The $15 an hour march towards the impossible.
The other day, I went into a local Burger King, and, I noticed that the prices on the menu were ridiculous. All I wanted was a Whooper. Fast Food prices in general have gone up over the years mainly, because labor costs have risen. This is the consequences of constantly raising the minimum wage. I wrote a few months ago about the misguided attempts by some fast food workers attempting to strike their way to fifteen dollars an hour. Thursday was the day in which fast food workers walked off of their jobs in 100 cities in what was called by the unions as a day of protest.
I'm not exactly sure how many workers either walked off or didn't show up to work on Thursday due to the strike, but any of them who did do it should have been fired the next day for "job abandonment". There is a little fact that the malcontents didn't comprehend, when they went on their one day strike. They weren't members of a union, so they didn't have the right to strike. In the video, I find it ironic and funny that a member of the Media Research Center interviewed a "Community Organizer dressed up as a clown".
Liberals wanting something for nothing doesn't surprise me. That is what they are all about. Many liberals thought that Obamacare was going to usher in the era of free health care, wow they thought wrong on that. Fast Food restaurants pay low wages for a very simple reason. Those types of jobs do not require a formal education or a specialized skill to perform. Anyone using liberal logic doesn't see reality that way. They want to be paid what people who have specialized skills or formal education get paid. Now common sense would say that fast food workers should simple get a marketable skill that is in demand and make fifteen dollars an hour or more the common sense way. Again, it comes back to the get something for nothing mindset, Of course these brainiacs aren't exactly knowledgeable on how business and economics work. This is CONgressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota speaking at a Fast Food Rally calling for Obama to use an Executive Order to raise the minimum wage. Keith is good a political grandstanding and blaming all possible ills of the poor, the suffering etc on the GOP. What he's not good at is telling the truth to the people. The truth is that raising the minimum wage or giving Fast Food Workers $15 an hour isn't going to lift these people out of poverty nor will it give them that illusive "living wage" they claim they want.
The unions, mainly the Service Employee International Union SEIU, are behind these rallies and staged strikes. This isn't some grand national grassroots uprising by fast foot workers. It makes for a great story line though. With union membership in a deep decline, the fast food industry is just another target for the unions to try and latch onto while using the fast food workers as pawns dangling that $15 an hour pipe dream carrot in their faces that will never get.
I'm not exactly sure how many workers either walked off or didn't show up to work on Thursday due to the strike, but any of them who did do it should have been fired the next day for "job abandonment". There is a little fact that the malcontents didn't comprehend, when they went on their one day strike. They weren't members of a union, so they didn't have the right to strike. In the video, I find it ironic and funny that a member of the Media Research Center interviewed a "Community Organizer dressed up as a clown".
Liberals wanting something for nothing doesn't surprise me. That is what they are all about. Many liberals thought that Obamacare was going to usher in the era of free health care, wow they thought wrong on that. Fast Food restaurants pay low wages for a very simple reason. Those types of jobs do not require a formal education or a specialized skill to perform. Anyone using liberal logic doesn't see reality that way. They want to be paid what people who have specialized skills or formal education get paid. Now common sense would say that fast food workers should simple get a marketable skill that is in demand and make fifteen dollars an hour or more the common sense way. Again, it comes back to the get something for nothing mindset, Of course these brainiacs aren't exactly knowledgeable on how business and economics work. This is CONgressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota speaking at a Fast Food Rally calling for Obama to use an Executive Order to raise the minimum wage. Keith is good a political grandstanding and blaming all possible ills of the poor, the suffering etc on the GOP. What he's not good at is telling the truth to the people. The truth is that raising the minimum wage or giving Fast Food Workers $15 an hour isn't going to lift these people out of poverty nor will it give them that illusive "living wage" they claim they want.
The unions, mainly the Service Employee International Union SEIU, are behind these rallies and staged strikes. This isn't some grand national grassroots uprising by fast foot workers. It makes for a great story line though. With union membership in a deep decline, the fast food industry is just another target for the unions to try and latch onto while using the fast food workers as pawns dangling that $15 an hour pipe dream carrot in their faces that will never get.
posted by Alpha Conservative Male at 1:26 PM
10 Comments:
If the minimum wage doubles, will we still buy BK and McD's combo meals for $7? When combo meals are $12, how many fast food franchises will stay in business if we can get better food and service at Denny's or Chilli's? A bunch of minimum wage folks will be out of jobs, and a bunch of fast food franchises will close. TANSTAAFL.
But this is about power, not economics. Obamacare is not working. Gun control is not working. Liberalism (see Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, etc.) is not working. Change the subject...raising the minimum wage will fix everything. Except it won't. TANSTAAFL.
Better learn some Orwell & Rand before it's too late.
Fast Food prices have gone mainly because of labor costs? Are you crazy? The Federal Minimum Wage in 2000 was $5.15. Today the minimum wage is $7.25. Thats a 37 percent increase. In the year 2000 a fast food combo meal was $3.85. Today that same meal costs $8.00, more than 100 percent increase. You are talking out your butt man. If you talk to almost any franchise owner he will tell you that labor cost's are the lowest they have been in several years.
Median pay for core front-line fast-food jobs is $8.69 an hour. Of course doubling that wage would drastically increase labor cost, so I wouldn't give much credence to the idea. The fifteen dollar an hour demand is just a starting point for negotiation.
In 2013 most minimum wage jobs are held by people over the age of 24. That fact alone tells you that poverty is rising faster than wages. Even full-time hours are not enough to compensate for low wages. More than half of the fast food workers employed 40 or more hours per week are enrolled in some kind of public assistance programs. If your going to argue your point, at least get your facts straight.
