Prosperity awaits! We just magically raised everyone’s income with no regard for the marketplace and what it can bear, or tiny businesses who might struggle under this new weight. What could go wrong?

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – Gov. Gina Raimondo has marked the passage of legislation to raise Rhode Island’s minimum wage with a ceremonial bill signing.

The governor was joined by state lawmakers Monday to mark the occasion.

Raimondo says she’s proud to raise the state’s hourly rate from $9 to $9.60 starting Jan. 1.

House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello says Rhode Island should remain competitive with neighboring states like Massachusetts and Connecticut that have increased wages.

To be fair to Rhode Island, this is one of the less aggressive hikes in the nation, which will hopefully shield it from some of the consequences places like Seattle and California cities are seeing. Small businesses and others successfully convinced the legislators not to raise the wage to $10.10, which they said they couldn’t afford.

The president is pumped, and applauds private businesses for taking this step on their own (which I have no problem with), and yet still insists that Congress “do the right thing and give America a raise.”

I commend the Rhode Island Legislature and Governor Raimondo for once again taking action to raise their state’s minimum wage. Since I first called on Congress to increase the federal minimum wage in 2013, 17 states have acted on their own, which will grow the paychecks of millions of American workers. Many private companies have acted as well, recognizing that paying workers fairly is both good for business and the right thing to do. This year, more than half of our states guarantee their workers a wage higher than the federal minimum, but despite this progress we still have work to do. I continue to encourage states, cities, counties and companies to lift their workers’ wages, and I urge Congress to finally do the right thing and give America a raise.

The problem, of course, is that simply giving American workers a raise by fiat because it makes you feel compassionate doesn’t actually help them in much the way that expanding Medicaid because it makes you feel like you’re giving everyone health care doesn’t actually help them get health care. Let’s check in on that adventure in compassion via Guy Benson briefly:

California health officials failed to ensure that more than 9 million residents enrolled in Medi-Cal managed care plans had access to doctors when they needed them, the state auditor said in a stinging report Tuesday. Health officials might have learned about those problems from calls to an ombudsman’s office – but thousands went unanswered every month. Among the report’s findings: (a) Incorrect or missing data on provider networks meant that state health officials had no idea if the plans had sufficient doctors and specialists, or if patients got the care they needed. (b) An average of 12,500 calls to the program’s ombudsman went unanswered each month for nearly a year, frustrating patients’ efforts to resolve problems. (c)Provider directories for three health plans – Health Net in Los Angeles County, Anthem Blue Cross in Fresno County and Partnership HealthPlan of California in Solano County – contained inaccurate or outdated information, ranging from incorrect telephone numbers for providers to listings for providers who no longer participated. Overall, state officials failed to verify insurers’ information about their networks of doctors and hospitals. The audit’s findings come as little surprise to health advocates…

And, back to the misguided minimum wage fights. Instant prosperity in Seattle:

“I’ve let one person go since April 1, I’ve cut hours since April 1, I’ve taken them myself because I don’t pay myself,” she says. “I’ve also raised my prices a little bit, there’s no other way to do it.”

Small businesses in the city have up to six more years to phase in the new $15 an hour minimum wage. But Shah Burnham says even though she only has one store with 12 employees, she’s considered part of the Z Pizza franchise — a large business. So she has to give raises within the next two years.

“I know that I would have stayed here if I had 7 years, just like everyone else, if I had an even playing field,” she says. “The discrimination I’m feeling right now against my small business makes me not want to stay and do anything in Seattle.”

Prosperity in San Francisco:

When San Francisco comic book store owner Brian Hibbs heard about another retailer’s pending closure because of the city’s new $15 minimum wage, he sat down to figure out the impact on his store, Comix Experience.

“I hadn’t done the math. I penciled it out and said, ‘Oh my god, that’s a lot of money,'” he recalled. “‘I know other stores haven’t done [the math]. You try to get through the day — you aren’t thinking three years ahead.”

Hibbs, like other small business owners in cities that have recently passed minimum wage hikes, is getting creative: He hopes his new subscription graphic-novel-of-the-month clubs will generate the $80,000 in additional sales needed to keep Comix Experience in business. Whether the effort will succeed isn’t yet clear, and while Hibbs says he supports workers earning a living wage and isn’t ideological about the issue, he feels the new law was passed without considering the impact on small businesses like his.

And again:

But it’s not just eateries facing problems: Borderlands Books, a local bookseller specializing in science fiction, announced it would also close at the end of March.

The owner, Alan Beatts, explained on the store’s website that he had survived the Great Recession, the rise of Amazon, and even the advent of e-books.

But Beatts — who’s not against a higher minimum wage in principle — said his city’s $15 mandate proved more than his business could handle by raising prices or cutting costs.

Beatts has since figured out a way to stay open for now, and I wish him well, but there are plenty who won’t, and I wonder how long his creative solution will last in such a high-cost city.

With minimum wage (and Obamacare/Medicaid expansion), as with many liberal “solutions,” the idea sounds simple, alluring and effective, if you don’t put a lot of thought into it. Just raise everyone’s wages! Just give everyone health care! But none of these solutions exists in a world of unlimited resources, and until they do, they won’t actually “work” without hurting a bunch of people with broken promises.