Do McDonalds Workers Deserve High Pay?

McDonald’s workers are going on strike because they feel their pay is too low.

“They’re not paying us enough to survive,” 21-year-old McDonald’s worker Raymond Lopez tells Salon. “This company has enough money to pay us a reasonable amount for all that we do … they’re just not going to give it to us as long as they can get away with it.”

Strikers are hoping to unionize and get wages raised to $15 an hour.

Lopez, who says he makes $8.75 an hour as a shift manager, also complained about “verbal abuse” and having to work off the clock “all of the time.”

Mr. Lopez thinks that his wages should be nearly doubled. I would ask him two questions:

1. Is there a scarcity of labor in the market that would make it hard to replace your job at $8.75 an hour?

2. Is there not another employer who would hire you at the wage you believe you deserve? If so, why don’t you work for them?

Lately there is a strong push for corporations to pay a “livable wage.” The problem is that what’s a livable wage for survival is not the same as a livable wage for an American who wants the accouterments of a first world lifestyle.

Is it the moral duty of McDonald’s to provide a higher wage than the market supports so that Mr. Lopez can purchase the latest smartphone with a 4G data package? Should unskilled workers be able to afford internet, cars, nights out at the club, Chipotle, and so on? Is it fair to deny them these purchases by letting the market decide compensation during times like this when labor is in surplus?

If McDonald’s provided all it’s workers with $15/hour jobs, their profits would decrease. Shareholders will not accept decreasing growth, so McDonald’s will have to raise their price of food to maintain profits and their share price. This means that Mr. Lopez will be funded not by capitalist money but by McDonald’s customers, who now have to pay higher prices. If customers choose not to pay higher prices, the business will collapse and Mr. Lopez, along with many of his peers, will be out of a job.

The “livable wage” movement doesn’t hurt employers—it hurts customers. It results in increasing prices in order to pay labor more than their market value. If you support a “livable wage,” then you support decreasing purchasing power of not only your income, but everyone else’s. Instead of livable wage proponents forcing us to pay higher prices for McDonald’s hamburgers, how about they donate their income directly to Mr. Lopez or other charities instead? I doubt you’ll find anyone in opposition to that.

Read Next: Is The United States Really Experiencing A Skills Gap?

147 thoughts on “Do McDonalds Workers Deserve High Pay?”

  1. McD’s workers are also subsidized with housing vouchers and food stamps, so McD’s doesn’t have to pay the full cost of supporting them. We the tax payers do.

    1. So raise minimum wage but abolish social programs?
      Will our taxes be reduced? Doubt it. So therefore our taxes will remain the same but burger prices will be higher.
      There’s already a place where social programs, taxes, prices, and minimum wage are high: Scandinavia.

      1. Miminum wage is not “high” in scandinavia. Roosh you dont do your homework and you speak without knowing, just assuming. Stop it !

      2. High minimum wages are a useful trick to drive all the poor people out of your locality. The low wage jobs just disappear so the low skilled, who drain the treasury, go elsewhere.

      3. There is no minimum wage in Scandinavian countries because it is so heavily unionized that the unions feels the wages would be lower if there was a minimum wage!

  2. I hope this doesn’t gain traction. Like Roosh mentioned this isn’t exactly skilled labor, you can pick any 15 y/o off the street and teach him to make a MrRib in 10 mins. There’s nothing about the nature of mopping floors or dropping fries that justifies such an asinine raise.
    I worked at McDick once making 7.25 hourly. I didn’t whine or strike: I found a better paying job elsewhere.

    1. And McDonald’s makes shit food. There’s nothing about the nature of selling low-grade food and destroying customers’ metabolisms that justifies a profit of billions of dollars.

  3. McD’s workers make a livable wage here in Switzerland. It’s probably somewhere around the $15/hr that these guys want. A Big Mac, fries, and a drink are around $16-18. There ya go.

  4. Call me a leftist if you want, but a “livable wage” should never be the baseline salary. Without ability for the worker to save, the work they are doing is slavery. If McDonalds is proven to be able to take up some of the slack, while mantaining some profit, making them pay their workers more would take a lot of the slack off the tax payer. 15 dollars and hour is too high, but surely some better thought-out figure could be decided.

    1. Are you not affected by prices of food that you pay in restaurants? How much of a percentage increase is acceptable to you?
      How many money are you willing to save less each month from your disposable income so that workers are paid a wage that you deem fare?

