The country is getting wilder every day, it seems. ICE arrests, radical demonstrations at churches, and the ever-evolving talk about the economy and everybody’s plan to try to fix it. Some ideas are crazier than others, and a co-president of a California union takes the cake with his wild assertion. He thinks the minimum wage in Los Angeles should be increased to a whopping $30 an hour, making burger flippers the literal rich kids on the block if it were to happen.
In a post shared to the California Reddit page by user TryingtosaveforFire, a news story reported by Cayla Mihalovich at CalMatters, broke down the information in detail.
California is once again bumping up its minimum wage to $16.90 an hour starting January 1, 2026. That’s right: a whole 40 cents more than before, because of annual inflation adjustments that occur every new year. After a measure to delay a full wage increase to 2030, which angered Unite Here Local 11 co-president, Kurk Peterson. This is what he had to say.
You can’t threaten to blow a hole in our budget and then the only way to stop it is on the backs of workers, that kind of raw extortion and shakedown has no place in our city. The power is everyone together, working people need help and raising wages is the easiest, most straightforward thing to do. Going up 40 cents per hour in 2026 doesn’t move the needle at all.
Peterson also suggests that community organizations and unions are collecting signatures to raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour for all Los Angeles workers. This drove people on Reddit wild, as conservatives and liberals alike couldn’t quite believe the number and argued over its pros and cons in the comments.
“And here come the people arguing that burgers are going to be $20 each and so on…”
“I am all for raising minimum wage. But $30 for 40 hours a week is $62k a year. That’s more than the starting salary of a lot of career-level jobs (teaching comes to mind). If the lowest paying jobs pay that much, there’s going to have to be a serious adjustment quite a ways up the ladder.”
“Burger flippers do not deserve 30 bucks”
“Meh $30 is weak.  At least make it worth your while, make it $50/ hr “
The raise is obviously theoretical, and even as inflation continues to soar to new heights, the world doesn’t quite seem like it’s ready for all California workers to make 62k a year, whether it’s deserved or not.
