Sen. Chris Murphy has finally found a constituency that truly gets him. Robots and automated systems around the country likely whirled and beeped with approval as he introduced the Senate version of the Living Wage for All Act. At a time when workers are being replaced at record numbers due to the cheaper labor of automated systems and AI programs, Murphy moved to price out millions of more workers by increasing their costs.
The bill would increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $25 per hour — a 245 percent increase — over 12 years. The far-left senator is following the lead of states like California, where Democrats dramatically cut jobs through such wage increases.
Murphy went on NBC to insist that he is “not a democratic socialist” but then attacked capitalism:
“[T]he Democratic Party has been historically way too timid in taking on corporate power. I think we have to understand that people do not believe that this version of capitalism has worked. And frankly, it hasn’t worked. … This version of capitalism isn’t working. Now, I make the argument in the book that we should embrace, you know, what I call a common good capitalism.”
He then added:
“And by the way, we can afford it. It’s not like we can’t pay a $25 minimum wage; we just choose not to because we’ve become okay with dozens and dozens of people in this country making hundreds of billions of dollars.”
It is not clear who the “we” is. While securing a law degree, Murphy has never run a business and has spent his life as a politician, spending other people’s money.
I previously wrote about wage hikes and the predictable loss of jobs that followed.
Democratic politicians from New York to California are pushing for a $30 minimum hourly wage for workers. Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and Democratic legislators in California herald their mandatory increases as providing a “living wage” for workers. In Los Angeles, a law requires hourly wages in the hotel and airport industries to rise by $2.50 each year until they reach $30 in 2028.
There is no question that workers are struggling with the high cost of living in California. But blindly raising taxes and minimum wages will exacerbate these problems, not eliminate them.
A recent report by researchers at the University of California-Santa Cruz found evidence of precisely what many economists had warned about in the state’s mandatory wage floors. Stephen Owen, an economics lecturer, explained that they found “a plethora of negative outcomes, such as higher menu prices for consumers, reductions in employee working hours, widespread elimination of overtime, and loss of benefits for employees.”
In other words, faced with mandated higher labor costs, businesses shrank their labor forces and raised their prices.
None of this is a surprise. Yet even amid such findings, Democrats are doubling down. They believe that because they claim to be the champions of the working class, it does not matter how many people they put out of work.
It is not just workers feeling the brunt of such economically ill-considered measures. In California, a two-person meal can run about $30 due to higher labor costs being passed on to consumers. It is only a matter of time before robots replace these workers.
What is ironic is that the Democrats are hitting the most vulnerable members of the labor force with these minimum wage increases. In my book, “Rage and the Republic,” I discussed not only the economic changes unfolding due to AI and robotics but also the expected political miscalculations that are most likely to fuel job losses and wasteful spending. This is one of them.
As discussed in the book, certain industries are already likely to convert to automation due to increasing labor costs:
“For any wealth-maximizing, rational actor in the marketplace, the choice is obvious and inescapable. There is little reason for a restaurant to employ workers to make Happy Meals when they can be done by robotics without healthcare, wage issues, or scheduling conflicts. The very premise of McDonald’s is to produce the same meals in the exactly the same way from restaurant to restaurant. That is precisely what robotics do. They will make fries in exactly the same fashion over and over again without variation.”
Faced with this threat to the labor force, Murphy and others are moving to do the one thing to accelerate and expand the job losses by increasing the cost of human labor.
Ironically, giving the advantage to the robotic workforce could still work in favor of the growing socialist movement in the party. With more workers out of jobs, more will look to the government for support and a guaranteed income. That will further increase the role of the state. Of course, to expand what Zohran Mamdani called “the warmth of collectivism,” millions of human workers will have to be put out in the cold as an overpriced labor force. Citizens will then become what I have called a “kept population,” which could have a disastrous impact on the role of citizens in our unique Republic.
What is clear is that Murphy will prove to be the greatest friend a robot has ever had in Congress.
There’s only one question I have before anything else moves forward, and that’s getting an answer to what is the limiting factor on this issue. Period.
The absolute limiting factor on the minimum wage issue is the structural economic ceiling of small-business profit margins, balanced against the erosion of consumer purchasing power.
fast-food restaurant operating on a 6% net margin cannot absorb a major wage increase without modifying its business model. However, the data reveals that automation is a capital-intensive hurdle.
For a small business to install a two-kiosk system and basic automated workflows, it requires an immediate capital outlay of at least $10,000 to $15,000 upfront, plus recurring software overhead.
Because of this steep entry cost, businesses do not immediately replace workers with machines during a wage hike. Instead, they initially adapt by implementing marginal menu price increases, flattening top-level corporate corporate payouts, or reducing staff turnover costs before opting for full automation.
When a fry station robot or a high-end automated beverage system breaks down, an entry-level manager cannot fix it. The franchise must pay specialized technicians emergency repair fees that can reach $200 to $400 per hour, plus proprietary software licensing costs.
A broken automated line halts production completely, leading to abandoned drive-thru queues and immediate revenue loss. A human employee can be cross-trained to cover another station in seconds.
