California is poised to impose new regulations for fast-food restaurants. The regulations would raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour and create a council to govern fast-food chains and set guidelines for working conditions. Demonstrating his ignorance of the source of prosperity, when he signed an earlier version of the legislation, Gov. Gavin Newsome said,
California is committed to ensuring that the men and women who have helped build our world-class economy are able to share in the state’s prosperity. Today’s action gives hardworking fast-food workers a stronger voice and seat at the table to set fair wages and critical health and safety standards across the industry.
Newsome, like statists of every variety, believes that prosperity can be mandated by law. Such a belief ignores what leads to prosperity—the freedom to produce and trade.
The freedom to produce and trade—property rights—is both practical and moral. When property rights are recognized, individuals have both the motivation and the means to produce an abundance of the values that life requires. When property rights aren’t recognized, production stagnates or declines, and the result is a shortage of values. See Venezuela, Cuba, or any communist country as examples.
Morally, property rights recognize and protect the freedom of individuals to act as they deem best. When individuals are free to act on their own judgment, they are able to try new ideas and produce new values without first seeking the permission of government officials. See the contrast between North Korea and South Korea, East Germany and West Germany, or the Venezuela of thirty years ago and the Venezuela of today as examples.
The source of prosperity is the production of values. When values are produced in abundance, prosperity is the result. And an abundance of values is possible only when property rights are recognized and protected.
If Newsome truly wants to see all Californians share in the state’s prosperity, then he should be restoring freedom to the producers. He should be repealing minimum wage laws, occupational licensing, and every other restriction and control on producers. Until he does so, his efforts to bring prosperity to all Californians will be as futile as seeking a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.