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In September of 2023, California passed a law raising the state's minimum wage for certain fast food workers to $20 an hour, but it didn't go into effect until just about a year ago, at the beginning of April1. In a statement from his office in August of that year, Governor Gavin Newsom was quoted as saying about the new minimum wage: "Despite those who pedaled lies about how this would doom the industry, California's economy and workers are again proving them wrong.2"
The statement does not identify those who supposedly lied about the new minimum wage, but I doubt that anyone claimed that the raise of a few dollars an hour would actually "doom the industry", so this is an attack upon a straw man3. It's economic common sense that raising the cost of labor is likely to result in fewer employees, fewer hours worked, or higher prices, so some opponents of the raise did argue that it would cause job losses and price increases in fast food restaurants4.
However, the statement from the Governor's office claimed that California had added 11K new fast food jobs since the law had taken effect in April of that year, which is evidence that the job loss criticism was mistaken. Since the possibility of higher fast food prices was not addressed in the statement it is, presumably, lost jobs that the critics "lied" about.
There are two things wrong with the statement, one minor and one major. First, the bad news, then the worse.
In the quote attributed to the Governor himself, Newsom accuses some unnamed people of having "pedaled lies". The verb "to pedal" means to operate a bicycle, piano or other machine with pedals5. Since lies don't have pedals, "to pedal lies" literally makes no sense and, even figuratively, it's hard to see the point of comparing lies to a bicycle or keyboard instrument.
In comparison, "to peddle" something means to sell it6, so that the common idiom "peddling lies" means to, at least metaphorically, "sell" lies. Since "pedal" and "peddle" are pronounced identically, it's no surprise that they are sometimes confused. Moreover, "peddle" is perhaps an unfamiliar enough word that people are unsure how to spell it. I suspect that most confusions of "peddle" and "pedal" come from people having heard the idiom "to peddle lies" but never having seen it spelled out, so that "pedal" is mistakenly substituted for "peddle".
Of the reference books that I usually check, only one lists this pair of words as a confusion to avoid7, so it may not be a very common error, but this is not the first time it's happened. Similarly, out of several free online spelling and grammar checkers I tried, only two suggested replacing "pedaled" with "peddled" in the Governor's sentence. In addition to such programs, I also ran it by GPT-4o mini, which responded:
The sentence you provided is generally clear, but it could be improved for clarity and flow. Here are a few suggestions:
- Punctuation: Consider adding a comma after "workers" for better readability.
- Clarity: The phrase "those who pedaled lies" could be rephrased to something like "those who spread misinformation" for a more neutral tone.
- Context: Depending on the audience, it might be helpful to specify what "this" refers to, as it could be unclear without additional context.
Revised example: "Despite those who spread misinformation about how this would doom the industry, California's economy and workers are again proving them wrong."
Overall, the original sentence conveys its message, but these adjustments could enhance its clarity and professionalism.8
This is a disappointing answer: the first suggestion is just plain wrong, and not even followed in the revised example. The second suggestion, about clarity, misses the misspelling of "peddled", and I doubt that the Governor would want "a more neutral tone". Finally, the last suggestion is quite correct, but is the result of taking the sentence out of its original context. The revised example corrects the "pedaled" mistake, but appears to have done so by accident.
Let's turn now to the second and more serious problem with the Governor's statement.
According to the statistics provided in the Governor's statement, which it attributes to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of fast food jobs in California increased by 11K in the four months after the wage increase went into effect. However, the BLS has since revised those figures and they currently show an increase of only 2.6K jobs, though it's still an increase9, so the Governor's argument is weakened but not destroyed.
Four months is a short period of time to judge the effects of such a major change, and it's plausible that it would take longer for the higher wages to lead to layoffs or less hiring. According to the BLS's current figures, in April of last year, the first month during which the higher wage would be in effect, the number of fast food workers in the state was 730K10. By December, the last month for which complete data is available, the number was down to 713.7K. So, according to the very source that the Governor relied on, the number of jobs lost in the fast food industry in the nine months after the new higher minimum wage was adopted, was 16.3K.
Now, I'm not claiming that all 16K jobs lost were the result of the higher minimum wage, but it's plausible that at least some were. Moreover, the Governor cannot get away with claiming that gaining 11K jobs in the first four months after the raise shows that it did not cost jobs and, at the same time, that 16K fewer jobs after five additional months has nothing to do with the raise.
Notes: