(The Daily Signal)—New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani wants a $30 minimum wage in New York by 2030, but California’s experience shows this flawed policy will kill at least tens of thousands of jobs.
Policymaking doesn’t happen in a vacuum—the laws of economics still hold whether a minimum wage worker is on the East or West Coast.
California is the canary in a coal mine signaling to Mamdani—an avowed socialist with communist predilections—how hiking minimum wage to $30 will cause thousands of New Yorkers to lose their jobs.
A new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research this month found California’s 2023 minimum wage increase to $20 per hour resulted in a loss of 18,000 jobs in the fast-food sector. This number would be far greater if researchers included other minimum wage jobs, including hospitality, gardening, etc.
The economists from Texas A&M University and University of California-San Diego traced the minimum wage increase impact since it went into effect in April 2024 and found a 3.2% decline in California compared to fast-food sectors in the rest of America.
“Our median estimate translates into a loss of 18,000 jobs in California’s fast-food sector relative to the counterfactual,” wrote researchers Jeffrey Clemens, Olivia Edwards, and Jonathan Meer.
The results are not surprising at all, and yet both California and New York keep engaging in repeated policy insanities like this that are driving people and money from their state.
On Monday night during an event with Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R-Va., airing live on CSPAN, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (founded by a group including current and former advisers to President Donald Trump) released a new series of interactive maps about migration among America’s states.
The maps show massive exodus of both Californians and New Yorkers to better economic climates. New York (1.8 million people) and California (1.6 million people) topped the chart of which states lost the most people between 2011 and 2022.
California and New York both also topped the chart of which states lost the most money, “in terms of the Aggregated Gross Income (AGI) tied to their net domestic migrants. This means that when people left these states, they took the largest amounts of personal income, which can have a myriad of impacts on these states.”
In that same period, New York lost $111.1 billion and California lost $102.4 billion. The winners? Not surprisingly, states led by conservative governors embracing freedom principles of competition, fair playing field and school choice.
Between 2011 and 2022, Florida and Texas proved the biggest winners. Florida gained 1.6 million people and Texas gained 1.3 million. Florida gained $195.6 billion—almost a quarter trillion dollars in net Aggregated Gross Income—while Texas gained $54.5 billion.
Despite his failed leadership, Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., on Sunday touted a state “cradle-to-career” workforce program—tone deaf considering the jobs he’s killed—especially as minimum wage jobs are often the first step on a career ladder for people like me who came from struggling, formerly homeless families.
As a former Taco Bell and Subway fast food employee, I feel compelled to stand up for my fellow workers who often take minimum wage jobs—like I did—as a first step on the economic ladder.
In New York, Mamdani epitomizes the capitalist American dream he seeks to destroy. Mamdani is a socialist with a capitalist lifestyle and pedigree. Mamdani’s mother is Mira Nair, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker whose movies have grossed over $100 million. Mamdani spent his childhood on luxurious red carpets. At age 12, Mamdani attended the 2004 Venice Film Festival alongside actress Reese Witherspoon.
Mamdani’s father is a tenured Columbia University professor. The younger Mandami grew up attending Bank Street School, an exclusive private school with tuition reaching $69,000 per year. As a child, Mamdani lived on Riverside Drive in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, one of the world’s most exclusive ZIP codes.
As an adult, he attended Bowdoin College, reportedly without any financial aid for the pricey school, which now costs $71,000 per year for tuition alone. Mamdani is the quintessential example of an elitist hypocrite who seeks to destroy the economic system that gave him a blessed life.
If Mamdani and Newsom—both wealthy, silver spoon elitists—truly cared for the poor, they would not destroy minimum wage jobs. Intention matters far less than outcome.
Carrie Sheffield is a senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Voice and author of “Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness.”
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
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