      1. I’m okay with prices raising in restaurants. It’s not like I can’t cook at home. I think others should do that to.
        McDonalds might as well have a sin tax attached to it.
        I’m only wiling to forgo as much of my income as I am willing to spend at restaurants.

      2. So you don’t mind prices being raised, but you will cook at home when it happens, ensuring that McDonalds gets less business. More people will follow, and eventually your $15/hour charity case makes $0/hour.
        Economics is zero sum. McDonalds will suffer, you will successfully wipe out their evil profit, and then grocers and 7-11 will see increased sales.

      3. I never said profit is evil, I just said that the worker deserves some of the profit.
        I don’t care if McDonalds goes out of Business, and others get their business. I don’t care if workers are displaced since I don’t see them as charity cases. I just care that they get their fair share for their work, when they work. If they aren’t working I don’t give a fuck.

      4. That makes no sense Dave. You think it’s better for a person to earn $0 an hour instead of $8.75 an hour?

      5. From Dave – “Kind of, yes.
        I’d rather not work and not earn, than work and not earn.
        Woulden’t you?”
        Dave – you are a fool. Low wage jobs are given to low skill employees. For someone with low skill/education/etc, this is an easy way to get a foot in the door. You act like the $8.75 is some permanent wage. The abundance of low wage, low skilled jobs allows an unskilled employee to get his foot in the door, learn some skills, and then get qualified for a much higher paying job. If you have a half a brain and some work ethic, anyone can advance rapidly in a fast food or call center environment. Your idiotic solution is to sit on your ass, gain zero skills, and hope that a higher paying job will somehow come out of thin air. Hope. I think I’ve heard that word somewhere before….can’t quite place it….

      6. “I’d rather not work and not earn, than work and not earn.”
        That’s the worst kind of employee to have. Hint: You are always ahead while working — show me more than 5% of people with jobs would be better without jobs and you have a case.
        The experience alone is worth working.
        I wouldn’t hire a person who stayed on social programs because they didn’t think that scraping horseshoes was a noble enough job for their liberal farts degree.

  5. McDonalds has created operating procedures so effective and simple that trained chimps could run the store. I am betting that McDonalds will downsize their staff significantly in the next 3 to 4 years, because of more affordable robotics.
    McDonalds and KFC are companies that created a worse world. Fatter, dumber and lazier people that will be a huge economic weight when they get sick with diabetes, obesity and all other related health problems.

  6. Great article. No way should McDonalds raise the wage, if the workers don’t like it, they should find a new job, or become more skilled/educated/desirable and then find a new job. The problem with people now, is they think they are entitled to everything, it’s ridiculous. Problem is, the government is allowing this to happen and fanning the fire.
    Also :
    1. Is their a scarcity of labor in the market that would make it hard to replace your job at $8.75 an hour?
    should be
    “Is there”
    You can delete this part of the comment, just wanted to help out

  7. ” If customers choose not to pay higher prices, the business will collapse and Mr. Lopez, along with many of his peers, will be out of a job.”
    While I agree that 15$/hour is too much for such an easy job, americans could never give up their mcdonalds. I fail to imagine an instance in which Mcshit could go brankrupt, they’re just too big of a franchise, they’re pretty much synonymous with the word “fast food”. People would still buy their shit even if they were to increase the prices by 10-15%.

  8. Raymond Lopez… so we bring in the bean bandits thinking they’ll work for nothing, and soon enough they demand higher wages. Gee, who could have predicted that?

  9. “If McDonald’s provided all it’s workers with $15/hour jobs, their profits would decrease.”
    That’s a questionable assumption. It could actually be a wise investment that boosts profits.
    Providing wages in line with the cost-of-living index means McDonald’s would be able to maintain a smaller stable pool of full-time personnel instead of a larger precarious pool of part-time and shift workers, which is more expensive given the high costs of turnover and training.
    Also, happier personnel usually translates into better customer service, which in turn results in higher customer satisfaction and consequently higher profits (and less spit smeared quarter-pounders).
    The downside, however, would be that hiring qualifications would go up and keep out those traditionally hired by fast food chains, such as teens, students, and the unschooled, who rely on easy access into this market to build experience and gain a foothold.

    1. Part-time designation will be far cheaper than full-time starting next year due to the way Obamacare was written – just saying.

    2. Training costs for companies like McDonalds are minimal, and employees are not likely to be poached by competitors, either.
      Low-skill labor is incredibly fungible, and, as has been noted, the Feds pick up the tab on housing, food, and healthcare for all the peons at the various Great Corporate Satans that don’t pay a “living wage.”

