Recent referenda on the minimum wage produced some striking results:
The California proposal to raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour in steps by 2026 narrowly failed, 51%-49%. Opponents and backers amassed a combined $1.8 million war chest for the issue — the lowest amount of all the propositions on Californians’ ballots this year, according to The Sacramento Bee. If the measure had passed, it would have made California, along with Hawaii, the highest general minimum wage of any state.
Since 1994, every single state referendum on the minimum wage had passed, even in red states like South Dakota and Nebraska. For instance, the recent election also produced this result in Missouri:
Missouri voters agreed 58%-42% to establish a $13.75-an-hour minimum wage by next year, which would then increase by $1.25 a year until it reached $15 an hour in 2026.
Keep in mind that the cost of living in California is far higher than in Missouri. So what explains the California vote?
I see several factors at work:
- Voters are still angry about high inflation.
- Shoppers are annoyed at the way that tipping has spread to more and more types of businesses.
- California has a separate $20 minimum wage for fast food workers. Most voters are older, and recall working for less money when young, even adjusting for inflation.
But it’s probably not just anger about high prices. California’s rent control proposition was also rejected, and by a far larger margin, nearly 60-40. I suspect that the election results in California partly reflect a backlash against progressivism.
When I was young, California was a red state. The passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 restrained the growth in property taxes. In 1988, California voted for Bush while Massachusetts liberal Mike Dukakis won Iowa by 10 points. In 1994, voters passed Proposition 187, which banned the provision of public services to illegal aliens in California. In the same year, voters approved the “three strikes law”, which mandated long prison sentences (25 years to life) for three felony convictions, even if the third conviction was for a relatively minor offense. Prop 13 remains in effect, but the other propositions were later watered down.
Over time, red states frequently become blue, and vice versa. It’s quite possible than in a few decades West Virginia will be blue and Vermont will be red. Indeed West Virginia was blue when I was young, and Vermont is one of only two states that voted Republican in 1936.
Minimum wages and rent control are not the only areas when California voters shifted to the right:
California voters passed Prop. 36, which increases penalties for retail theft and drug trafficking, and they voted down Proposition 6, which would have paid people in prison for their labor and abolished slavery in any form.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, voters ousted the progressive-minded Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price. Democratic socialist San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston lost his race.
In Los Angeles, DA George Gascón was ousted by Nathan Hochman, a candidate who promised he would be a more law-and-order district attorney.
The votes on criminal justice issues did not surprise me, as there is a lot of anger here about the increase in crimes such as shoplifting. But I was mildly (and pleasantly) surprised by the shift in voter sentiment against interventionist economic policies. We’ll see if this is the start of a new trend. California’s Proposition 13 kicked off a national tax revolt that led to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
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