When the price of any commodity rises, demand falls. This iron law of economics applies even to labor.
Advocates of minimum wage laws (which allow government rather than the market to set wages) believe in a fantasy: that when politicians order wages to increase they are helping poor people.
The reality is precisely the opposite. Minimum wage laws harm the poorest workers above all.
In January 2016, the City of San Diego ordered that the minimum wage be raised from $10 per hour to $11.50 per hour. (The rest of the state raised the minimum wage from $10 per hour to $10.25 per hour.)
“In the year and three months since then, the number of food service jobs in San Diego has dropped sharply, with perhaps as many as 4,000 jobs lost, or never created in the first place.” See here.
