At this point, it’s undeniable that hiking the minimum wage hurts businesses and the employees who work there. Protesters think they’re securing more money for lower-income workers, but there is no magic in economics. While some workers were fortunate enough to keep their jobs with $15 an hour, they were also likely to have their hours cut back while everyone else lost their jobs due to forced cutbacks.

It’s happened pretty much everywhere it’s been tried, especially in New York City where over 75 percent of restaurants had to cut back on staff thanks to wage hikes, and the problem only continued to worsen as time went on.

Now, as the New York Post reveals, the problem is getting to a point where long standing New York restaurants are closing down and even more staff are losing their jobs:

Big Apple restaurants are feeling the heat from minimum-wage hikes, cutting staff hours and even closing kitchens as they struggle to shoulder the extra payroll costs. Gabriela’s Restaurant and Tequila Bar, a margarita and taco staple on the Upper West Side for the past 25 years, is closing at the end of September — and it has been a long, painful road downhill, according to its mom-and-pop owners. Since the $15-an-hour minimum wage hit New York City in December, Liz and Nat Milner say, they’ve been forced to slash their full- and part-time staff to 45 people from 60. Quality has suffered, they admit, and customers have noticed: They’re not coming in like they used to, and when they do, they’re spending less.

Jazz Shaw of Hot Air reported on this and further added that some 4,000 jobs have been lost in New York thanks to the wage hike:

It’s not just the loss of local watering holes and eateries that are the problem. All of the jobs they support are going away too. As of August, the restaurant industry in the Big Apple has shed a shocking 4,000 jobs this year.

You’d think that this kind of loss of livliehood would make people stop and reassess their beliefs about what is and isn’t the correct course of action. Instead, it caused people to lash out at Shaw for daring to come to the conclusion that these loss of jobs were the result of their activism.

As you can see below, they put up every barrier they can to make it seem like Shaw was telling a blatant lie.

Has anyone checked to see how NYC is doing with zero restaurants? — Bert “The Hellman” Hort🛡 (@YappaPodcast) September 30, 2019

I know! Remember when there were restaurants in New York? Now there aren't any – just self-serve automats like in the 1950s! Not a cook or server to be seen anywhere! — Patrick White (@whitepatrick) September 30, 2019

Last week I had to seat myself, tell myself the day's specials, get myself water, order for myself, cook the food myself, bus the table myself, run my own credit card and thank myself as I walked out of a NYC restaurant. — Fabian Nicieza NYCC A-36 (@FabianNicieza) September 30, 2019

you’re right I was just in NYC and there are ZERO restaurants left wtf — Reply MANatee (@Manateejay) September 30, 2019

I live in NYC and I can back this up. The restaurants have all closed and there are no more servers. We need to bring back abject poverty and exploitation as soon as possible so that we can reopen the restaurants! — NYCDE (@wanderingcde) September 30, 2019

Last time I went to a Hispter Coffee Shop in New York I had to roast and brew the beans myself! — RB (@RBMEllis) September 30, 2019

Ah yes, the famously restaurantless city of New York. Tourists are all like, “what happened to the restaurants” and we all answer, “SOCIALISM” — T. Rev (@TrevvyTrev) September 30, 2019

And so on, and so on.

The city of New York contains some 8 million people and has over 25,000 places to eat at. If a shop closes down, it’s not at all difficult to find something else close by. So what seems to be happening is that many are still being served their food and drink without interruption, and as such are calling the entire trouble with New York’s minimum wage causing job losses a lie.

This is quite possibly one of the most first-world spoiled positions a person can take. The data that people are losing their jobs due to wage hikes aren’t just coming from right-wing reporters and commentators, this is information being given to us by business owners and publications like the Wall Street Journal.

If that doesn’t do it for you, then perhaps the fact that 74 percent of economists called the wage hike a bad idea and predicted this very thing would happen.

Just because they don’t notice it happening in New York due to its volume, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. But it’s worse than just mistaking surface level experience with facts. Those who are in support of raising the minimum wage are purposely turning a blind eye to the trouble their positions are causing in the face of mounting evidence.

This could be because they refuse to face the fact that their actions meant to help people are actually having the opposite effect, and that their take about how economics work has been wrong all along. That their opponents were right.

Instead of backing off, they’re more than willing to let the destruction continue and people lose their livelihoods so that they can keep on believing that they’re right. If a restaurant closes down, they’ll find an excuse for it and go to a different one. If that one closes down they’ll repeat the process. As things stagnate they’ll find something to blame for it like the policies of those pesky Republicans and that filthy pro-capitalist sentiment.

This is some head in the sand nonsense, and it’s actually hurting people.