Posted on 09/02/2013 5:42:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As a former fast-food worker, I can attest to the crazy hours, poor working conditions and rotten pay.
I boiled chicken — and repeatedly burned my forearms — in hot pressure cookers in high school for Colonel Sanders’s KFC (now owned by YUM Brands) until I could get a higher-paying job in a department store.
The unionized retail clerk’s job wasn’t glamorous, either, but it was a big step up: I sold sporting goods, rang a register (calculating change in my head) and hand-drilled bowling balls.
Although the pioneering retail chain (E.J. Korvette’s) at the time was dying a slow death as Wal-Mart, K Mart and other mega-discount stores gained market share, it paid most of my way through the University of Illinois-Chicago in a time when one could do this (late 1970s).
Wages haven’t gotten much better relative to inflation in 30 years. They need to, and the myth that higher, low-end wages will hurt the economy is a slander against our economic future. Living wages are needed to support families, communities, schools and our larger economy.
President Kennedy’s phrase “a rising tide lifts all boats” has some currency in economics. Increased wages create what economist John Maynard Keynes called higher “aggregate demand.”(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Fast Food is the quintessential disposable expense.
And Kennedy achieved that through -- tax cuts, right? Just like Coolidge did, and Reagan did, right?
And how is Obama's war against business working out for y'all?
Never bothered to attend a technical school, college, or do construction? You stick with a job a chimp can do and scream about low wages? Cry me a river, A=Hole.
276 stores in 1980, 10,000 now.
UIC apparently didn’t offer any survey level econ courses when this meathead whiner attended ?
Raise the minimum wage of the fast food workers means wages for all minimum wage jobs rise too... including all the minimum wages jobs involved in the production, processing, packaging and transportation of that food to the fast food restaurant. Not to mention ALL minimum wage jobs that aren't even related to the fast food industry. Not to mention that union wages will rise also as they're contractually connected to rise if the minimum wage rises.
And the higher cost of employing those now-higher paid people WILL BE PASSED ON to the cost of everything. So your paycheck will be bigger but the cost of everything will rise proportionally. Which means you have gained nothing. Except maybe a stint in the unemployment line because employers will drop some of those now-expensive employees.
Eight Types Of Food You Love, Now Made By Robots
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3057376/posts
and they’re outsourcing the drive-thru line:
Fast-food industry tests outsourcing
http://www.blog.infinit-o.com/fast-food-industry-tests-outsourcing/
In some ways, I feel sorry for the people. This rotten economy does not allow low-skill workers to move upward into expanding businesses that would be willing to take experienced workers and train them for a career in a better paying job.
Why is the broken window fallacy so hard for people to understand?
If we pay more for something, we have less to spend on something else. Paying more for fast food to pay wages to workers means someone somewhere else is earning less.
Everybody’s income is somebody else’s cost.
It is the market mechanism of supply and demand that balances all of these costs and incomes to achieve the maximum achievable level of overall prosperity.
Anything else is just political smoke and mirrors, inevitably distorting actual real measurable values and leading to lower levels of general prosperity.
The truth of the foregoing has been proven consistently throughout human history, and is especially observable in the 20th and 21st century as Progressivism achieved widespread acceptance in the world and, sadly, in America.
It is unbelievable to me that so many people are blind to observable reality.
John Maynard Keynes? Isn’t he the utterly discredited English wishful thinker?
Every fast-food restaurant would close. How would that help the economy?
I don't think it would go over well with the EBT crowd, either.
And courtesy of Odouchebag their hours are being cut. It's very depressing to watch what's going on around us.
if they double the minimum wage then they immediately double the income taxes received and as it trickles up doubles revenue to the government
This will make the 16Trillion in debt seem only like 8 trillion.
Imagine if you buy a house for 100K today and you earn 50K per year. If inflation makes your income double or triple your house payment stays the same but your income goes up.
They are going to inflate away our debt. sux for anyone holding the bag
Does he really think minimum wage needs to grow relative to inflation? Is he that naive about economics? Here's a simple thought experiment, so simple even a liberal can do it. If some is good, more is better, right? So why merely push the minimum wage to 15 an hour? Why not 45, heck, 150? Let's give those teens some real buying power, then you'll see the economy take off!
Why don't they advocate for that, don't those libs care about the kids? They don't because they are smart enough (barely) to know that such a salary for minimum wage is ridiculous. What they refuse to see is that 15 is just as outrageous, differing only marginally in degree. Minimum wage jobs are just that, a minimal employment level. They are not supposed to be a career choice. You're not supposed to be able to afford all the things you might want while working a minimum wage job. They get you by, and motivate you to do and find something better.
http://www.psfk.com/2012/11/burger-making-robot.html
San Francisco-based robotics startup, Momentum Machines aims to revolutionize the fast food industry with an automated burger machine. While preparing for the launch of their new restaurant chain, they don’t have to worry about potential chefs because they plan to start the world’s first “smart restaurant” chain where all cooking is done entirely by robots. The company proudly boasts on its product page: “Our alpha machine replaces all of the hamburger line cooks in a restaurant. It does everything employees can do except better.”
This is a deeply flawed statement.
First, almost nobody working for min wage pays income taxes unless they have a spouse who is making good money.
The top 10% of earners paid 71% of all income taxes.
Doubling the minimum wage would not have a significant effect on the deficit.
Technically, Kennedy was dead. It was LBJ, for some strange reason, that pushed them through.
He must have benefited more than anybody else, otherwise that sleaze wouldn't have done it just to help the country.
Not to mention that unemployment will grow because many fast food stores will go out of business since they will no longer make a profit with high-paid, employees.
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