McDonald’s famously ended its multi-year partnership with IBM after its AI drive-thru tests repeatedly failed. The system misidentified regional accents, structural background noise, and custom orders—notoriously adding hundreds of dollars of nuggets or matching bacon to ice cream.
Most current AI drive-thru systems still maintain a 20% to 30% failure rate. To make them viable, restaurants must pay “shadow labor”—human employees who sit silently on headsets ready to intervene the second the AI misinterprets a customer. This means the operator pays for the expensive AI subscription and the human worker simultaneously.
Employee turnover in fast food averages a staggering 130% to 150% annually. According to data from TouchBistro, onboarding and training a single new fast-food worker costs an operator roughly $3,000 to $4,000 in lost productivity, background checks, and manager training hours. By raising wages a few dollars above the baseline, turnover drops significantly, saving thousands of dollars in onboarding costs.
“The absolute limiting factor on the minimum wage issue is the structural economic ceiling of small-business profit margins, balanced against the erosion of consumer purchasing power.”
When doing your AI copy and paste, before posting, please make sure it’s not gibberish.
Sam, of course to will sound like gibberish to you when you leave out the rest of the post giving it context. Reading the entirety of the post is important. Choosing to stop at the first paragraph is just plain ol’ laziness.
X/George, who pretends legal training, must certain be aware of the rising causes of action related to AI-facilitated plagiarism. Very easy to see where he changes a word or omits one here and there…..
That’s a lot of numbers to avoid answering one question. Margin percentages, kiosk costs, shadow labor, turnover savings, all of it sounds impressive and none of it names a ceiling. That’s not an answer, that’s a smokescreen dressed up as data.
Here’s the tell. Real answers to “what’s the limiting factor” sound like “$X an hour is where small operators start closing.” What you gave me sounds like a consultant’s slide deck built to make people nod along and forget what they actually asked. Doesn’t matter how much research went into it if it dodges the question.
So I’ll ask a third time, plain and simple. What’s the number where Murphy says stop. Not a range, not a formula, a number.
Why do you insist that a dynamic, shifting economy must have one universal ‘breaking point’ number, when the data explicitly proves that the limit completely changes depending on the specific business model, location, and operational costs?
You are demanding a single, rigid ceiling—like saying, “Tell me the exact temperature where all engines melt.” But an aluminum engine melts at one temperature, a cast-iron engine at another, and a liquid-cooled engine can handle entirely different conditions. Giving you a single temperature would be factually wrong and deeply misleading.
In economics, there is no single “$X an hour” where the floor drops out for everyone simultaneously. The “smokescreen” you are dismissing is actually the real-world calculation. A franchise fast-food restaurant with high automated kiosk potential can absorb a $22/hour wage through turnover savings. A small, labor-heavy mom-and-pop diner with a 3% profit margin might hit their ceiling at $17/hour.
The previous response gave you the exact formula and variables because the formula is the limiting factor.
That all sounds complex X! I think it would be a lot easier if we just got rid of it. What could happen?
people would be paid more that’s what.
With more workers out of jobs, more will look to the government for support and a guaranteed income. That will further increase the role of the state.
Bingo! That’s what it’s all about. Import tens of millions of unvetted, undocumented immigrants to depress wages and drive up home prices. Thereby makeing life unaffordable. Then offer yourself as the solution through legislation. Power, power, power, power. That’s all these people are after.
The Dem objective is to create dystopia. But a new realization is dawning on them. If they leave it to Dem governors like Newsom to do so state-by-state, wealth will free to states with a more competitive business climate. Enter Christ Murphy, stage Left, to nationalize the effort so as to hide their embarrassment and spread misery to a greater number of people. Two for the price of one situation. What leftist politician could resist that kind of temptation?
Raising the minimum wage actively reduces reliance on government assistance programs. Research from the Economic Policy Institute demonstrates that every $1.00 increase in the minimum wage significantly lowers the number of people who qualify for and require food stamps (SNAP) and Medicaid.
Keeping it at $7 an hour forces more people into the welfare system. Increasing the minimum wage gets people off government faster. Common sense.
The Cato Institute and the Center for American Progress both note that immigrant labor primarily complements native-born labor rather than competing directly with it. Immigrants frequently fill acute, structural labor shortages in agriculture, construction, and hospitality.
Immigrants contribute MORE into the economy. Not detract more.
“Raising the minimum wage actively reduces reliance on government assistance programs.”
Hogwash.
Compulsory minimum wage is a government assistance program — a fascist one that government forces companies to pay for.
Nope. It’s not a government assistance program, paying people a real living wage keeps people off government programs. It’s not a hard difficult concept to understand.
People getting paid less while costs for food, gas, and housing increase FORCES people to seek government assistance. Paying people enough to meet those rising costs keeps people OFF government assistance.
That is right X! You tell them! You come here to tell Turley and all these others what things really are! You know everything about the law, the constitution, construction, rent, being a landlord, airplanes, algae, and now, economics! You are the smarts person you know!
Nope. It’s designed to keep people from jobs here that need doing.
Minimum wage suppresses teenage and low-skill employment so severely that we must outsource it to near-slaves in other counties.
