Economy

SQ 832 ties Oklahoma wages to NYC socialist mayor’s agenda

February 17, 2026

Ray Carter

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist, is pushing to raise that city’s minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030.

If Mamdani succeeds, the change in New York City’s wage regulation would indirectly jack up the minimum wage in Oklahoma as well should State Question 832 become law, causing wage mandates to far outpace economic feasibility in Oklahoma.

State Question 832 would mandate annual increases in Oklahoma’s minimum wage based on increases in the cost of living in the nation’s urban centers, as measured by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers.

That would effectively outsource control of Oklahoma’s wage policy to the elected leaders of major urban centers around the United States, such as Mamdani.

During his campaign, Mamdani called for boosting New York City’s current minimum wage of $17 an hour, vowing to “champion a new local law bringing the NYC wage floor up to $30/hour by 2030. After that, the minimum wage will automatically increase based on the cost of living and productivity increases.”

Under Mamdani’s proposal, the city’s minimum wage would increase to $20 per hour in 2027, $23.50 in 2028, $27 in 2029, and $30 in 2030.

Under SQ 832, that would indirectly mandate additional increases in Oklahoma’s minimum wage as well, since the New York City increase would drive up living expenses in New York City and further inflate the U.S. Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers.

Because Oklahoma is one of the nation’s lowest-cost states, SQ 832 would effectively mandate rapid increases in wages far above market reality in Oklahoma, based on the cost of living in places like San Francisco and New York City.

According to MIT’s Living Wage calculator, a “living wage” in Oklahoma requires $43,119 for a single adult with no children. But that same individual would have to earn $62,167 in New York state to enjoy the same standard of living and $79,469 in New York County, one of the five counties covered by New York City.

In effect, SQ 832 would mandate that Oklahoma’s minimum wage be based on the cost of living in locations where the cost of living may be nearly twice that of Oklahoma.

While SQ 832 would mandate that entry-level jobs pay $15 an hour starting in 2029, it would then rapidly escalate the wage even higher based on the cost of living in urban centers. An analysis by The State Chamber of Oklahoma and Oklahoma Farm Bureau found SQ 832 could inflate Oklahoma’s minimum wage to $35.61 per hour within 15 years, and that analysis was conducted before Mamdani began pushing to raise New York City’s wages even higher.

Critics have long noted that minimum-wage laws, if set at a level where a worker’s mandatory pay exceeds the value he or she provides an employer, simply prices those workers out of jobs. Writing about Mamdani’s minimum-wage plan for the Foundation for Economic Education, economics professor Walter Block noted that even socialists tacitly acknowledge that reality.

“The minimum wage law, like it or not, is an attack upon the unskilled and semi-skilled people whose productivity level lies below that wage required by law. It consigns them to all but permanent unemployment,” Block wrote. “If such legislation really could boost wages, all else held constant, then why stop at $30? Why not make it $300, or $3,000 per hour? Then we would all be rich. Then, everyone, skilled or not, could afford to live in Manhattan.”

Photo credit: Bingjiefu He, via Wikimedia Commons