Not content with the current level of inflation and the number of residents fleeing the state, California is scheming up new ways to drive up costs and drive people out of work. This time, it means hiking the minimum wage.

Starting next April, California will increase the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour. The state also created a council that can increase the minimum wage for fast-food workers every year until 2029. It is great news for workers that fast-food restaurants don’t fire and replace with kiosks and other forms of technology that now will cost less than workers do.

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While Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) boasts that California is the “freedom state,” the government is now dictating the terms of employment for people who haven’t asked, many of whom will now be forced out of work as restaurants cut down on staff due to the increased costs. We have already seen businesses do this in Fresno as California’s minimum wage continued to rise over the past several years. Those that didn’t lay off workers raised prices, while others froze less-skilled (mostly younger) employees out of hiring due to the higher salaries.

At the extreme end, you may even see fewer restaurants in California. “Hero pay” ordinances in some cities in California during the pandemic, which saw increases of up to $4 per hour for some workers, led to Kroger closing five stores in Los Angeles and Long Beach to save on costs. And it’s not like the market is going to grow in California as the state continues to lose residents.

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Again, this will be great for the workers who keep their jobs. National Democrats boasted about how a $15 federal minimum wage would lift 900,000 people out of poverty for that same reason. But the same Congressional Budget Office study that reached that conclusion found that, at the low end, it would cost 1.4 million people their jobs. The minimum wage for fast-food workers in California won’t be $20 an hour. It will be zero, just as it has always been, for all those workers whom businesses now can't afford to hire. California’s wage hike will introduce many more to that reality.

This is what happens when politicians decide that they should micromanage how businesses are allowed to run, which has been a particular problem with California Democrats. The state with the highest poverty rate in the country when adjusted for cost of living will now send more people into unemployment and increase the cost of living again, all under the mistaken impression that this is helping.