Just what X wants!
The bottom half are set up for government programs, X. The upper half is hidden now and have a different economy.
Did you even read the article?
SNAP eligibility is tied to the minimum wage, but you already knew that.
This has been a sore spot for the entire left ever since robots.
‘Robot’ is derived from the Czech noun robota, which historically referred to forced labor, serfdom, or drudgery performed by feudal serfs.
The dems shiver at the thought of their feudal serfs being replaced by unswayable, unemotional machines that don’t vote blue.
Sen. Chris Murphy is either a moron that doesn’t understand economics or a partisan propagandist liar that’s intentionally lying to the public trying to get the votes from ignorant people that don’t understand economics or what’s more likely is that Sen. Chris Murphy is both a moron and a liar.
Chris Murphy is both a moron and a partisan hack.
I think you just described a communist, or at least a ‘democratic socialistic”.
Witherspoon, as usual, gets all emotional and apoplectic without offering a single refutation. Shocking.
If wage hikes inherently destroy economies, California’s tiered wage hikes should have collapsed the state by now. Instead, even with a $20 fast-food minimum, the state’s fast-food industry saw stable establishment growth that outpaced the national average. Adjusting shifts or menu prices by a few cents isn’t a “debacle”—it’s called basic corporate budgeting.
Leaving the federal minimum wage frozen since 2009 while inflation eroded over 40% of its purchasing power isn’t “sound fiscal policy”; it’s a slow-motion economic disaster that destroys consumer spending power.
Calling a United States Senator a “moron” might feel satisfying on an internet forum, but it doesn’t change the mathematical reality. A consumer-driven economy actually requires consumers who can afford to consume.
“If wage hikes inherently destroy economies”
your supposition is marked. It’s anti-free-market and you know it. Insincere as always, X.
You and I know that the minimum wage is about incremental leftwise government power: control of your labor’s value.
Just another price control, a fav of leftys everywhere.
Tell me why in order for a citizen to be employed do they need a middleman?
The minimum wage is there to give employers an excuse to treat workers poorly otherwise they would have to work at retention.
You have backed yourself into an incredibly bizarre logical contradiction here. You are claiming that the minimum wage is a “leftist price control” designed to steal the value of labor, but in the very next breath, you claim it exists to give employers an excuse to treat workers poorly.
Which is it? You can’t argue that a policy is a socialist tool to control the market and a capitalist tool to help bosses exploit workers. Your argument is tripping over its own feet just to find a reason to call the policy evil.
If the minimum wage is just a leftist plot to control labor value, why did the historic absence of a minimum wage result in workers being treated like disposable property, rather than employers working on ‘retention’?
that’s what I’ve been trying to get you to admit and you fell right into my trap.
Your argument is the ole communist claptrap of trapped exploited workers but that only happens in a non-free economy where the market for one’s skills are purposefully limited and held for the motherland. Here in America I can sell my labor in a virtually free market and all one needs is almost any useful skill. Anyone working for minimum wage is certainly overpaid. Minimum wage is for suckers.
X writes above^ “Calling a United States Senator a ‘moron’ might feel satisfying on an internet forum”,
X called S. Meyer a moron yesterday.
X called others morons prior to that, in addition to “MAGA morons.”
That’s georgie, our holier-than-thou, smarter-than-thou, AI plagiarist.
X wrote, “Witherspoon, as usual, gets all emotional and apoplectic without offering a single refutation.”
1. I didn’t show any emotional at all in what I wrote, I simply wrote my opinion; what you wrote was an intentional misrepresentation of what I wrote. Only a moron would intentionally misrepresent someone like that when the original comment is right there for everyone to read.
2. I didn’t show any anger at all in what I wrote, I simply wrote my opinion; what you wrote was an intentional misrepresentation of what I wrote. Only a moron would intentionally misrepresent someone like that when the original comment is right there for everyone to read.
3. I wrote “doesn’t understand economics” twice, that is literally a single “refutation” stated twice in the same sentence. Only morons use big words that they don’t understand, maybe you should try understand the words you use before using them improperly.
X wrote, “Adjusting shifts or menu prices by a few cents isn’t a “debacle”—it’s called basic corporate budgeting.”
That’s pure gaslighting propaganda lies.
Your statement is signature significant because shows that you’re either a gullible moron that’s swallowed the gaslighting propaganda lies like a willful sheeple or you’re a willful sheeple for the morons pushing the DSA’s nonsense across the USA.
The places that have made huge jumps in the minimum wages they pay their employees are not adjusting prices by a few cents that’s a baldfaced tunnel visioned lie that doesn’t represent the totality of reality. Prices to end users, aka consumers, have made large increases across the board. This increase is largely because companies have been rapidly increasing the minimum wages they pay their employees to keep up with the employment market which automatically forces those that are making above minimum wages to also get a large increase in wages. Almost all of those rapid increases in wages are being passed down to customers through the supply chain to the point that consumers are now paying either double or very nearly double what they were paying a few short years ago. Ignorant people and propagandists ignore that the price for something like a simple McDonald’s burger has increased over the last ten years from somewhere around $1.20 to somewhere around $3.20, that’s what your “few cents” propaganda mantra does over ten years, reality is that 100% of that increase is due to rapidly increasing wages in their restaurants and increasing prices throughout their entire supply line which can be traced to rapidly increasing labor costs right down to raw materials. Rapidly increasing labor costs across the board in-turn cause a more rapid increase in consumer prices because of the supply line accumulative effect. If this increase happens too fast it creates rapid inflation that will completely counteract the reason they raised the minimum wage by rapidly raising the “living wage”. These are facts, and only morons ignore these facts.
