"Fight for $15" is the rallying cry for most Democrats these days. But soon after Washington, D.C., voters approved a hike in tipped wages to $15, Democrats on the city council moved to repeal it. That's what happens when ideology crashes into reality.
On Tuesday, 7 of the 13 members of Washington's city council sponsored a bill to jettison the wage hike for tipped workers that 56% of D.C. voters had approved by a ballot initiative less than a month before.
...Keep in mind that D.C. is about as heavily Democratic as you can get. It went for Hillary Clinton by a 91%-4% margin.
But the D.C. council members came to understand what economists — and D.C. restaurant workers themselves — already know. Sharp increases in the minimum wage will cost lost hours, lost jobs and lost income....
...Not only would the wage hike pretty much eliminate tips — why tip when the waiter is already making as much as everyone else? — it would almost certainly make workers who keep their jobs worse off financially, since they'd have to pay taxes on every dollar of income.
...This wage mandate, just like the one the council is trying to repeal, will also end up hurting the very people it's supposed to help.
That's not speculation. It's what happened in Seattle, which four years ago decided to gradually hike the city's minimum to $15. Researchers from the University of Washington found that the average low-wage worker lost $125 a month as the mandate took effect and employers cut back on hours and jobs.
Other parts of the country are catching on as evidence rolls in of the job-killing side effect of these mandated wage hikes. The mayor of heavily Democratic Baltimore vetoed a minimum-wage bill last year. The city council in Flagstaff, Ariz., decided to scrap the planned hike to $12, and cap it at $10.50....