A Great Day for Robots…California Gov. Signs Fast Food Worker $20 Minimum Wage Bill
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Oh, it’s a great day. Big day. Big day for robots. Yes, robots. You should be all excited. The governor of California signed a $20 minimum wage bill into law. Here come the robots. Here comes more automation. Yeah, this new wage takes effect in April 1, 2024.
$20 an hour. And my question to Gavin Newsome and the people of California, why 20? Why not 30?
Why not 40? Where did you come up with 20? Is it not an arbitrary number? If you could, could you show me what mathematical formula you use to calculate that $20 an hour minimum wage? Yeah, you don’t have one, do you? Again, this.
Yeah, what’s going to happen? You’re going to continue to see more automation, more online ordering, more filling out your orders via iPads. We already talked about how Chipotle is already utilizing machines to make their guacamole and putting things and to make chips to do a myriad of things. Here’s the thing, guys. We’ve been watching wages rise in many businesses because of the tight.
labor market, but a business is not going to pay a worker more than they’re worth. A business owner that pays his workers, his or her workers more than they’re worth is going to go out of business.
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It’s going to go out of business, it’s going to go bankrupt. Same reason, one of the main reasons why the automakers needed to be bailed out was the fact that they were overpaying their workers. Oh, no, they’re union, I went back, I was making fun of it back in the day. Guys cutting the grass, union workers cutting the grass at the auto plants that were making well over $100,000 a year. Really? Come on.
Okay, so you got your $20 an hour. And this is from a Fox News story here. The moment was almost too much for Anisha Williams who held back tears as she spoke during a news conference. A mother of six, seven if you count her dog, works at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Inglewood. They’ve been with me on the picket line and they’ve been marching with me as well, Williams said of her children. This is for them.
You know, whenever I see these anecdotal stories, I always, it drives me nuts. Because I always want the backstory. I do. I always want the backstory. I always want to know, okay, you know, how you end up working, you’re an American citizen, how you end up having six kids and a dog, and you’re working at a jack-in-the-box. I mean, it could be some sad story, could have lost her husband, maybe she wasn’t working, whatever it may be.
But, you know, something’s amiss here. Not to mention the fact that, you know, I don’t mind. I’ve had more than enough. I’ve done a ton of minimum wage jobs when I was younger, and all of those minimum wage jobs, quite frankly, taught me something. Taught me something. I learned something from every one of those jobs. And that’s why they’re
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go back to the great, I thought it was a great conservative movie, Coming to America there with McDowell’s and the comedian Louis Anderson working there and he’s telling Akim in semis, he’s like, ah yeah, I was like you guys, I was washing lettuce and now I’m, you know, now I’m working fries and next year I make assistant manager and that’s how the big bucks start rolling in and that’s how things work here in this country.
When someone dictates a number, it’s never going to end up working out. And it’s going to end up making things more difficult. I actually, she wrote a column about this. I remember the year now, OK, because I remember where I was. This is 2004. It’s in my archives. I archive all my columns there. It was entitled Minimum Wage Malarkey. And at the time, there was an ongoing debate here.
about minimum wage. I can’t remember that was the time where Nancy Pelosi got caught. They were pushing for a higher minimum wage, except they wanted to exempt Samoa. And it was found out that her husband was a big investor in the tuna canning plants that were there, and they didn’t want to pay them more. But anyway, neither here nor there.
a while ago and obviously that the country’s changed a great deal since, you know, that point in time. I was in Greece in Easter back in 2004 on a Saturday. And again, I only had my son with me at times, all I had at the time. And he had to go out, get sent out to the grocery store with my son’s late godfather at the time, had to get diapers and a myriad of things.
and you go to the grocery store, the grocery stores are busy, markets are busy on weekends. And I’m looking at the checkout line, singular line was, it was as long as long could be. I was like, what the hell is going on? This is crazy. Not that they didn’t have other registers, they did. And I started, I was asking about this and explained. They said, they can’t afford to hire.
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more cashiers because of what the minimum wage is at the time demanded. And I’m saying to myself, well, that’s ridiculous. But yeah, that’s what happens. Okay. Minimum wage, again, it’s just another disconnect in how the free market is supposed to work. We’ve watched wages climb for a steady period of time, okay, on their own, without pressure from government.
What’s going to happen in California is that you’re going to see places close. Not only that, you’re going to see people get fired. And if you’re a boss and you’ve got to make ends meet and you’re going to have to tell a worker, well, you know what? I can only keep one of you. And the other one, you’re going to have to assume the duties and many of the things that this other worker was doing because again, the government decided that I can’t pay you any less than this. I mean, again.
It’s just a numbers game people, it’s math, okay? You might not like the math, but it is what it is. And again, this is a disaster. And again, a great day for robots out there in the state of California. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.