You’re adjusting the “menu prices by a few cents” is an intentional, tunnel visioned, baldfaced gaslighting lie that doesn’t accurately reflect the total reality of what happens when the minimum wage is rapidly increased across the board.
Conclusion; anyway I look at it, you’re a moron.
Witherspoon,
For someone who spent the first two paragraphs insists they aren’t emotional, you sure used the word “moron” seven times and threw a massive, caps-lock-energy tantrum just to prove how perfectly calm you are. Copy-pasting your own denial doesn’t make you look composed; it just makes you look like a broken record that’s short-circuiting.And let’s talk about your glorious “refutation.” Writing “doesn’t understand economics” twice in one sentence isn’t a economic refutation—it’s just a playground insult repeated for emphasis. If repetition equaled logic, a parrot would be the head of the Federal Reserve.
But your absolute meltdown over McDonald’s prices is where your argument completely flies off the rails.
You have classic tunnel vision. You see a price go up at a fast-food counter and blindly assume 100% of it went into the pocket of the teenager flipping the burger. You are completely ignoring the entire rest of the global economy just to preserve your narrative.
Claiming a $2.00 increase over a whole decade is solely because of wages isn’t “facts”—it’s a fairy tale for people who prefer simple villains over complex reality. Adjusting menu prices by a few cents at a time to absorb budgeting shifts over a ten-year timeline is exactly how corporate accounting works.If you have to call everyone a “moron,” a “gullible sheeple,” and a “propagandist” just to sustain your tantrum, it’s pretty clear who actually ran out of arguments. Try breathing into a paper bag next time; it’s much better for your blood pressure.
Busted out laughing at X response to Witherspoon.
X is the one who calls everyone morons, then copycats with soothing copycatted smooth-talkin,’ look-alikes, like
“Try breathing into a paper bag next time; it’s much better for your blood pressure.” Gawd, does X/georgie/svelaz have an original thought in his little head?
X is slipping. he used to hide his insincerity much better.
X hasn’t learned yet that it’s better to be thought the fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt. It’s clear to me that X is a moron that trolling his stupidity in Turley’s blog threads.
Let’s start with a simplified definition.
X moronically wrote, “Writing “doesn’t understand economics” twice in one sentence isn’t a economic refutation—it’s just a playground insult repeated for emphasis.”
My “doesn’t understand economics” was logical reasoning based on the reality of economic facts. It was a “refutation” whether your sasquatch brain can comprehend it or not.
X wrote, “For someone who spent the first two paragraphs insists they aren’t emotional, you sure used the word “moron” seven times and threw a massive, caps-lock-energy tantrum just to prove how perfectly calm you are.”
I’ll give you this, it appear that you can count to seven without help, but what’s this nonsense “massive, caps-lock-energy tantrum” you wrote about. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing to support that allegation in this thread written by me, so you making that unsupportable claim based on this thread is moronic.
X wrote, “But your absolute meltdown over McDonald’s prices is where your argument completely flies off the rails.”
“Meltdown”, seriously??? You’ve really got to figure out a better way to use hyperbole because what you’re doing just makes you look like drooling moron.
X wrote, “You see a price go up at a fast-food counter and blindly assume 100% of it went into the pocket of the teenager flipping the burger. You are completely ignoring the entire rest of the global economy just to preserve your narrative.”
That is a baldfaced misrepresentation of what I wrote, you’re a liar. Clearly what I wrote blew completely over your sasquatch brained head with the speed of hurricane force winds. I literally didn’t assume that or write that. I literally stated the “entire supply chain” (that includes the global economy you moron) as the reason for the increase that’s passed on to the consumer. I wrote my comment in plain English, how about you read it in something other than dumbass.
X wrote, “Claiming a $2.00 increase over a whole decade is solely because of wages isn’t “facts”—it’s a fairy tale for people who prefer simple villains over complex reality.”
That sentence is complete verification that you’re a tunnel visioned sasquatch brained moron that doesn’t use a shred of critical thinking or logic. I’ve got to wonder, are you a paid shill for the Republican Party trying to make progressives look this stupid or are you an actual stupid progressive.
X wrote, “If you have to call everyone a “moron,” a “gullible sheeple,” and a “propagandist” just to sustain your tantrum, it’s pretty clear who actually ran out of arguments.”
Actually X, aka moron, all three of those things are accurate observational based descriptions. You make it very easy to use the word moron to describe you because the only time you open your mouth is to change socks.
