Recent referendums on the minimum wage have achieved some of this striking results:
California’s proposal to gradually increase the minimum wage to $18 per hour by 2026 narrowly failed: 51%-49%. Opponents and supporters combined to raise a $1.8 million war chest for the issue — the smallest amount of any proposal on Californians’ ballots this year. according to The Sacramento Bee. If the measure had passed, California would have become, along with Hawaii, the highest overall minimum wage of any state.
Since 1994, every state referendum on the minimum wage has passed, even in red states like South Dakota and Nebraska. For example, the recent elections also produced this result in Missouri:
Missouri voters agreed 58%-42% to set a minimum wage of $13.75 per hour next year, which would then increase by $1.25 per year until it reaches $15 per hour by 2026.
Keep in mind that the cost of living in California is much higher than in Missouri. So what explains the mood in California?
I see several factors at work:
- Voters are still angry about high inflation.
- Shoppers are annoyed by the way 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 remember working for less money when they were young, even adjusted for inflation.
But it’s probably not just about anger about high prices. California’s rent control proposal was also defeated, and by a much larger margin, almost 60-40. I suspect that California’s election results partly reflect a backlash against progressivism.
When I was young, California was a red state. The passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 slowed property tax growth. In 1988, California voted for Bush, while Massachusetts liberal Mike Dukakis won Iowa by 10 points. Voters approved it in 1994 Proposition 187that prohibited the provision of public services to illegal aliens in California. The same year, voters passed the “three strikes law,” which mandated long prison sentences (25 years to life) for three convictions, even if the third conviction was for a relatively minor offense. Prop 13 remains in effect, but the other proposals were later weakened.
Over time, red states often turn blue, and vice versa. It’s entirely possible that in a few decades, West Virginia will be blue and Vermont will be red. West Virginia was indeed blue when I was young, and Vermont is one of only two states that voted Republican in 1936.
Minimum wages and rent control aren’t the only areas California voters are voting on shifted to the right:
California voters passed Proposition 36, which increases penalties for shoplifting and drug trafficking, and they voted against it Proposal 6, which would have paid people in prison for their labor and abolished slavery in any form.
In San Francisco Bay, voters expelled progressive Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price. Democratic Socialist San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston lost his race.
In Los Angeles, District Attorney George Gascón was ousted by Nathan Hochman a candidate who promised to be a more orderly prosecutor.
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 started a national tax revolt that led to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.