  10. Roosh, your arguments make perfect sense from the standpoint of free-market economics. Please remember, though, that McDonald’s and other big corporations don’t really operate in a free-market environment. What with limited liability laws, corporate welfare, and armies of lobbyists, big corporations have a tremendous economic advantage over employees and would-be competitors.
    This economics advantage leads to injustices, which in turn lead to calls for livable wage laws and other types of increased regulation. A much better solution, of course, would be to repeal the corporation laws that cause the problems in the first place.

    1. Or how about we just get rid of the corporate welfare and cut down the government involvement in the economy that incentivizes lobbyists?
      GM, Sears, IBM, Microsoft, and countless other companies were considered at one time to have such strong built-in competitive advantages that nobody could every compete.
      I grant that corporate welfare distorts markets, sometimes severely. That’s a great reason to end corporate welfare but an awful reason to increase welfare for everbody else.

  11. Economics is not zero sum…or at least it shouldn’t be. Economic cycles are propelled by innovation, innovation leads to efficiencies and the whole pie grows for everybody. Unfortunately the internet/computer age was the last innovation, and I do not see any great new ones on the horizon (that aren’t already dominated by the Chinese).
    In a perfect world the idea of the ‘working poor’ is abhorrent. I wouldn’t say everybody should be able to purchase the newest ‘Iproduct’, or drive an Audi…but I think it’s reasonable for a person to expect that a full time job should allow them access to basic medical/education/housing/transportation…even save a little for an occasional holiday. Doesn’t seem much to ask… Of course if better paying jobs are available, this is a moot point.

    1. Why so glum? Fiscal cliff got you down? Don’t worry friend! Bio-tech will save us. Automated driving cars won’t hurt either. Maybe our future gets delayed by our current problems, but it can’t be held back for ever. And since we’re all followers of Roosh I can only assume that, besides being in great physical shape and mentally honed, we follow the path of self improvement and enlightenment which the current malaise can’t mess with. This will quickly pass us by and when it does we’ll enter into a whole new era totally unrecognizable to us today. Holla!

    2. No, there is no reasonable expectation of any such thing.
      You are not entitled to a job, medical, education or transport, period. You need to either earn the skills that will get you are decent paying job, or start a business of your own. It is up to you and only you, nobody else has that responsibility.
      It is easy to forget that only a century or two ago people in the West were still largely living off the land, and only those who had educated or upskilled themselves had city jobs.
      McDonald’s workers complaining about low pay can either do something about it, or keep working the shitty job. It might seem harsh but that difference in attitude is the difference between succeeding in life and merely surviving.
      PS: There is definitely govt subsidisation going on as well, Walmart is particularly guilty of this. Without that subsidisation healthcare etc would be cheaper and we’d all be better off.
      In response to P Dog below, Aussie wages being so high is part of the reason our productivity is falling rapidly relative to other countries, and its a big part of the reason why everything is so much cheaper overseas (especially in the US). You cant pay unskilled workers those types of wages and expect it to be sustainable. Small business owners have a hell of a time trying to make money and pay those wages to (sometimes very unreliable) staff. Especially when penalty rates are applied; having to pay double or triple time is just crazy.

      1. I never said it would be sustainable, I said basic housing/education/etc should be available to anybody with a full-time job in “a perfect world”. I’m pretty sure that is the type of society everybody is working towards around the globe…the so called American dream; ie hard work leads to a reasonably comfortable life, I’ve done plenty of restaurant work and it is far from easy. Anyway, I’m a free-market guy, but this is the question that should be pondered:
        Markets lead to efficiencies that lead to less inputs per widget, including labor, if the ‘egg-heads’ of the world refined automation to the point where all goods and services could be produced by one small machine that only required a solitary zoo monkey to press a banana shaped button (the true end game for industrial production)…and so productive human labor it’s self was no longer needed…would people still have a right to any of those goods and services created (think of the floating fat people in WALL-E)? Or should they be considered expendable at that point?
        Also, fairly idyllic understanding of the growth of cities in the 19th century…it wasn’t that people always pined to stop living off the land and big-upped their skills to go to the busty city…they usually were kicked of their land in Europe, and forced to work in a match factory that rotted away their teeth.
        Most of us here are capitalists, but for capitalism to work we have to acknowledge it’s weaknesses and try our best to minimize them…that’s what FDR did with the New Deal, and why he saved western capitalism from fascist or communist revolution. Greatest Generation for FTW!

