The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So is the road to poverty. Is it any surprise that Democratic-run cities continue to prove this true time and again?
Seattle Democrats, in their infinite wisdom and with their economic expertise, came up with an ordinance to tack on an additional fee for people using delivery apps. This fee is designed to give gig workers a “minimum pay” for their deliveries. Because if there is one thing that gig workers really want, it is for the government to erase much of their flexibility and start imposing more unnecessary regulations on an industry that they know nothing about.
Shockingly, this artificial price hike had the added effect of erasing gig workers’ flexibility as well as their incomes. Fewer people in Seattle are now using delivery apps, which means gig workers now work their gig for fewer hours, have fewer delivery requests to fill, and, of course, make less money.
“There’s certainly nothing in the policy that requires apps to impose additional fees, to pass those fees on to customers,” one overpaid Washington activist complained. Yes, the policy does not literally dictate that, but it is fairly easy to imagine that businesses who have their operating costs increased by arbitrary minimum “pay” increases (or “minimum wage,” as you more commonly recognize it) then pass that cost off to consumers. Criminal laws may not be strictly enforced in Seattle, but economic laws and the law of unintended consequences are not subject to the wishes of labor activists or Democratic politicians.
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Just like California “helped” gig workers by ruining their flexibility and running them out of jobs, or how Los Angeles (and Seattle) got stores closed for additional “hero pay,” Seattle thought money grows on trees and they could force companies to give it away without harming the people it wanted to protect.
Don’t worry, though, I am sure Democratic-run cities will learn their lesson from this the next time a minimum wage debate comes up. Doing the same thing over and over again until it works is a good strategy, right?
