say he’s wrong on pretty much everything else. But this is a weird moment, so you take allies where you can find them. Bernie Sanders, of all people, is trying to get your money back from Jeff Bezos. This is especially amazing since Bezos is on Bernie’s side on most things. They’re both leftwing activists. But on this question, Bernie’s right. He’s planning legislation that would force big corporations to return the taxpayer-funded welfare benefits you’ve paid to their workers. It’s not a perfect solution, and it probably won’t pass. No matter what they claim in public, liberals in Congress would never support something like that. Their loyalty isn’t to you. It’s to Uber and Jeff Bezos. But at the very least it might awaken a sleepy population to the new reality of activist corporate America. And that’s a good thing.

America has changed enormously in the last 20 years. A lot of people you thought were your allies are in fact working against your interests. They have contempt for you and your family, your customs and your faith. Included in this group, I’m sorry to say, are a lot of big corporations. They have no use for you or the country you grew up in. Stand in their way, and they’ll crush you. It’s all shocking enough that I recently wrote a book about it. It’s called “Ship of Fools,” and it explains what happened and who did it. The book is out in a month, the first week of October, but you can preorder a copy now, and I hope you will.

Yakima Washington Herald lets the cat out of the bag: American fruit grower rich enough to buy hotel to house foreign labor complains they make too much

Growers want more, cheaper guest workers:

Rob Valicoff is relying on 270 guest workers this year to pick his 1,700 acres of apples and pears in Wapato, nearly triple the 96 guest workers he used last year.

Under the federal H-2A guest worker program, growers are required to provide workers with housing, transportation, affordable meals and pay them higher wages.

“I’m excited now, to be honest,” he said. “Even if it costs more money, I’m excited for us not to be short of labor this year.” ...

One recent afternoon, more than 300 laborers filed into the dining hall at the former FairBridge Inn and Suites on North First Street in Yakima for dinner after a day in the fields.

Valicoff bought the 800-bed hotel and in June began housing H-2A workers from Mexico there. Some of the workers are employed by other growers, with Valicoff providing housing under an agreement with them.

Housing is free for workers, and they each pay $12.26 a day for three meals. They eat breakfast and dinner at the hotel and are provided sack lunches.

Valicoff would like to see changes that would require workers to pay a little more for meals and help with the cost of utilities.

“I think they need to pay a portion of that,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be a lot, maybe $6, $7 a day.”

He’d also like to see wages lowered for H-2A workers. The minimum wage is $14.12 an hour, above the state minimum wage of $11.50 an hour.

Here's an extreme he hasn't thought of: Maybe try paying more than "above minimum wage"

The minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, but low-skilled jobs in Michigan start at $10.00 an hour, and pay even higher than that for competent, dependable people. The median wage for a production operator for a local company near me situated here just across the lake from the one in Manitowoc mentioned in the story below commands $13.57 an hour. 

From the story here:

Mike Fredrich shows off unmanned presses in his Manitowoc, Wisconsin, company. They're ready to start production at MCM Composites, a 55-person enterprise that makes custom thermoset molding. The only problem? Fredrich has no one to operate them. "These tools are heated to 300 degrees," he said. "But we're not running them. Had we had the people for the first shift, we could have been running this all day. But we don't, so they sit here heated, ready to go, with no action." Fredrich said the business has gone to extremes to try to find the 15 additional employees it needs. But he's had little success.

"There are no workers, but there's a huge demand. The economy has picked up, but the market is so thin, that we just can't find them. We've gone to extraordinary means to find people that will actually work, including going to the local county jail and recruiting people to work from inside the jail," Fredrich said. ...

Fredrich is also looking for a core staff of his own — low-skilled laborers he's willing to train and pay above minimum wage. "What they need to be able to do is come to work on time every day, pay attention to what they're doing, take instruction well, and just put in an honest day's work," he said.

Bernie Sanders understands open borders is what the libertarian Koch brothers want, but he doesn't

Here, where he says open borders are harmful to ordinary Americans' wages.

Why is it the only prominent politician who really truly gets it is the socialist Bernie Sanders? Donald Trump, by contrast, has claimed American wages are too high and does not support increases to the minimum wage.