    3. FDR did NOT save capitalism, he simply extended what should have been a bad recession for an extra decade. The worst part of the depression was 1938-9, AFTER FDR’s precious programs supposedly saved capitalism.
      As far as the other points go, for able bodied adults, If somebody else has to give it to you, if somebody else has to do it for you, YOU DON’T HAVE A RIGHT TO IT.

      1. So expendable? I do agree that nobody has a right to handouts…but everybody has a right to work, and for hard work to be rewarded (within reason). That is the difference between the old FDR era labor movements and the post 1960’s ‘Left’. The former thought that being held back from working was a form of oppression; whereas the idiotic 60’s generation thought work it’s self was the oppressor…often times modern conservatives blur this important distinction.

  12. McDonald’s workers make around $15 or down under if they’re over 18, they get around that by hiring a lot of teenagers. I’m pretty sure Aussie Maccas is pricier than America’s, but that doesn’t stop people from feasting on that shit all the time.
    McDonald’s seems to have become an inelastic good like bread and milk over here.

  13. Honestly, when I think of high-profit businesses, I’m seriously not thinking McDonalds.
    Hell, they seem to throw out a LOT of food, so that’s a sign to me.
    Also, McDonalds is a franchise. We aren’t really talking about rich people owning a McDonalds or two. The average McDonalds owner is making mid six figures at best, so we’re not talking about multi-millionaires here.

    1. “The average McDonalds owner is making mid six figures at best,…”
      Jsus, that’s not even worth the effort then. 🙁

  14. The goal of the employer is to pay workers as little as possible, so the employer can keep a larger percentage of the result of the employee’s labor.
    The marketplace price of a commodity is ONLY an accurate reflection of its value if those negotiating have equal power. If, for example, a person is forced to sell their house, they will receive less for it, and the selling price of the house is not longer an accurate reflection of its market value.
    Since the worker obviously doesn’t have as much power as the employer, the worker is NOT receiving an objectively fair wage, and is NOT being paid according to his or her genuine value in a genuinely fair and free market.

    1. You couldn’t be more wrong. The worker has more power than you think – through other potential employers. The worker can take his labor to Burger King, Arby’s, Taco Bell, etc. And because of those competing market forces, McD has to pay a competitive wage to employees at all levels – from the fry guy all the way to the CEO. Otherwise, they would lose all of their employees to competitors who would pay a higher wage.
      Another way to look at it – an employee demands a wage of say $10 per hour for his labor (given his education and experience) in the labor marketplace. And then let’s say an employer is willing to supply the same job for $8 per hour. If there is only one employer in the marketplace, the employee might have to suck it up and work for $8 an hour vs being unemployed. However, the employee gains leverage if there are several companies competing for the same employee. Maybe one offers $8.50….then another offers $9.25…until the market clears. With many employees and employers, the leverage balances out.
      As a side note, I worked for McD in 1989 for $5.00 an hour as a grill guy (I could make 12 cheeseburgers and 6 big macs in 48 seconds :)), and also recently as a CFO of a $1b tech company. The labor market creates a market clearing wage at every level.
      – John.

    2. Adding to Galt, obviously, if all you’re good for is picking your nose and can’t even mop a floor, naturally, every business on the planet will have lots of leverage over you because you’re basically worthless. You have no value to provide.
      In response you could scream really loud about how unfair it all is and try to get the government to back you up, or maybe you could learn a valuable skill or two.
      Some people even pick up valuable skills in crappy McJobs. Hell, just the ability to show up to work on time properly dress is becoming a rare commodity.

    3. Apply at In and Out Burger, they pay $9 an hour to start. Competition is fierce, and as soon as you fuckup, you’re done, there is a line waiting to replace you.

  15. Very impressed by this essay Roosh. Sometimes you have called out capitalism but you view this issue logically and through to the next steps. Well done.

  16. First of all, why the fuck is anyone eating at McDonalds. Eat good food for once in your life you fat ass americans. Being able to maintain an erection is an important part of game no?
    McDonalds food also tastes like shit, which anyone who goes to a real restaurant will quickly realize. Roosh you spent years in Europe and you never ate the good fucking food available here? WTF? Don´t you realize why those european women you like so much are so much skinnier?
    So, fuck McDonalds, and fuck the corporate oligarchs too. Let´s raid their mansions with AKs, put them in jail and redistribute their resources. They got enough to make everyone happy.
    What up Jamie Dimon…. BOOM

  17. or…ya know, the owners of Mickey D’s can stop being greedy fucks and take a pay cut from their zillion dollar checks.
    You raise an interesting point about what exactly is “livable” (being able to afford housing v.s. a smartphone). but I don’t think 8.75 is livable at any stretch, considering it is very necessary to own a car in many US areas, and let’s not forget high healthcare costs and student loan debt.
    I think they have a right to money to afford living conditions, and McDonald’s has the moral obligation to give it to them, and if they wanna be assholes, then regulations will force them. Any higher wages (to afford luxuries) will have to be fought for by union bargaining and not gov’t action or moral discussion.
    But if they raise the price on my Chicken Snack Wrap, Imma smack a bitch.

