The California Minimum-Wage Disaster

One of the fundamental principles of economics is that if the price of something goes up, people will buy less of it. Californians are now learning the hard way that this principle applies to labor just as much as it does to any other good or service.

Last September, Gavin Newsom hailed the passage of a law that increased the already high $16-per-hour minimum wage in California to $20 per hour for fast-food workers at chains with more than 60 locations nationwide (the minimum wage for health-care workers is also being increased).