SEIU Researchers Admit $20 Wage Law Caused Fast Food Job Losses
“California’s fast-food restaurants lost 10,700 jobs making it the worst performing year outside of a recession”
https://californiaglobe.com/fl/new-seiu-funded-report-admits-20-wage-law-caused-fast-food-job-losses/
Impactof the $20perHour Minimum Wage onCalifornia’s FastFood Workers:Early Indications
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qwllx1iv8q1ecudz6z59v/BRG_Impacts-of-20-Min-Wage-Report_2.18.25_FINAL.pdf?rlkey=zy6b96c3s5ngjeactf30hui77&st=guugtn2c&e=1&dl=0
And… what’s your point? It is CA BTW. Not part of the USA.
@Anonymous
The above is not me. And this piece is spot on. There is no positive aspect of socialism/communism, I really wish the dems would stop pretending all of them don’t fit inside the same *small*, mendacious, tent.
Upstatefarmer, nice article cherry-picking stats.
The article frames the report as a “shocking confirmation” and an admission of a “debacle” by labor advocates. In reality, the BRG researchers found a “very small (0.7 percent) negative employment effect”. Framing a minor 0.7% fluctuation as an absolute policy disaster is a rhetorical exaggeration that ignores the massive net benefit of an immediate 25% wage increase for hundreds of thousands of low-income workers.
Attributing the 10,700 job loss entirely to the $20 mandate is misleading. Full-service restaurants—which were not subject to the $20 fast-food floor—faced similar employment declines over the exact same period. This shows that the job losses were largely driven by broader macroeconomic trends, like shifting consumer spending habits and inflation, rather than being uniquely triggered by the fast-food wage law.
Nice try, but no cigar.
“Nice try, but no cigar.”
Where would our Georgie/X be, if he could not copy-cat terms he lifted from this forum or plagiarized from AI?
Hey! That’s MY line you thief! Now I get to use it!
Nice try, but no cigar, X.
SEIU Researchers Admit $20 Wage Law Caused Fast Food Job Losses
“California’s fast-food restaurants lost 10,700 jobs making it the worst performing year outside of a recession”
https://californiaglobe.com/fl/new-seiu-funded-report-admits-20-wage-law-caused-fast-food-job-losses/
Impactof the $20perHour Minimum Wage onCalifornia’s FastFood Workers:Early Indications
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qwllx1iv8q1ecudz6z59v/BRG_Impacts-of-20-Min-Wage-Report_2.18.25_FINAL.pdf?rlkey=zy6b96c3s5ngjeactf30hui77&st=guugtn2c&e=1&dl=0
Turley ignores a critical reality: minimum wage hikes are not inherently destructive. While technological advancements lower operational costs, higher wages actively stabilize job markets by drastically reducing costly employee turnover.
Look at California. Its $20 fast-food minimum wage boosted the economy by stabilizing employment, reducing staff retention costs, and driving consumer demand. In fact, state data shows fast-food establishments grew at a faster rate in California than the rest of the nation after the hike.
Additionally, California’s layered wage system disproves Turley’s broad, alarmist claims. The state maintains a $16.90 baseline, while specific sectors and cities mandate higher rates based on localized cost-of-living data:
Fast-Food Sector: $20.00 baseline statewide.
Hotel Workers: $25.00 mandated in Los Angeles, Glendale, and Santa Monica.
Airport & Convention Workers: $26.50 in Long Beach.
None of these regions have experienced the catastrophic losses Turley broadly predicts.
Ultimately, wages must keep pace with reality. Freezing the federal minimum wage at $7.25 since 2009 has left it practically useless against severe inflation and soaring everyday costs. Even a $16 baseline is barely enough to survive today. The longer the federal government puts off incremental increases, the more drastic the eventual adjustment will need to be. Given massive corporate profits and the erosion of purchasing power, a $20 federal minimum wage is entirely reasonable—and multi-billion-dollar corporations can easily afford it. Let’a not forget that the plan being proposed is phased incrementally within 15 yrs.
Turley ignores a critical reality:… George, George… George. Its an opinion piece, not an analysis of workforce economics. Gawd, you are stupi_d.
Turley uses statistical claims, academic studies, and predictive economic outcomes to argue against a federal bill, he is presenting a policy analysis. Clearly you’re not paying attention.
critical reality? inherently destructive? like Biden’s 9% inflation?
This whole game of driving up costs via inflation and then demanding higher wages to compensate is in the little red book as you already know!
Economic freedom is coming to this country X, whether you have eyes on everyone else’s money or not.
Raising wages to match inflation is a reactive measure to protect consumer purchasing power, not an attempt to eliminate economic freedom. When workers’ wages fail to keep pace with the cost of living, overall consumer spending drops, which harms businesses and stalls economic growth.
“. . . not an attempt to eliminate economic freedom.”
Typical socialist con job.
Impose a government control (wages) by force. Then whimsically claim that it’s “economic freedom.”
In the real world, economic freedom includes a business owner’s *right* to hire whoever he wants at whatever salary he chooses to pay. And it includes an employee’s right to accept, reject, or negotiate that wage.
Freedom is a concept alien to X. He’s an authoritarian and wants to control you.
George –
CA’s minimum wage boost reduced the workforce, caused closure of businesses, and actively damaged the local economies of the cities.