Maybe Bernie's not really a socialist as he claims. True socialists welcome free trade and open borders because they know that equalizing wages globally will hasten the revolution of the proletariat since it widens the gap between rich and poor to the extreme, driving wages down in a race to the bottom, ending in a violent overthrow of the rich capitalist owners.

Instead Bernie believes in the US nation state. If he's a socialist, he's a national socialist. He just can't say it. Instead he calls himself a democratic socialist.

Your kid probably isn't working this summer like he should be, because of the minimum wage and cheap immigrant labor

The population level of teenagers in 2017 has recovered to 1978 levels, but only 29% are employed in May 2017 vs. 47% in May 1978.

The minimum wage has made it too expensive to hire your kid to recover shopping carts at the grocery store, and soaring immigration means your kid competes against Francisco to cut the grass and Sanjay to sell ice cream.

Make teenagers work again: Repeal the minimum wage

3.3 million fewer teens work in 2016 than in 1978 even though

the size of this population in 2016 is the same as in the late '70s

The minimum wage of 30 cents an hour which prevailed throughout World War II is the equivalent of $5.12/hr today using CPI, not the federally mandated $7.25/hr.

The minimum wage today has outpaced CPI by almost 42% since its inception. Meanwhile teenage employment has contracted by almost 40% since the late 1970s peak.

Already by 1978 the minimum wage was wildly out of whack. It should have been only $1.41/hr instead of the federally mandated $2.65/hr, outpacing inflation by a whopping 88%. No wonder employers have sought cheaper labor abroad, wrecking it for everyone, not just teenagers.

Do we believe in free market capitalism, or not?

WaPo doesn't mention the minimum wage is too high and attracts cheaper illegal immigrant workers, displacing teenagers, which is just fine with them

There are all kinds of jobs not worth the minimum wage of $7.25, and we should abolish it forwith. Youth employment would surge, as would respect for a dollar and the value of capitalism. Maybe that's why liberalism keeps raising the minimum wage.

US teenagers used to do those jobs, and gained the valuable work experience and good habits employers look for in adults but often do not find any longer.

In the United States children who have reached 14 years of age may work limited hours in many jobs. 

There are an estimated 24 million kids aged 14 through 19.

In July 2016 just 6 million aged 16 through 19 were employed, about 38% of that slice of teenagers.

Here:

[A]t least 8 million unauthorized immigrants are employed, most have been in this country for 15 years or longer, and typically they do jobs — tending crops, washing dishes, mowing lawns — that native-born Americans do not want. In basic economic terms, illegal immigrants meet the labor market’s demand for lower-wage employees, for which there is a shortage of available legal workers.

Trump is right that wages are too high: The minimum wage should be reduced to $4.20 per hour, not raised, to put teenagers back to work

Trump was right when he said during the debates that wages are too high. He was referring to our comparative disadvantage as a nation with lower wages abroad.

A key reason wages are "too high" in the US is because the minimum wage sets the floor for wages too high to begin with. That's why Trump said he didn't want to see a minimum wage increase. But we could actually start to reverse this problem by reducing the minimum wage to $4.20 per hour, not raising it.

Currently the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, almost 73% higher than it should be.

The minimum wage set by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set the minimum wage at $0.25 per hour. Indexed to the Consumer Price Index since then, the current level should be about $4.20 per hour, through 2014.

One terrible consequence of artificially high wages at the bottom of the scale is that average teenage employment in the United States has plummeted from its high in 1978 and 1979 at 8.1 million to 4.7 million in 2015.

As recently as 2006 teenage employment averaged 6.2 million, but now on average 1.5 million fewer teenagers work compared to 2006 after a fusillade of minimum wage increases were unleashed beginning in 2007 under George W. Bush.

Demographics are not to be faulted. Birth rates have held steady between 1977 and 1999 at 15.525 per 1000, so that people born between those years turned 16 between 1993 and 2015, providing a steady supply and a steady level of young labor.

