As I never tire of telling people here (and other places), Marxism is one of those strange belief systems that holds that as long as the intentions are praiseworthy, the consequences are irrelevant. Take this latest episode in the People’s Soviet of Kaliforniaaahhh:
In their seemingly never-ending quest to make lives for Californians miserable, the state legislature passed a bill that Governor Newsom signed into law mandating a $20 minimum wage for fast food workers by April of 2024.
…and why not? Don’t we want people to be able to earn a “living” wage in California? (Okay, Califuckingfornia is expensive to live in because of their insane one-party government and its onerous laws, rules and regulations, but we can discuss all that some other time.)
Well, sure. Except that business owners, already driven up against the wall by said laws and regulations, have decided that enough is enough, and they need to rein in costs — in this case, salary costs.
So:
PacPizza LLC, operating as Pizza Hut, said in a federal WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) Act notice filed with California’s Employment Development Department that the company has made a business decision to eliminate first-party delivery services and, as a result, the elimination of all delivery driver positions. Similarly, Southern California Pizza Co. has also announced layoffs, impacting about 841 drivers across the state.
Thus, Californians too lazy to fetch their own pizzas will now have to rely on expensive “third-party” delivery services (e.g. UberEats etc.) to deliver their deep-dish delicacies.
Oh, wait; didn’t California recently pass legislation that made Uber service essentially too costly for people not on a corporate expense account? Why yes, yes they did:
The California Legislature passed a law in 2019 that changed the rules of who is an employee and who is an independent contractor. It’s an important distinction for companies because employees are covered by a broad range of labor laws that guarantee them certain benefits while independent contractors are not.
While the law applied to lots of industries, it had the biggest impact on app-based ride hailing and delivery companies. Their business relies on contracting with people to use their own cars to give people rides and make deliveries. Under the 2019 law, companies would have to treat those drivers as employees and provide certain benefits that would greatly increase the businesses’ expenses.
But hey, that was too much even for the serfs and helots a.k.a. ordinary Californians, who later passed Proposition 22 in a ballot measure, in essence telling the legislature to fuck off and leave Uber and their drivers alone. Of course, that was no good, so the CalGov tried to get the Prop 22 overturned in the courts (standard Commie reaction when the peasants revolt, if they can’t be stuffed into gulags or shot in killing pits).
App-based ride hailing and delivery companies like Uber and Lyft can continue to treat their California drivers as independent contractors, a state appeals court ruled Monday, allowing the tech giants to bypass other state laws requiring worker protections and benefits.
The ruling mostly upholds a voter-approved law, called Proposition 22, that said drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft are independent contractors and are not entitled to benefits like paid sick leave and unemployment insurance. A lower court ruling in 2021 had said Proposition 22 was illegal, but Monday’s ruling reversed that decision.
Everyone following the story of the film so far? (There may be a test.)
Anyway, now that the Cali Politburo has decreed that workers have to be paid a lot more than their services are worth, and employers have responded by applying one of the basic capitalist principles (when wages get too high, reduce the workforce), expect the Politburo to pass some equally-stupid new law, say that companies which sell fast food have to employ drivers.
You heard it here first.
Frankly, I look forward to the day when Californians have to fetch their own fucking pizzas, driving cars at $7/gallon fuel costs or EVs which catch fire and turn them and their pizzas into extra-crispy meals for buzzards.
Me, I say: Let California sink.
Soon the Law of Unintended Consequences is about to kick in. (although in this case maybe Intended consequences is probably more accurate). This bill was heavily backed by ALL the Left leaning Unions ( Service Workers, Teachers, State Employees, etc. )
Why would that be? It only applies to fast food workers. Yes, but buried deep in all those Union contracts is a clause along the line of any increase to the minimum wage also means an increase to the Base rate for the union workers. That increase to the base then cascades up though the entire wage structure. … and it’s automatic, not part of the next round of negotiations. Kick’s in right away.