This is well known. There are even posts on this website about that. You can even use Google.
If you’re distinction is “awful” rather than “catastrophic” I guess you have a defense. For my part I want what works, not what has already proven to actively cause loss of businesses and jobs.
You are relying entirely on anecdotal bias and early, unverified industry panics. When the $20 minimum wage was first announced, business advocacy groups flooded the media with doomsday predictions of mass layoffs and bankruptcies. You took those early corporate warnings as absolute gospel.
Look at the comprehensive, peer-reviewed data released by institutions like the UC Berkeley Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. When economists tracked actual payroll records, cell phone foot-traffic data, and business registries after the law took effect, they found that fast-food employment levels remained steady and the number of fast-food establishments in California actually grew faster than the national average.
You say you “want what works.” What works is a policy that lifted the earnings of over 700,000 workers without causing the economic collapse you are insisting happened. Demanding that people “Google it” only works if you skip past the actual scientific data to find the one partisan blog post that agrees with your pre-existing narrative. If you want to argue economics, bring real economic data, not just corporate press releases.
“to find the one partisan blog post that agrees with your pre-existing narrative.”
what X does every day.
Chris Murphy–a lifetime politician–pays substandard wages to those in his employ in the Senate, using taxpayer funds. Murphy should start a company and pay everyone, even interns, $500 per hour, so that everyone will earn a million dollars a year. Problem solved.
Chris Murphy thinks he knows a better place to put your money than you do.
” . . . what I call a common good capitalism.”
And the rest of us call that socialism.
Clearly you do not understand that capitalist USA is in fact based on socialist principles…. social security, for example. Too bad you were never properly educated.
Broewn, that argument doesn’t hold up. Social Security and a handful of federal programs don’t make the whole system socialist any more than a stop sign makes your street a police state. The American system was built on private property, free exchange, and self-reliance as the baseline. A few safety net programs layered on top of that baseline don’t change what the baseline is.
If you want to have the education conversation, start there. Confusing “has some government programs” with “is founded on socialist principles” isn’t an educated take, it’s a category error.
Yeah, and Social Security is headed toward bankruptcy.
Based on? The USA is based on socialism? No way you believe that, so insincere is your tag. “Insincere Broewn”.
How dare you speak of your indoctrination as education.
Useful idiots lose their usefulness when they embarrass the Supreme Leader.
If America was based on socialist principles, then why did it not exist till 1935. Why was it not mentioned in 1776 when the country was founded?
And, as with nearly all socialist principles, it is going to go insolvent in as early as 2032 according to the SS trustees.
That is why this never properly educated farmer, has always planned his retirement as if SS would not be there or would be a pittance of what was paid into it.
Like, it might cover the phone bill.
The “capitalist USA is in fact *based on* socialist principles…. social security, for example.” (emphasis added)
Really?
I did not realize that social security existed at the time of America’s founding. Or during America’s Industrial Revolution.
That’s not what our capitalist system was delivered to us as, it is what our politicians have mutated our system into for their years at the trough.
The professor is justified in worrying about the political effect of widespread dependence on government benefits. A successful democracy is dependent on a vibrant middle class. A population of dependents think of only one thing at election time: who will expand my benefits?
Woooooo man – where to even begin this one.. First off, let us recall that it was the GOP and their Dear Leader Trump who have been responsible for the greatest increase in cost of living and inflation recently by screwing up the Strait of Hormuz. And who did that hit the hardest? Those lowest in the socioeconomic sector. Then, through two administrations now, Trump has attacked clean energy – the results of which have further increased energy costs significantly. Trumps tariff wars have so injured the working class and especially farmers, that he is now paying them billions in subsidies. Further, Trump has stolen billions of dollars from his followers shilling his cryptocoin to enrich himself. But Turley claims that the Democrats who want to increase minimum wages for the working woman and man are the real enemy of the people here. Murphy is right – had we NOT spent BILLIONS on a war with IRAN, had he not encouraged his MAGA faithful to spend BILLIONS on crypto (which lost them money), had he invested in clean energy and had he not instituted his illegal tariffs, we actually WOULD have the money to raise the minimum wage. I wonder why Turley doesn’t mention any of that. Oh right – cause like Trump selling memecoins, Turley has to shill his books….Just remember Turley readers – his kid goes to Harvard – and that ain’t cheap.
poor gigi. Stuck at $7.25 an hour from the guv while she tries to make up the difference by collecting from Geo Soros and the DSA. Remember when she was very worried about her weight? Sitting on her ______ on her computer all day isn;t gonna help.
greatest increase in cost of living?
Since 1980, the president with the highest average annual inflation rate is Joe Biden.
Biden’s Average Inflation (2021–2025): Approximately 4.95% to 5.7% (sources vary slightly based on the exact end month of the term in 2025).
Peak Inflation: Reached 9.1% in June 2022, the highest single rate since 1981.
Biden’s inflation rate stands out significantly when compared to his successors and predecessors since 1980:
Vs. Post-1980 Average: The average inflation rate for presidents serving since 1980 (Reagan through Trump’s first term) is approximately 3.0%. Biden’s rate is roughly 2 to 2.7 percentage points higher than this modern average.