So compared to peak teenage employment, 3.4 million fewer teenagers work today even as the federal minimum wage was hiked ELEVEN times:

From $2.30 in 1976

to $2.65 in 1978,

to $2.90 in 1979,

to $3.10 in 1980, 

to $3.35 in 1981,

to $3.80 in 1990,

to $4.25 in 1991,

to $4.75 in 1996,

to $5.15 in 1997,

to $5.85 in 2007,

to $6.55 in 2008,

to $7.25 in 2009.

That's a 215% increase in the minimum wage since peak teenage employment, accompanied by a 42% decline in that employment. You get the picture. Increase the cost of labor, and you get less of it.

Teenage employment is critical to transmitting our values to the next generation of Americans by giving the young an opportunity to gain the work experience and habits they will need to get that first "real" job, and to learn the relationship between effort and enjoying the fruits of labor.

Unfortunately their teachers and parents have not been communicating this message in word nor in deed. The socialism of Bernie Sanders is all the rage at the schools even as the parents idly answer the siren song of minimum wage increases sung by Republicans and Democrats alike.

The only problem with all that is, eventually the kids will run out of the fruits of other people's labor, including their parents'.

    

Obama's poor make an emotional appearance at Iowa Democrat town hall, woman speaks of her shame

From the story here:

SANDERS: I want to hear what it is like if people, know people or themselves, what is it like to live on $12,000 a year, $10,000 a year on Social Security. We’ve got a mic right here? OK. Hold that mic close to you, please.

WOMAN: I’ve been living on probably less than that for a long time, because of disabilities. (Crying) It’s so hard to do anything to pay your bills. You’re ashamed all the time… When you can’t buy presents for your children, it’s really, really, really hard. And I worked 3, 4, 5 jobs sometimes, always minimum wage. I have a degree. I’m divorced, and it’s just, I’m waiting for disability to come through, so my parents have to support me.

Believe it or not, pick any level in $5,000 increments all the way up the income ladder starting at zero and you will see that there is a smaller percentage of Americans making that income in 2014 than in 2007 at every single one, with just a very few exceptions starting after the 99.992 percentile where fewer than 15,000 Americans fight over incomes over $4 million per year. The percentage of people making any given income is smaller in 2014 than in 2007 with the exception of the very highest earners.

Everything has shrunk under Barack Obama, except his ego.

We all have something to be ashamed about, not just the poor. 

Charles Cook embraces the impotence of contemporary conservatism faced with Donald Trump

Where else but in National Review here, the locus of conservatism as ineffectual cult and ideology, which finds it impossible to revolt against anything except for the rebels:

"As it happens, Trump’s critics do grasp the appeal [of revolt]. What they do not do, however, is act upon it in this manner. The temptation to deliver a bloody nose to one’s ideological enemies is a human and comprehensible one, by no means limited in its allure to the disgruntled part of the Republican primary electorate. But temptation and reasonable conduct are two separate things entirely, and they should always be treated as such. Can one understand the instinct that is on display? Sure. Can one look beneath the surface and do anything other than despair? I’m afraid not. Such as they are, the explanations provided by Trump’s discordant choir are entirely risible and easily dismantled. Great, you’re annoyed! But then what?"

He's obviously proud of it. In 1776 he'd be called a royalist.

Was taking up arms against England "reasonable conduct"? Only a Catholic sensibility could fail to grasp the point. "But then what?" Well, a long war of several years, full of privations and without guaranty of success, followed by another long period of several years preparing for and culminating in a constitutional convention, during which local and colonial institutions were strong enough to support the absence of a centralized framework. The same is still true today, if only the locals more frequently told the federal courts to go to hell, as the Kentucky county clerk recently did.

By definition, an ideology ought to have some ideas in it which form a system, and should be, when all is said and done, unrealistic. That pretty much describes American conservatism since forever: unable to roll back anything, including the income tax, direct election of Senators, universal suffrage, the Federal Reserve Act, the Reapportionment Act of 1929, Social Security, Medicare, the minimum wage, Obamacare, and the enormous regulatory code, and unable to permanently refound the country on any constitutional principles, say, of limited government or separation of powers. Conservatism has a massive record of zero achievement while liberalism's untruths keep marching on like tanks in Tiananmen Square.