    1. Why is McDonalds responsible for making sure people that work for them can pay off their student loans?
      Of course McDonalds employees with student loans is hysterically funny. They went to college and now flip burgers for a living. Probably majored in Gender Studies. 😛

  18. “If there is only one employer in the marketplace, the employee might have to suck it up and work for $8 an hour vs being unemployed”
    I’m guessing you’ve never lived in poverty…
    Would you tell a poverty-stricken min. wage worker in a marketplace with one employer just to suck it up?
    And even if there are other employers, it’s not that easy to just, “change jobs”, btw…
    I’m all for capitalism, but sometimes it’s shitty, and needs to be regulated. in some cases a little bit, in some cases a lot (and in some sectors, it probably shouldn’t exist at all). To claim capitalism “just works” and distributes goods and resources well in every sector of the economy and life is to be dogmatic.

    1. You are not very bright. To refute your every assertion…
      1. I’ve worked for $5 per hour. I’ve been flat broke. All I needed was an opportunity. An opportunity to get my foot in the door, bust my ass, get recognized by my superiors, and then get promoted (and hence make more money)
      2. There are ALWAYS “other employers” and it’s as easy walking across the street and filling out an application to get a new job. Wow, that was tough!!
      3. There are always costs to regulation, do you even recognize them? The car you drive, the food you eat, the clothes you wear. Capitalism does “just work”. You think idiot bureaucrats making regulations who havent even done a cost/benefit analysis make capitalism better?? And reduces costs to consumers??
      Solution to poor people – get off your ass, work for peanuts, gain skills, make more money, support yourself. Rinse and repeat.

    2. I’ll never understand this “gov’t = evil” attitude in Ayn Rand-type libertarians. the government is a human-run entity, just like a corporation, a charity, etc. It’s not some other worldly thing. Sometimes the people in it are bad, and sometimes theyre good. Bureaucrats arent all idiots be definition, i mean c’mon. It gets to the point of religious dogmatism: Capitalism is good, all the time. All the time, Capitalism is good (if you were raised catholic, you”ll get the joke lol).
      And when you worked for 5$, and got promoted and stuff, good for you. You worked hard, and had some luck. and I’m gonna assume you’ve had at least a little support from your parents, raised in decent neighborhood, went to decent school, etc. And even if you didn’t…then you got lucky (though I am not claiming you worked hard, I’m just saying every accomplishment we’ve done is not totally by our doing)
      Some people don’t get lucky, in fact many people don’t. Many work theyre fucking asses off and still don’t get shit. Personal responsibility is great and everything, but many times the environment and external variables hamper some people’s abilities and options, and sometimes it helps others. No man is an island. And I think they deserve a little assistance.
      And I don’t give a fuck what Ayn Rand says. If I see a group of billionaires idly standing by a sick and suffering baby, I think they should be forced to help that baby. Yes, by “men with guns” if necessary”.
      Live with a couple families in the ghetto for some time, and see how it is. Tell them to stop bitching, get a fourth job, and just work harder. I work with many orgs that serve the poor, and its not that easy, dude. not at all.

      1. I lived the broke ass student life for a long time … you don’t really have to be a student, just in a low-paying job … I even managed to save a reasonable bit while doing it, about one year’s broke-ass salary in three years of broke-assedness.
        It’s not very demanding, it’s basically just living like Roosh seems to do. Keep a cheap, tidy hovel; make your basic food yourself and stay lean as a bonus; stay away from expensive habits like drugs or smartphones or rental cars; cancel the cable and read cheap used books or talk to girls instead; work out instead of drinking (mostly); go on cheap romantic dates instead of expensive chump dates; always add to the principal and then forget that it’s there.
        Not a bad life, and not very different from how most of our (great-) grandparents lived.