In contrast, John F. Kennedy had the lowest average (~1.1%), and Donald Trump’s first term averaged roughly 1.9%.
“The more you know. *”
This says it all: Denny’s Grand Slam now goes for $16.89. I remember about 20 years ago, it was $2.99.
Well, thanks to tariffs, Trump kicking out migrant workers who work farms and fertilizer costs going through the roof because there’s a supply shortage thanks to Trump’s war in Iran, what did we think was going to happen to food prices? Literally everything he has done has been pro-inflationary.
Oh please! This is directly related to the costs to own and operate. This started long before Trump but as usual your daily baseless Trump attacks right on Q🤣
Your baseless attack is … a baseless comment. Try sourcing your repsonses, you may then come across as, at the least, as smart instead of stupid.
Yeah, the dumbocrats want their cheap migrant workers back so they can pay them almost-slavery wages and pretend that’s not insulting.
It reminds them of their “good ole days” where they first got the idea of free stuff: Make someone else work for you for free.
Turley’s “kept population” line is the real story here. Price human labor out of the market and you don’t just lose jobs, you lose the habit of self-reliance that goes with earning them. What you get instead is the managed citizen, formed to wait on a check instead of solve his own problem.
The founders worried about tyranny by force. This is tyranny by convenience. Nobody has to march you into dependency. They just make independence too expensive to bother with.
That’s not economics anymore. That’s formation.
So the Founders (BTW its always capitalized) knew AI was coming and …. what exactly. What tyranny have to with workforce economics? Must be some strong drugs eh?
It would be a lot easier to respond, if Anonymous were to argue the merits, rather than engage in an ad hominem attack.
It is very simple: by raising the Minimum Wage, you increase the cost of labor.
As the price of labor goes up, businesses will seek to cut back on the number of workers they use, especially workers
whose wages have been raised by the government.
Please respond to the economic argument.
Seth Goldstein
ad hominem? The comment criticized the comment not a person. Its pure gobbledygook (just like yours) and you thinking its intellectual engagement is laughable.
^^^^worthless life tries to take it out on others.
Seth Goldstein,
Well said and you are correct.
I would add, according to the studies I provided links to above, not only did they cut back on workers hours, but had to increase menu prices. Smaller businesses had to cut back on store hours.
Yes sir. It’s not complicated. Econ 101 stuff.
A statutory wage hike means an individual is funded entirely by their private payroll, not a government check.
Data from the Economic Policy Institute shows that raising the minimum wage significantly reduces reliance on public assistance programs like SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid. A higher wage floor transitions people off government rolls and into total self-reliance.
A minimum wage is not a universal basic income or a government handout. It is an earned exchange of human labor for private capital.
Workers earning a higher minimum wage are still actively clocking in, managing workflows, learning skills, and solving operational problems daily. Their character and work ethic are being formed by the labor market, not by a passive relationship with the state.
This “formation crap” is a useless excuse for common sense.
Call it “formation crap” if you want, but you just made my argument for me without meaning to. You said a higher mandated wage moves people off SNAP and Medicaid and onto private payroll. Fine, but ask why that money is available to pay them in the first place. If it’s not coming from higher productivity, better skills, or a better product the business is selling, it’s coming out of margin, hours, headcount, or price increases passed to everyone else. You haven’t removed the dependency, you’ve just moved who’s paying for it. That’s still not the worker earning more because he’s worth more to the business. That’s a wage floor propped up by government mandate instead of a government check. Different mechanism, same dependency underneath.
And the “earned exchange” line doesn’t hold up either. An earned wage is one the market sets because the business needs that labor to compete. A mandated wage is one Congress sets whether the business needs it or not. Calling both of those “earned” is exactly the kind of category error the whole thread started with.
Formation isn’t an excuse. It’s the reason this debate keeps going in circles. You can change who cuts the check without changing whether a person is standing on his own two feet or standing on someone else’s mandate.
You have spent this entire debate trying to force a dynamic, interconnected economy into a hyper-simplistic moral binary of “independence versus government handouts.” Your whole argument relies on a massive blind spot regarding how corporate profits and public subsidies actually interact in the real world.
By framing a living wage floor as just another form of “government dependency,” you are ignoring the fact that the minimum wage doesn’t create a dependency—it ends a massive corporate dependency on the taxpayer.
You argue that an “earned wage” can only be set by what you call a pure, unmandated market. You claim that if a wage rises because of a regulation rather than a worker’s sudden skill increase, it is artificial. But the low wage you are defending isn’t “natural”—it is artificially propped up by public assistance.
Look at the business models of retail and fast-food giants over the last few decades. When a company pays its full-time employees so little that those workers still qualify for SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid, the taxpayer is effectively paying the difference to keep that worker alive. The public is cutting a check so the corporation can keep its profit margins high and its prices artificially low.
That is the true “dependency” in this thread. The corporation is dependent on the state to keep its workforce housed and fed. A mandated wage floor simply forces the business to internalize its own actual operating costs instead of externalizing them onto the American taxpayer.