Trump's camp, meanwhile, thinks three modest things: the way to make America great again is to restore law and order by starting with enforcing its borders and putting an end to illegal immigration, to bring jobs back to Americans by reforming the tax code, developing energy independence, cutting wasteful spending and punishing unpatriotic corporations who profit from exporting jobs, and to rebuild the military to protect freedom at home and for our friends and allies abroad.

It takes near religious nuttery to call the proponent of these measures "a self-interested narcissist and serial heretic whose entirely inchoate political platform bends cynically to the demands of the moment."

To understand Trump, it takes a village . . . of Protestants.

Surprise: Lefty Michael Tomasky wants to punish the middle class with an increase in the regressive gasoline tax

Here in "Pony Up, Middle Class, for a Gas Tax", recommending Hillary do it in 2017 like her husband did with income taxes in 1993, by lying about it:

"And the rich, even though they’re rich, only have so much to contribute. The top marginal tax rate just isn’t going to get much higher, and the corporate tax rate if anything should be lowered (although as loopholes are simultaneously closed). So you’re going to have to pay a little.

"I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this for a campaign. But let us not forget that the husband of the putative Democratic nominee in 2016 got into office in 1993 and promptly raised taxes, and fairly substantially, on just about everybody."

----------------------------------------------------------------

Of course, Tomasky doesn't mention Bill Clinton specifically promising in October 1992 NOT TO RAISE TAXES on the middle class, period.

Americans were forced in the aftermath of those tax increases to plunder home equity to maintain their standard of living. Owners' equity as a percentage of the value of household real estate subsequently plunged from 60.88% when Clinton was elected to 57.43% in the autumn of 1997 even as those housing values began to soar in the gestating housing bubble. We won't digress about how Clinton then threw gasoline on the housing fire in the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 just as the percentage of owners' equity had hit that new low.

What's noteworthy is how enthusiastic the left is to punish the middle class, now as then. They haven't changed a wit, and neither have their methods. Everyone is paying higher taxes now in the form of healthcare premiums (hello HillaryCare), and if they get their way they'll raise federal gasoline taxes, too.

Of all the taxes which hurt working and middle class people more it's gasoline taxes, euphemistically referred to as user taxes by libertarians. The current federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents per gallon generates about $131 of federal revenue for every vehicle driven 15,000 miles annually getting 21mpg. While that's hardly noticeable to your person making $50,000 per year, a mere quarter percentage point, it's like adding almost one percentage point to the taxes of a minimum wage earner making $15,000.

The problem is then greatly magnified by the states, which add on another 29.89 cents per gallon on average, also in the name of transportation funding. Suddenly your 1% tax on the poorest drivers becomes a 2.3% tax.

Any addition at the federal level will only exacerbate this regressiveness. It's not that liberals don't know any of this. They do. It's just that they don't care.

Everyone benefits from roads, not just the users. Everyone should pay for them.

22 States and DC raise minimum wage this year: Expect teen employment to remain in depression or decline further

Teen employment levels today at 4.6 million are still 2.9 million below their 2006 peak of almost 7.5 million.

This is not just an artifact of the 2008 Panic.

The Federal minimum wage was increased nearly 41% over three years beginning before the panic began, from $5.15 to $5.85 in July 2007, to $6.55 in July 2008, and to $7.25 in July 2009. It is noteworthy that teen employment suffered almost immediately with the first increase in 2007, not reachieving the 2006 peak teen employment level in July of 2007 even as full-time employment hit an all-time record high. Teen employment continued to decline each summer through 2011 before stabilizing at the new low level, averaging about 4.4 million now vs. about 5.9 million previously. Raising the minimum wage has effectively sidelined 1.5 million teenagers permanently.

Raising the minimum wage now in 45% of the country only means inexperienced people like teenagers will find it even more difficult to find that first job going forward.

This is not free-market economics. It is crony capitalism which redistributes income to low-wage-earning adults at the expense of the young.

Call it part of the liberal war on children. Hey, if you forgot to abort 'em, impoverish them!