Who could possibly have predicted this shockingly unexpected result of increasing labor costs via government mandate? The idea that if wages go up, demand for workers will decrease and the price of goods and services will increase is insane! No economist could have foreseen this Black Swan event! There is simply no experience anywhere in history that would predict this.
Our legislators and the professional staff that supports them are, of course, expert in all facets of economics, and have a sound understanding of basic economic laws. I am confident that they are just as surprised as the companies they are driving out of business and the formerly employed casual workers who now have no jobs.
Seattle takeout orders have reached a breaking point. Amid horror stories of $122 Thai delivery and $26 to-go coffees, the Emerald City is now considering rolling back a brand new wage law that’s causing food takeout prices to skyrocket and delivery orders to tank. It’s just the latest in a series of wage laws that are backfiring this year, causing chaos for customers, restaurants, and the gig workers they were meant to help.
The true minimum wage is $0.00/hr, and any other mandated wage distorts the labor markets. That is fact. Governments have been playing fast and loose with immutable economic laws for centuries, and while they are expert at obfuscation, they cannot hide the undeniable fact of their missteps, because the data are screaming in everyone’s faces!
Every minimum wage law, every legal restriction on the free exchange of capital for goods and labor restrains the natural growth of an economy. That’s the obvious first order effect. But there are even more malign ones that do not appear for years. teenagers can’t get summer jobs when the minimum wage is higher than their labor is worth. Who wants to pay some pimply-faced 16-year old $20/hour to push a broom around or flip burgers? So that work experience is lost to him, never to be recovered. Companies on the margin of profitability will fail, and companies that are someone’s life’s dream will never be created because the artificial labor market — courtesy of our legislators who never worked an honest day in their entitled lives — has priced them out.
Maybe that would have been the next Apple or Lincoln Electric or Carnegie Steel.