    3. Never said govt is evil, stop making a strawman. At the end of the day, its about allocating scarce resources in the most efficient manner. So who has the proper incentives to allocate said resources? Is it the bureaucrat? No, he isnt evil, he simply has incentives to keep the bloated govt structure in place. Do I think union workers are lazy? No, they are responding to incentives. If my pay is already determined, then my incentive is not too work hard (no upside), but to work as little as possible and keep my same job (similar to someone living off govt assistance…not much incentive to get an entry level job and learn skills). A small business owner also has incentives (increase profit by increasing productivity) and he responds accordingly. Hence you get your Chicken Snack Wrap for only 99 cents :).

      1. But somehow magically the government is simultaneously going to 1. make the guy who owns the chicken wrap shop pay his workers more, 2. not hurt the shop owner’s profits so much that he stops hiring people or shuts down the whole damn shop, and 3. get you your chicken wrap for just 99 cents.
        Well, maybe not the third part. We’ll just make poor people pay more for their chicken wraps so that we can complain about how they can’t afford food so we can give them even more food stamps. Government (like beer to Homer), the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.

  19. Dont you hate it when women prattle on about things they have no idea about?
    Like when they read Atlas Shrugged and suddenly think they are an expert in free market economics. I tend to avoid those blogs…I mean women.

  20. america seems like a shithole for many; the flipside being if you make it big there you really do well.
    i’m glad australia has a ‘livable wage’ where adults get paid at least $15 per hour for their labour. most here would agree with me.
    btw mcdonalds is still fucking cheap – $2 for a mcdouble, $5 for a cheesburger meal.

    1. I don’t agree with you, it is unsustainable. It has been masked by the phony wealth created by an excessive debt binge, trade and current account deficits and the squandering of household ‘equity’ through consumption, as well as a once in a century mining boom. It is not shareholders that pay those wages, it is consumers.
      I’ll bet you don’t like the fact that everything from cars to appliances to clothing are much more expensive in Australia: simple example CK Jeans from Macy’s cost me $25 as opposed to $110 in Aus. It is cheaper for me to import an Australian-made PWR radiator from the US than buy it from a retailer in Australia.
      And our McDonald’s pricing isn’t equivalent to US prices, I cant buy 20 nuggets for $6 in Australia, nor two apple pies for $1.
      High wages dont mean everybody is better off if the cost of living is higher, and we are relying on debt to fund it all. It’s one of the reasons manufacturing is dying and we are no longer competitive in many industries globally (slowly but surely including our current lifeblood, mining).

  21. Yeah, agree with Peter above. No need to be a greedy bunch of cunts. Pay people fairly and everyone benefits.
    Living in Australia, we believe in paying people a living wage. Almost 16$US for a full time worker and $20US for a casual at McDonalds. If that means shareholders have one less yacht they can water-ski behind, so be it. The social divide here is widening to be sure, but not to the extent of the US. I pray it never goes that way, but trends indicate otherwise.
    Does it mean that our burgers are anymore expensive? No way. Still really cheap and equivalent to US prices.

  22. mcdonalds workers soon to be obsolete……
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/20595874
    The robot – known as Burgeon – can serve up a fully-loaded mouthful every 16 seconds.
    The team behind the machine say it can do everything a burger-making human can do – only faster!
    It grinds the meat and sends it along a conveyor-belt to be grilled. It toasts the buns and sorts the salad and sauce.
    If that wasn’t enough, it pops the finished burger in a bag!

  23. personally i like this particular situation because id love to see mickedeez go out of business…
    but ideologically, it aint right. unions were a good idea back in the day because competing companies were getting together and rigging the pay with each other. people couldnt even eat on their wages and were subject to poisons and other hazards.
    nowadays we pay dudes 30 bucks an hour to screw in screws at the gm plant. did you know that 2000 bucks of every car you buy goes to the families of retired or dead auto workers? not the workers themselves, their kids, who did nothing. thats unions these days.
    and this is rediculous. i can live off 9 bucks an hour alright. its not necessarily relaxing, but i can. these guys want 15 an hour to flip burgers? have they lost their minds?
    to people who say things like “true market value is not realized because the workers have no bargaining power” you must understand that mcDs is in 2 markets. the fast food industry and the job market. they must compete with every low skilled job, not just fast food, for workers. they have power in the fact that they can go work at a warehouse, telemarketing, real restaurants, etc. hell you can make more panhandling.
    if these people would rather flip burgers than wait tables or play block dude at the home depot warehouse knowing full well those jobs pay better then they really have no room to be disgruntled. “i hate the pay, but this job is sooo easy i dont want another one, so give me more money” makes 0 sense. we already have laws in each state to make sure that these companies dont get away with murder. its called a minimum wage. you arent supposed to make a career out of mcdonalds.

