(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) At a Monday night debate in California, candidates for the United States Senate vied for the support of voters.
One candidate in particular, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., floated the idea of raising the state’s minimum wage to $50 per hour, Fox News reported.
According to Lee, such a move is justified because California is an expensive place to live—despite the fact that the increase would likely be passed on to consumers, making it even more expensive.
“In the Bay Area, I believe it was the United Way that came out with a report that very recently $127,000 for a family of four is just barely enough to get by,” Lee said, noting that nothing less than $50 per hour would be “sustainable.”
“Another survey very recently, $104,000; for a family of one, barely enough to get by, low income because of the affordability crisis,” she added.
The congresswoman declared that the federal minimum wage must also be increased in order to address the rising cost of living.
“Just do the math. Of course, we have national minimum wages that we need to raise to a living wage,” Lee said.
“We’re talking about $20, $25—fine,” she continued. “But I have got to be focused on what California needs and what the affordability factor is when we calculate this wage.”
Former baseball star Steve Garvey, the only Republican candidate to attend the debate, argued that the minimum wage “is where it is and should be.”
Garvey argued that California’s already-high minimum wage of $16 per hour has made it difficult for lower and middle class Americans to continue to survive.
“If you look at what California has done to fast-food franchises right now, increasing the minimum wage to $20, and what’s going to happen—that’s going to increase costs for hardworking Californians to go to a franchise to get a Big Mac for $9, it’s going to be $15,” he noted.
And it appears that Garvey’s prediction is already coming true.
Fat Brands chairman Andy Wiederhorn told Fox News earlier this month that “someone’s got to pay” for the spike in wages.
“Everyone wants their employees to make more money, but it just costs,” he continued, noting that “someone’s got to pay for it. . . prices are going to go up.”
Other companies were responding to the state’s recent wage hike by cutting costs: specifically by laying off employees. Pizza Hut announced in January that it planned to terminate some 1,200 delivery drivers before the new $20 minimum wage rules take effect in April.
Meanwhile, the nation is in the midst of a genuine crisis caused by President Joe Biden’s inflationary policies.
The short-term crisis that Biden inherited as the result of pandemic recovery likely would have been transitory except that he wound up exacerbating the problem by attempting to spend his way out.
With businesses struggling to lure back workers who had grown accustomed to receiving overly generous unemployment benefits, Biden’s solution was to force higher salaries, which effectively turned the short-term spike in prices due to supply-chain shortages into a permanent inflation.
È qualcosa che era arrivata addirittura al suo orecchio nel 2021
Non riuscite a trovare lavoratori?
Biden: "Pay them more" pic.twitter.com/YpdZFSb0lb— Ottavio Agretti (@OAgretti) December 27, 2022
