California Fast Food Minimum Wage Now $25, Fast Food Still Available at Prices That Reflect $25 Minimum Wage

Industry confirms that higher labour costs produce higher prices in economic system that functions as predicted

Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

The Wage and Its Effects

LOS ANGELES — California’s $25 per hour minimum wage for fast food workers, which took effect under AB 1228 and which has now been in operation for over a year, has produced the effects that economic theory predicts and that both its proponents and opponents predicted for different evaluative reasons: fast food prices in California are approximately 8 percent higher than they were before the wage increase, fast food worker incomes are approximately 20 percent higher than they were before the wage increase, and fast food employment in California has declined by approximately 4 percent relative to the pre-AB-1228 trend.

The Distributional Analysis

The distributional analysis of the $25 minimum wage is the contested part: the workers who are employed in fast food are significantly better off in absolute terms, with wages that have increased by $7 per hour. The workers who would have been employed in fast food at the lower wage rate and who are not employed due to the employment effect are worse off. The consumers who pay higher prices for fast food are paying a small additional amount per transaction. Whether this distributional outcome is desirable depends on the weights applied to each group’s welfare change, and the weights applied depend on the values that determine them.

The Automation Acceleration

Fast food companies have accelerated kiosk ordering and kitchen automation in California at a rate that exceeds their acceleration in states without the $25 minimum wage, which is the market response to increased labour costs and which will, over time, produce an employment level that is lower than it would have been without the wage increase and higher wages for the workers who remain. The long-term employment effect is a function of the automation technology’s trajectory. The California Department of Industrial Relations manages the AB 1228 implementation and publishes wage and employment data. The Employment Policies Institute provides the economic analysis of minimum wage effects including the AB 1228 specific impacts. Both confirm the situation described, which continues.

California, Freedom, and the Surfer

The surfer as libertarian avatar — the person who wakes up early, reads the forecast, makes a decision about where to go, accepts the consequences of that decision including the rip currents, the crowds, the parking tickets, and the occasional shark, and does not require the government to make the decision or accept the consequences for them — is one of the more coherent applications of libertarian values to a recreational activity. The problem is that the California that produced the surfing culture has also produced the regulatory frameworks that the surfer navigates, and the regulatory frameworks are there because the alternative was the specific outcomes that unregulated California coastline, water, and land use produced in the period before the Coastal Act, the Clean Water Act, and the environmental regulations that the libertarian critique of California simultaneously benefits from and complains about. The Reason Foundation makes the argument. The California Coastal Commission makes the coast accessible. Both are part of the same California.

The Week and Its Structural Context

The stories documented above are specific events produced by structural conditions that predate them and that will continue after them. The journalism industry structural condition — the collapse of the commercial advertising-supported newspaper model and the incomplete emergence of the digital subscription and nonprofit models that are replacing it — has been producing the specific events documented above for approximately two decades and will continue producing them for at least another decade as the transition completes itself at the pace that industry transitions complete themselves, which is slower than the pace at which the casualties of the transition occur and faster than the pace at which the replacements reach the scale the casualties occupied.

The California structural condition — a state whose progressive politics and libertarian geography are in permanent productive tension, whose regulatory frameworks reflect the progressive politics and whose economy reflects the libertarian geography, and whose residents navigate both simultaneously — has been producing the specific events documented above since the state established itself as the primary laboratory for American regulatory innovation in both directions. The regulatory framework expands. The economy grows. The surfers park illegally. The permits take longer. The seawalls get approved while the science documents their effects. All of this is California in 2026, which is California as it has been for forty years and will be for forty more.

The Guardian California and the Los Angeles Times provide the baseline coverage of the California structural condition. The Poynter Institute provides the baseline for the journalism structural condition. The satire provides the angle on both. All three are necessary parts of the complete information environment. The column contributes what it can to each.

The week closes here. The documentation is the contribution. The contribution is imperfect. The imperfection is honest. The honesty is the standard. The standard continues next week, applied to the next week events from the same structural conditions, which continue regardless of the week or the documentation or the column that attempts to document them. The record grows. The conditions continue. Both are real. Both matter. The column returns.

More at https://www.thedailymash.co.uk.

SOURCE: Satirical Journalism