Woke Extremist Minneapolis City Council Demands $30.60/Hour Minimum Wage for Uber and Lyft Drivers; Uber and Lyft Both Announce They Will Abandon Minneapolis

Faced with public anger about driving out the popular ride-share services, the woke extremists of the city council say they may delay when the order goes into effect.

But they're only doing that to allow other ride-share companies -- are there any? -- to enter the Minneapolis market.

By the way, I base the headline claim of a $30.60 per hour minimum wage on the city council's demand that drivers be paid a minimum 51 cents per minute when ferrying passengers.

With Uber and Lyft threatening to cease operations in Minneapolis on May 1 over a minimum wage ordinance, the City Council is considering pushing the implementation date back in a meeting on Thursday.

Council members Elliott Payne, Katie Cashman and Aurin Chowdhury are seeking to push back the implementation date to July 1, giving more time for new ride-hailing apps to enter the market.

During the council meeting, co-authors are also said to be bringing a notice of intent to amend the ordinance to include offering fare transparency and data disclosures. Furthermore, council member Andrea Jenkins may bring an amendment or motion to dismiss the minimum wage ordinance all together, according to a release on Wednesday.

California recently imposed a $20/hour minimum wage for fast food workers. There's now a $16/hour minimum wage for all other jobs.

Companies immediately began firing workers and closing down stores.

California fast-food chains are laying off workers, raising prices and deciding against opening new stores as the state implements a minimum wage that is more than 175% higher than that required by the federal government.

California implemented a minimum wage for all workers at $16 per hour effective Jan. 1, 2024, although some individual municipalities have implemented higher minimum wage requirements. The new $20-an-hour minimum wage that goes into effect Monday only applies to fast-food workers, who will see their hourly wages rise by as much as 25%.

All fast-food employees, regardless of age, will see a $20 an hour minimum wage in California. This is significantly higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 for adults and the youth minimum wage of $4.25, which applies to employees under the age of 20 during their first 90 consecutive days of work with an employer.

Alex Johnson, who owns 10 Auntie Anne's Pretzels and Cinnabon bakeries across the San Francisco Bay Area said his sales have slowed down in 2024, forcing him to layoff employees and even use his parents to help with human resources, according to The Associated Press.

The wage increase will cost Johnson about $470,000 annually, so he plans on raising prices between 5% and 15%. He is also no longer hiring new employees or looking to open more stores.

A pizza chain announced the closure of five stores in California.

Apizza chain shuttered some of its California locations before the state boosted the minimum wage for fast food workers earlier this month.

Mod Pizza, which has 500 locations nationwide, closed five shops in the state at the end of March, according to local Fox affiliate KMPH.

Those shops were among the over two dozen locations that the company closed across the nation. The company did not specify a reason, but workers in Clovis, whose shop abruptly closed, told the outlet they suspected that the California closures had to do with the new law that took effect in April....

Analysts forecast that this law will gift California with increased unemployment for years.

That's putting it in the best possible light.

Libertarian economist Scott Sumner, a California resident, believes the new mandate could hobble the economy beyond just the state's cost of doing business--it could make the state's unemployment rate higher for the long term.

"If California has more rules that increase costs for businesses--maybe mandating worker benefits or regulations that just make it more costly to do business in California--that could slightly increase the natural rate of unemployment," Sumner told Fortune.

The "natural rate of unemployment" refers to an economic concept that is often confusing to normal people, to wit: Even an economy at full employment includes a small number of unemployed workers, often new entrants to the workforce or people switching from one job to another. It's "the rate at which the unemployment rate settles when the economy itself is relatively stable," as Sumner put it.

Classic economic theory holds that the natural rate of unemployment is related to wages, and that, as wages go up, businesses trying to keep their profit margins may cut employees' hours or lay them off. Higher wages in theory also means that businesses are going to have a higher bar for their workers. After all, if they're paying more money, Sumner argued, they should be getting their money's worth.

"There would be quite a few workers who simply would not be profitable to be hired at $40 an hour," Sumner speculated. "And so there are obvious limits to what you can do in terms of artificially raising wages."

Sky-high inflation and mass layoffs -- man, this Bidenomics Economy is fantastic!

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:13 PM

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