Economic Illiteracy: This week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez "swung by" to say goodbye to a restaurant where she used to work. What she didn't say is that it is closing because the owners can't afford New York City's soon-to-be $15 minimum wage — the very job-killing policy Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow Democrats want to impose nationwide.
"The restaurant I used to work at is closing its doors," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Monday. "I swung by today to say hi one last time, and kid around with friends like old times."
She was referring to the popular Coffee Shop in Union Square, which was frequented by A-list celebrities and featured on "Sex and the City." Despite its popularity, the Coffee Shop is going out of business. Why?
Co-owner Charles Milite told the New York Post that the main reason was "the minimum wage is going up and we have a huge number of employees."

In New York City, businesses that employ more than 11 people — the Coffee Shop had more than 150 employees — saw the minimum wage jump $2 an hour to $13 this year. And they face another $2 increase starting next year. For businesses like restaurants that hire a lot of unskilled labor, that means a government-imposed 36% increase in labor costs in just two years.
Even a successful business will find it hard to absorb a cost spike of that magnitude.
As a result, Milite's 150 workers will soon see their actual wage drop to zero.
Many others will join them.
The American Action Forum calculates that minimum wage hikes in cities and states around the country this year will kill 261,000 jobs — with most of the lost jobs concentrated in California and New York.
As we noted in this space recently, San Francisco saw far more restaurants close than open after its minimum wage went to $14 last summer. It climbed to $15 this summer.
When TV host Trevor Noah asked Ocasio-Cortez whether a $15 national minimum wage would stifle economic growth, here was her answer:
"Raising the minimum wage to a living wage will expand the economy. It will create wealth in our economy. And it will increase economic activity in this country."

Fact Check Needed

She also claimed that 200 million Americans make less than $20,000 a year, which she said amounts to 40% of the country. And she claimed that Seattle's experience proves her point about the benefits of jacking up the minimum wage.
Somehow, the fact checking police missed those utterly ridiculous claims.
First, the total number of working age people in the country today is 257 million people. And that includes retirees. The idea that 200 million make less than $20,000 is farcical.
In fact, the median household income is around $57,000. That means half of households make more than that.
As to the Seattle experience, the most recent comprehensive analysis shows that the city's minimum wage hike has hurt the very people it was supposed to help. The study found that their net income dropped as employers either eliminated jobs or cut back hours to compensate for the higher wages.
Of course, Ocasio-Cortez is hardly the only one pressing for a $15 national minimum wage. It's become the de facto position of the increasingly radicalized Democratic Party. (In fact, almost none of socialist Ocasio-Cortez's policies differ from that "mainstream" Democratic Party line these days.)
Never mind that at $15 the minimum wage would be far higher than it has ever been since the federal government started imposing it in the 1930. The inflation adjusted peak was in 1968, when it was less than $9 an hour in 2016 dollars.
In that same tweet lamenting the loss of the Coffee Shop, Ocasio-Cortez describes herself as a "a normal, working person."
Maybe she should tell that to the folks now standing in unemployment lines thanks to her "pro-worker" economic policies.