California’s minimum wage inflation isn’t going to stop with the massive fast-food wage hike. Instead, it is going to grow worse year after year.

Just four months after the state jacked up the fast-food minimum wage from $16 to $20 an hour, the Service Employees International Union is demanding another increase. The SEIU wants a 70-cent increase in the hourly minimum wage at the first meeting of the state’s brand new Fast Food Council, which can increase that number for the next several years and can reconvene any time in the future after its allotted time period runs out.

That means that California can and will regulate the fast-food industry, with a government “Fast Food Council,” for the foreseeable future. The most recent wage hike led to restaurants laying off workers and slashing hours for workers who didn’t get fired. That means you now have people who get no benefits from the wage hike because they were fired, people who get no benefits from an hourly wage increase because they had their hours cut, and people who get no benefits from the hike because prices in California are going up. California has four of the top 17 metro areas with the worst inflation in the country.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

So, who exactly wins here? It isn’t most workers, given that they have to deal with inflation if they aren’t dealing with fewer work hours, or no longer having work hours. It isn’t consumers, who have to deal with inflation at fast-food restaurants and everywhere else. It obviously isn’t the restaurants themselves, given the layoffs and price hikes. The SEIU seems to be enjoying this, though, and that is how California operates. If union leadership likes it, that is all California Democrats need to see, regardless of how many workers it harms.

This is what California’s heavy-handed, busy-body governance produces. Workers and consumers pay the price for California Democrats thinking they and their union buddies best know how to run society. It would be pathetic even if the state didn’t have other glaring problems, such as homelessness and poverty, to address. It is even worse that California would rather create government fast-food councils than solve those problems, showing residents how little the California Democratic Party cares about them and their problems.