Your definition of “standing on your own two feet” apparently means a worker should quietly accept a wage that doesn’t cover rent, while taxpayers quietly pick up the slack for corporate balance sheets.Moving people off public assistance and onto a self-sustaining private payroll isn’t a “category error.” It’s forcing the market to be truly honest. If a business cannot afford to pay its workers enough to survive without the government feeding them, then that business is the one living on a mandate.
The now accelerating decline of the post-World War II era of the Pax Americana is exemplified by the imbecilic, economically illiterate proposals such as this one.
So sez the imbecilic, economically illiterate Jack Lifton. Ya know, I don’t understand how cretins like you Jack think you’re smarter than everyone else?
I find it interesting that Murphy, a long time mainstream Dem, found it neccesary to disavow being a Democratic Socialist. He must see that the DSA brand is being savaged and falling in popularity. It, hopefully, won’t be long before being part of the DSA is as toxic as being a “card carrying liberal” became before they replaced it with progressive!
Democrat, Socialist, Democrat Socialist, Communist are just labels that have the same end goal. They are all hideous, destructive, collectivist, redistributionist ideologies. They want government to dictate outcomes, rather than free people voluntarily choosing to transact. The only real differences between all of the various labels is 1) timing and 2) the degree of honesty.
Democrats are obviously the least honest. They have lied about the end goal for a century. They have a much longer time frame to impose their collectivist, authoritarian ideology on the normal people. If they can’t do it legislatively, then they try to do it through the courts to provide a fake veneer of legitimacy. On the other extreme are Communists. They are the most openly honest. They tell you what they want up front. No lies. No sugar coating. Not pretending. They are also the least patient. Yesterday is not soon enough.
============
I am 100% behind people earning $30 per hour – provided two parties sit down and negotiate it. The employee must be able to instill confidence in the employer that he can provide value that is greater than $30/hour (plus social security, plus Medicare, plus vacation, plus sick days, plus health insurance, plus maternity leave, plus….) Add it all up and an employee paid $30/hour actually has to provide MUCH greater value than $30. I’d guess the breakeven point would be closer to $45 per hour of value.
Hard to prove you can provide that much value with little or no experience and no skill set. Or you are an illegal invader who can not speak English.
Minimum wage jobs were never intended to be a career aspiration.
How do you figure that? You in a minimum wage career still?
Nah – rest assured the USG under a future Admin will put Union-like controls on employers in coming years where you ‘have to maintain’ a certain level of biological units on the premises even if they are just playing cards in the breakroom all day! Want an example – look at the blackmail deal the California Port Worker Unions made with the Port Authority – the Union insisted and received assurance that the Ports will NOT automate or use AI in conjunction with any current port worker job position. We can certainly expect more of that in coming years across the spectrum and a GOOD DEM Admin (aka AOC etc.) will certainly use the HAMMER in the same way DJT has used it on Corporate America!!!
That’s exactly what the longshoremen did at America’s Ports as the containerized units were implemented by shipping. They required that a rate be included for the longshoremen for the labor hours lost by the workers. So every benefit of increasing production that would be seen as profit and reduced costs to the consumer that resulted in lost labor manhours to the unions were tacked on to the per unit cost of cargo offloading to the benefit of the union.
better idea
50% cut of all government salaries and pensions!
Better still, is cut off guyventer’s social security. Why, for stupidity.
I don’t need social security! LOL
BTW the DEMOCRATS have GIVEN Trillions to illegals and the richest…so there is NO MORE MONEY! Your government is BROKE
Democrat Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 estimated by Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to cost $370 billions, now estimated up to $1.97 trillion due to high uptake of uncapped clean energy tax credits.
You just may not need it (which is very doubtful, you old people here have to much time on your hands, put it to better use, go hang around Dunkin Donuts and buy a round) then why are you drawing it?
Guyventer Stellar! Why should any government employee have better healthcare, equal compensation for zero risk and retirement benefits than those that pay their salaries?
my entire family is from CT…75% have left!
Entire you say? All 75%? And pray tell, where did they go… on welfare?
LOL
London, FL, places where rich SMART people go!
“Where smart people go”, we will NEVER have to worry about Anonymous showing up there.🤣
weird how virtually NO DEMOCRAT has a background in running a business….beyond government extortion!
Will only illegals be allowed to get this minimum wage? We have come to that level of absurdity.
Time to END ALL Federal Aid to cities, states, non-profits and colleges
Outlaw Public Unions
DESTROY THE ENTIRE DEMOCRAT MACHINE!
And somehow you have gobs of experience running a business then eh? Then what are you doing here?
I retired from a startup tech…don’t need to work. LOL
can you explain why you Support ILLEGALS?
reminder Democrat want illegals to Harm YOU!
Study from the Atlanta Fed Reserve Bank:
Wages are 30% Less at firms who hire undocumented!
Undocumented workers DRIVE DOWN Wages and STEAL JOBS
Hire only Documented $9,272
Hire Undocumented $6,520
VA has at least two self-made >$100 millionaires, Mark Warner and Don Beyer. Both are 100% nestled within the progressive Dem cocoon.