  24. It isn´t capitalism at work here; Roosh. Rather the opposite. Without the government refusing to enforce its borders (ensuring and endless supply of cheap workers) and subsidising cheap labour (through food stamps and other perks), McDonald´s would not be able to kep in business at current prices. They´re not paying market prices, because the wage market in manipulated to benefit large corporations.
    What you have in effect is tax payers footing the bill to make up the difference between corporate shit pays and livable wages. Because we can´t afford to have poverty, can we?

  25. Again, McDonalds is a franchise. It is not corporate headquarters that is spending the money to pay the wages, it is the owner-operators, most whom are making 6-figures at best.

  26. On one hand, $15 an hour and benefits for each McRib maker is too much.
    On the other hand, look at Grocery Stores–unionized, with low (but less slave-labor) wages, decent job security and benefits, and yet still profitable.
    Remember, our country grew and experienced its greatest period of economic expansion not under free market capitalism, but with extremely high taxes and nearly-universal Unionization. $10 instead of $8 for McRib makers isn’t the end of the world!

    1. 1950-1960s
      – 70-90% Income Tax on Wealthy
      – Very Strong Unions
      – Relatively High Min. Wage (it would now have to be 10$ just to keep up with inflation)
      .And we had the largest expansion of the Middle Class evar. and the world didn’t end, and the White House didn’t don a USSR Flag.

    2. Matty, Matty, Matty…an economics and history course will do you well.
      – the highest marginal tax rate was for incomes over $3mm…in 1950’s dollars (~$30mm today). Plus, there were numerous real estate tax shelters to reduce your taxable income. In other words, NO ONE paid that rate (it was literally 243 taxpayers out of 43mm who actually paid the 91% marginal rate)
      – many states now have minimum wages that approach $10 per hour, the federal rate is not the rate for everyone. All min wages do is increase unemployment at the low end of the skill level
      I suggest we have a boxing match to settle this. If you win, I will put an Obama sticker on my Porsche 😉

      1. Also, the USA was the only functional industrial base left after the post-war bombing of Europe and Japan, until the 1960’s; which is, in many ways, why those decades were so profitable for US business, and why they could withstand such a high tax rate…no foreign competition for investment opportunity.

      2. Have you ever tried actually living off the minimum wage? There’s no incentive to work. You would make more begging for change in a parking lot. Digging ditches or serving fries for $6 or $7 an hour, trying to survive and keep a roof over your head, especially for young people, is a miserable and soul-crushing existence. It is slave labor.
        I’ve done it, I’ve been working poor, and yeah I’ve been a part-owner of a (very) small construction company. As for the effect on unemployment…total bull! The jobs have to be done, and the profit makes the impact of a wage hike nonexistent. Seen this as both a worker, and as a business owner.
        When I raised my pay for our laborers from $8 to $10 an hour, we had no real impact on overall profit, didn’t magically run out of working funds and close up shop. It was a decision I took on a moral ground (based off my background, I’m sure you can see why!), not a financial one, and one which ended up having no noticeable impact on our bottom line.

      3. Glad to know that Moose is so entirely certain, based on the one time he raised wages for charity, that no business will suffer by paying people more. It happened once that labor had no effect on a bottom line, so I’m sure it’s like that every time. Yes, I’ve worked for minimum wage. No, it’s not soul-crushing (unless your soul is weak). Yes, I admit it sucks.
        But when I didn’t have skills that my boss thought were more valuable than the minimum he was paying me, I had no right to his money. He built the business, not me. (btw, please let me know if your running any other companies–I’d rather not invest in them)

  27. A citizen’s dividend makes more sense. In many states average per-capita payments to those on welfare far exceed that $8.75 an hour McDonald’s wage referenced above, creating some problematic incentives. Raising the minimum wage creates a whole lot of harmful second-order economic effects. By comparison, simply paying every citizen below a certain income level a flat income is distortionary, but not nearly as much.
    Practically speaking, while the libertarian-minded anarcho-capitalists might have a decent ethical argument against redistribution on their side, when a large number of the young and reasonably fit men in a society have nothing to do and no money to spend, bad things start happening.

    1. Raise the minimum wage and/or provide “jobs for the sake of jobs” directly from the govt. I’m sure $15 an hour to do basic clerical crap or infrastructure repair is more efficient than $12 an hour thrown away in programs.
      I’m a fan of redistribution, but of it being earned. Call me a centrist–yeah, you should work for what is yours, even if it’s nominally working, but lots of jobless men with nothing to do is a recipe for disaster.

