After California put a $20 per hour minimum wage law into place, the most predictable thing in the world of predictable things happened: Job cuts and more investment in automation:
As part of that automation process to counter the minimum wage hike, many grocery stores, fast food chains and others decided to increase the number of self-checkouts.
What did California's progressive politicians do when it became clear their supposed effort to "help" the working class was backfiring? Did they decide to repeal the minimum wage law? Of course not! As our own Amy Curtis pointed out about a week ago, the Left's "solution" is to ban self-checkouts. The move is ostensibly to "combat retail theft" (since when do progs care about that?) but it's obviously designed to try and put a bandage on the unintended but totally predictable reaction to the new minimum wage law:
California is passing a bill to limit self-checkout because it raised the minimum wage to $20, and people were being replaced with machines. https://t.co/dLh7B4Q4dE
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) May 15, 2024
From the Media Research Center:
California’s Sacramento-seated collectivists have forced the minimum wage to rise to $20 per hour, which was immediately followed by mass lay-offs and resulted in many businesses turning to automation. Now, it seems, they have realized the error of their ways.
This doesn’t mean they’ll repeal the minimum wage edict that created the problem. No - they’ll just put forth new laws like SB1446. A proposed state law could change regulations on self-checkout, forcing some stores to do away with the service altogether.
Just after many businesses made the expensive long-term move to automation and kiosks, they’ll still be forced to hire and pay people $20 an hour on top of it anyway. Or they can just close their doors and go out of business.
Is there any better summary of leftist policies than this? They pass bad laws with predictable downsides and then try to legislate away the natural reaction of the market to the original lunacy.
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The issue of homelessness in California (and elsewhere) is another example of government "solutions" making the problem worse, which of course calls for more government "solutions," which... and on and on it goes.
Newsom says California has a "national model" to address homelessness 🤦♂️
— Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_) May 15, 2024
This mfer is either delusional or insane
pic.twitter.com/JBBiAJ7PU9
The answer is "delusional AND insane." For how many decades has Gavin Newsom been "solving" the homelessness problem and only making it worse?
What's sad is that the people who most deserve to be jobless and homeless are the do-gooder leftist politicians whose policies create more joblessness and homelessness. The other problem is the people who keep voting for these destructive lunatics.
As Charleton Heston once eloquently put it...