Don’t expect them to admit that you were right. About what? Raising the minimum wage for tipped employees would result in lost hours, fewer jobs, higher prices, and restaurant closings. If you are reading this, assuming you are not some progressive troll, you knew that. The real minimum wage is zero, which is where more entry-level or low-skilled workers end up when virtue-signalling socialists doing business as registered Democrats meddle with market forces.
Democrats do not know better, especially the Democrats in office who proposed Initiative 82 or the majority of DC-voting Democrats who approved it. The ballot measure boosted pay for all tipped employees to the same as the District’s already too-high minimum wage. And while everyone patted themselves on the back for their moral superiority, higher labor costs drove up prices, cost those workers hours, and cost jobs.
Just like we knew they would.
“Let us be clear — repealing Initiative 82 is about saving jobs, saving restaurants, and stabilizing a vital sector of the District’s economy. Restaurants are cornerstones of our communities,” the association said in a statement.
“Yet nearly 70% of them have already been forced to cut hours and lay off staff. In 2024 alone, the city saw a record 74 closures. The consequences of inaction are not hypothetical — they’re happening now.”
D.C.’s restaurant industry is facing a full-blown crisis, with multiple popular eateries citing I-82 as one of the reasons they closed down. A recent survey found that 44 percent of D.C. restaurants were “likely to close” by the end of the year, a stark finding reflective of the sour mood among restaurant owners in the nation’s capital.
Mayor Bowser, no relation to the greaser in the band Sha Na Na (may he rest in peace – Boww, Boww Boww!), has had a Road to Damascus moment. She is asking the City Council to consider a repeal to Initiative 82 before it wipes out DC’s restaurant scene.
“DC restaurants are facing a perfect storm — from increased operating and supply costs to higher rents and unique labor challenges,” Bowser said in a statement. “DC must rebalance our system to ensure local restaurants can survive, compete, and employ DC residents.”
That’s the diplomatic way of avoiding responsibility for another stupid left-wing idea that did precisely the opposite of what its proponents claimed. For new readers, that’s every idea Democrats have. Just scratch away at the narrative veneer, and the ugly truth awaits. Bowser isn’t taking credit for failure, not that many politicians would. The same market forces her party insists it can command aligned to make what should have been a good idea an abject failure.
It was never a good idea to elect Democrats, but people willing to outsource their social responsibility to the pocketbooks of others are enamored of the proposition. And that reality is severable. The fact that Democrats did not know better when it came to wages for tipped employees does not translate to any other aspect of their programming. Admitting it doesn’t work and seeking a repeal has no bearing on why their welfare programs don’t encourage self-reliance or how their approach to fighting crime worsens it. Education costs must rise so we can churn out dumber children, and around we go.
Will the DC City Council join this limited, narrowly imagined crusade favoring market forces? Probably not. And I’m unclear whether they would have to get voters to undo the initiative they voted for or if they have abrogated that power to their political masters. Whatever happens, the damage won’t be reversed as quickly as it was introduced. It never is. And there’s the rub.
Breaking things is easy. Putting them back together takes time, which is an essential truth for Trump supporters, especially the new ones. And while we wait, the best thing you can do to help speed it along is to stop electing Democrats to public office.