Even if by Executive order, or by House and Senate law, the minimum wage was raised to $15 per hour, what is to stop employers and business owners looking at their bottom line, from laying off employees, closing franchises, and using more machines and robots? (They require maintenance but not benefits, and they don't miss or quit.) SubWay in their drive-thru already has a touch screen order system (ingredients and all).
A local meatpacking plant is the primary employer (inc. heads of households) and is starting employees out around only $10 to $12 per hour. That is slaughterers and butchers. So the protesters want a child working after school at Taco Bell, or granny going back to work at McDonalds, to be paid $15 ??
It is a sad state that fast food workers are seeking what used to be paid for “breadwinner” jobs that would support a family. Fast food used to be students, or people wanting extra income, or people between other jobs. That 40, 50 and 60 year olds have been unable or unwilling to upgrade, and have settled into what used to be entry level jobs, is a pathetic reflection of the job outsourcing, cheap importing, and American factory closing, that started in the 1960's.
With this minimum wage plea, and Obamacare, the debt and liabilities, and the Fed keeping a lid on interest rates, and the Fed printing more fiat money bills, and the decline of the dollar in the world market, “the chickens are coming home to roost” (reap and sow), on short-sighted consumers, short sighted business leaders, and short-sighted lawmakers.
CB-"The other day, I went into a local Burger King, and, I noticed that the prices on the menu were ridiculous. All I wanted was a Whooper."
I love Whoppers too, Tyrone. I might not eat another one probably for a long time. I have predicted that if these fast food joints were to raise the minimum wage up to $15/hour, that food prices would go up too just to pay for these employees.
I worked at a McDonald's, busted my butt off, wasn't treated with respect, instead of giving me a promotion, they only gave me two pay raises. Unlike me, those who worked part-time were given promotions. By giving me a hint that I was "not welcome" to work there, they busted my hours down to three hours per week. I was young and naive then, but once I went I back to school, I begun to work at a better job and much more respect than what I had at McDonald's.
I don't know about you, but I think most of those who work at these places hate their job because of the working conditions. So, why are they demanding a $15 pay if they hate their job much?
-Big Pop
aeriedad " If the minimum wage doubles, will we still buy BK and McD's combo meals for $7? When combo meals are $12, how many fast food franchises will stay in business if we can get better food and service at Denny's or Chilli's? A bunch of minimum wage folks will be out of jobs, and a bunch of fast food franchises will close."
Well you just described perfectly how the economics work. The Fast Food workers foolishly believe that their pay can be raised to $15 an hour and their would be no negative consequences. Consumers always have choices, People might decide to make their own hamburgers, because it would cheaper and an actual better burger then spending $7.00 for an overpriced piece of crap resembling a burger in burger joint.
aeriedad" But this is about power, not economics. Obamacare is not working. Gun control is not working. Liberalism (see Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, etc.) is not working. Change the subject...raising the minimum wage will fix everything. Except it won't. TANSTAAFL.Better learn some Orwell & Rand before it's too late."
Liberalism had been an epic failure dating back to the Bad Deal. The road to ruins is paved with good intentions. Liberals might mean well (I doubt it actually, because they are all about control)but the consequence of their actions never seem to pan out in the positive. Their war on poverty has been a catastrophic failure. Liberalism did destroy Detroit, and is threatening to destroy Chicago, thanks to liberal politicians cozening up with the municipal unions and promoting them the world that they knew they could never deliver
-Big Pop "
I love Whoppers too, Tyrone. I might not eat another one probably for a long time. I have predicted that if these fast food joints were to raise the minimum wage up to $15/hour, that food prices would go up too just to pay for these employees."
If the price of a simple hamburger due to wages going up to $15 dollars causes that burger to cost on par with a burger I can get at TGI Friday's or Ruby Tuesday Big Pop, I will make my own burgers on my George Foreman Grill. I wouldn't step foot inside of another fast food restaurant. If the day that FF workers make $15 I would bet it wouldn't be soon after that owners would find a way to automate as much of the process as possible in order to contain costs and try to keep their product affordable to consumers.
Here are links concerning machines doing work formerly done by people:
http://singularityhub.com/2013/01/22/robot-serves-up-340-hamburgers-per-hour/
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/365606/minimum-wage-and-rise-machines-jonah-goldberg
ACM, as an aside to your prior posts, have you seen about “the 12 O'Clock Boys” (Baltimore) disturbing the peace in the streets on their motorcycles? They are “first cousins” of those in the Knockout NotGames and in the Flash Mobs – undisciplined children with absent fathers and blind mothers.
http://screen.yahoo.com/new-york-times/riding-12-o-clock-boys-142607645.html
CB-"If the day that FF workers make $15 I would bet it wouldn't be soon after that owners would find a way to automate as much of the process as possible in order to contain costs and try to keep their product affordable to consumers."
I will also predict too, now that they got their $15/hour pay, business will be slow and hours will be cut and employees would be laid off. I'm surprise they did did not thought one out.
-Big Pop
I engineer controls for all types of machinery. I believe I could design a system that would allow a fast food joint to deliver a better product with two employees. Wawa already has a customer operated menu system. Add a card reader and coin handler and you have what McDonalds is doing in Europe. Add a computer controlled back end, similar to machines that put chips on a circuit board, and all you need is some one to refill bins and mop floors. All with a two year payback. Come to think of it, I should be selling my idea!
Please check this out:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-12/chicago-vs-houston-4-charts
I have been in construction for nearly twenty years off and on and I do not make what they are demanding. I have skills. If wages go up, then food prices will follow. Get Government 100% out of the economy. It will fix and regulate itself.
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