Californians, for the first time ever, just rejected an increase in the state's minimum wage. The voting down of Proposition 32 also marks the first time in 30 years that any state's voters have done so.
We can speculate as to the reasons for this, among them being the businesses that shut down as a result of the last minimum wage hike (to $20 for fast food workers). We can also lament that the advocates for this particular form of government coercion aren't going to pack up their placards and go home. After all, it's Other People's Money, and activists and big-government types are quite happy to spend it on business owners' behalf.
I've spilled much digital ink on the minimum wage. How it was born of racism and perpetuates it, how it hurts the least-skilled in society, how it destroys jobs, how it is an economic drag that raises prices and slows growth, how it incentivizes automation, how it shifts services such as grocery bagging onto customers, and how it violates our fundamental liberty to act, transact, and interact as we choose. That it's a favored policy of the "my body my choice" crowd is an irony I'll only mention in passing.
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