BREAKING: Supply/Demand Curve, Gravity Still Work

"But we meant well!" -Idiot progressives, every single time https://t.co/2XptUdLpIn

— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) August 31, 2015

Let’s go to our friends at Think Progress (“Two Lies in One Name!™”) for the progressive take on what happened when Walmart unilaterally raised the minimum wage for its employees:

One anonymous Walmart worker near Houston told Bloomberg that her store had cut more than 200 hours a week by asking people to go home early. Another in Fort Worth was told that the store would cut 1,500 hours and said that employees who had been asked to stay late for extra work earlier in the week were told to take two-hour lunch breaks later on to make up for those hours.

In February, Walmart announced that it would raise its base pay to at least $9 an hour by April and $10 an hour by early next year, increasing wages for about 500,000 employees and spending more than $1 billion on the effort. At the time, the CEO said the company expected those changes to lower employee turnover and attract better talent, as well as to lead to better customer service that would boost sales.

But earlier this month, the company lowered its annual earnings forecast based in part on the higher cost of employee compensation. It had originally said the cost of higher pay would reduce profit by 20 cents per stock share, but then revised that to 24 cents a share.

Writer Bryce Covert* insists that hiking wages without a commensurate increase in productivity is somehow akin to “long-term investments that don’t pay off as quickly but can increase growth in the long run.” How that is supposed to work is best left to the fevered dreams of progressives.

Meanwhile, here’s how it’s playing out for actual Walmart employees:

GOOD NEWS: You’re getting a raise.

BAD NEWS: Your hours are getting cut.

GOOD NEWS: Your pay works out about the same.

BAD NEWS: Fewer hours mean you no longer qualify for benefits.

Entry level work sucks because it’s entry level — and that’s before well-meaning lefties start screwing with it.