Gavin’s about to see another big hit to his already untenable budget deficit. He’s going to have to ask Uncle Joe for more money to bail him out and another trip to the “Tax the rich ” honey pot.
Oh wait … The rich have all moved to Texas and Montana and Uncle Joe doesn’t have any more $ either. Guess that leaves China to pick up the Bill.
I don’t disagree with your analysis Kim, but I worry about the consequences of the “Let X Sink” mentality. The more we abandon parts of the country, the fewer parts of RealAmerica(tm) still exist.
Fighting back though, that’ll require either lots of bloodshed, or a Long March Back Through the Institutions, and we don’t have an equivalent of the Soviet Union backing us up. Plus the Marxists in power won’t be anywhere near as tolerant of sane people working to undermine them as we were of them working to destroy the West.
The large nation state is dead. The Soviet Union blew up first, Czechoslovakia went, so did Yugoslavia, and the UK has “devolved” an awful lot. Balkanization is coming.
The big race is whether Canada or the USA will blow up next. Or maybe the Bavarians will finally tell the Prussians to fuck off.
I long for the break up of Canada when we Albertans can band together with Montana, Idaho and Saskatchewan then conquer and subjugate British Columbia and Washington – the state, not DC, who the eff would want that shitehole?
That seems more and more like a distinct possibility. Not sure how it’ll pay out here in Texas. Mexico might try to re-conquer the land that we took from her, and she’s got too many people here already:-(.
Just an added note, it seems that the town of Eagle, Idaho, is being overrun by California public employee retirees. They claim to be Republicans, but to the Conservative natives of the area, they’re just more Liberal refugees from the Cali People’s Republic, bringing their up to six-figure pensions with them and trying to buy a New People’s Republic, with less of the foolish restrictions and taxes, but with the same sh*t-for-brains ideas they left in Cali.
Yeah, the problem with “let it sink” is that we need to put a wall around California first. We got too many of them damn people in Texas too. Oh, they claim to be conservative but really, a conservative Cally is basically a hair to the right of Beto, which ain’t saying much.
In 1970 at the age of 15 I worked at a McDonald’s making $1.15 and hour. Before that I was self employed at mowing lawns for $3.00 each. Comparing the work to wages, I was making HUGE money working at McDonald’s. I was making a “living wage” for a 15 year old.
Other than the managers, everyone that worked at McDonald’s then were my age. As we earned more experience, and matured, we left McDonald’s and advanced to the next rung on the ladder of success. Working at a fast food joint requires the bare minimal of intellect, maturity, and experience. Why should it pay more money than it warrants?
After the age of say, 18, people that work in fast food have proven themselves to be losers incapable or unwilling to climb the ladder of success and are undeserving of more pay. To pay them more than is warranted is to condone and approve their life failure.
When you reward failure you can expect to get more of it.
If you need to see what “rewarding failure” looks like, you need look no further than the CA Legislature. When George Lucas needed to create “… a more wretched hive of scum and villainy…” in Star Wars, he only needed to look at Sacramento and to “Frank Fat’s”, and “change the names to protect the innocent”, of which there were few.
Rewarding failure indeed.
https://onthenorthriver.com/2023/12/28/education-lost-generation/
We are becoming Lord of The Flies, at the speed of the internet.
The problem with California is that their dreadful ideas spread to other states that enact the same nonsense. Some californians flee and spread their voting proclivities in other states like Texas, Idaho, Colorado, Montana etc just like a plague of locusts. It’s the densely populated cities who support these crooked politicians.
Until the media and education industry champions self reliance, rugged individualism, small government, moderate regulations and such, you can expect more of the same from government and corporations.
JQ
“Until the media and education industry champions self reliance, rugged individualism, small government, moderate regulations and such…”
I’ll just hold my breath till that happens, and y’all can watch my face turn blue.
Kim,
It took them years to infiltrate and ruin media and education so it will take us the same or more time to reverse their evil infiltration. As Reagan accurately observed, “Freedom is only a generation away from being lost” or something to that effect.
JQ
Fastest way to improve the government coffers… raise the minimum wage.