  28. Sure as hell! I have seen many McDonalds employees having to tolerate every impertinent client.

  29. Another issue with this argument is it could be used to justify decreasing wages.
    There are also a lot of a posteriori arguments in this thread presented as a priori. (Often the case with those talking about free market economics.) E.g. the labor supply is not necessarily such that workers have power over fast-food restaurants collectively. That is an empirical question. The labor market may be saturated.
    Here in Canada, and in New Zealand where I’m from, minimum wage is not that brutally low and McDs is not expensive. Although $15 an hour is a ridiculous demand.

  30. Or we could not have a policy of importing millions from the lower classes of the most primitive 3rd world countries and thereby artificially driving down wages for unskilled American labor. If you go the remaining white states, there are plenty of fast food and other unskilled jobs that pay $10+/hr.

  31. If McDonald’s provided all it’s workers with $15/hour jobs, their profits would decrease. Shareholders will not accept decreasing growth, so McDonald’s will have to raise their price of food to maintain profits and their share price. This means that Mr. Lopez will be funded not by capitalist money but by McDonald’s customers, who now have to pay higher prices. If customers choose not to pay higher prices, the business will collapse and Mr. Lopez, along with many of his peers, will be out of a job.
    Your argument isn’t very compelling since Mr. Lopez’s wages are funded out of revenues not share price. If the enterprise is still profitable at $15/hour, it’s not Mr. Lopez’s concern that the shareholders take a haircut if his financial position improves. He’s simply claiming more of the revenue that his labor helps to generate.
    If the franchise is profitable to the extent that it could afford doubling the workers’ wages, what’s the problem with employees defending their interests and collectively bargaining against their employer for higher wages?
    Seems like a smart move to me.

  32. There are plenty of jobs in America in which people are getting paid $30-40K a year that literally your average McDonald’s worker could do. Should every job in which anyone could do pay their workers minimum wage? The only reason McDonalds can do it is because its socially acceptable for the time being. But if all companies across America conspired to lower pay to minimum wage for all jobs that require little training, than the economy would be in the shitter. But we can see now that companies are paying workers less for the sames jobs that used to pay more a couple decades more, so they can squeeze out more profits for hedge funds and wallstreet and your 401k. The reason Democrats support a strong middle class so much, though they will never say it, is because the average middle class american is a dumbass who will spend all their middle class income. The economy is stronger when more money is being spent, so it makes sense that when you have a strong middle class spending every penny they have the economy is stronger than an environment where the upper 1% are hoarding the wealth for themselves. Both parties know the same thing, that the average american is stupid. Republicans want to punish stupid americans who make bad life choices with a life of poverty, democrats want to ride their backs as they spend every penny they make. Historically in america the democrats idea has worked better, but with the amount of corruption we have neither option is truly sustainable.
    So really what is comes down to is what is your ideal society?
    If you believe the role of government is to make a society in which the general population is happy, then you would support an economic structure similar to countries in scandinavia.
    If you believe the role of government is to foster a society in which the harder you work, the more rewards you get, but a couple bad life decisions will condemn you to a life of poverty, then America is your country.
    Or if you think America is too corrupt and full of idiots to be saved, you can just pack up and move.
    But to answer the question, do McDonalds workers deserve higher pay? No.

    1. I need to grammar check before I post. Would be nice if there was an edit post option, but oh well.

    2. “Condemn you”?
      It seems you’re implying that if you make a mistake and I don’t help, I’m “condemning” you. Really? I’m responsible for your well being? Are you a child?
      I’m all for charitable work and helping those less fortunate. I support a few kids in South American and Africa through the Children’s Fund. I’ve volunteered teaching English to immigrants during the evenings.
      I’m perfectly capable of helping those less fortunate. And I do. But I am utterly opposed to bureaucrats taking my money and spending it on what *they* want to instead of what *I* want to.
      Really, it is not hard to make a personal positive difference in the world. Want to help the poor or others who have been “condemned by their choices”? Give time or money to a local charity. Tutor someone in job skills.
      There is no need for government to get between you and helping others. You can do it today.

      1. “It seems you’re implying that if you make a mistake and I don’t help, I’m “condemning” you. Really? I’m responsible for your well being? Are you a child?”
        Bad choice of words on my part. Your not condemning them, merely making it extremely difficult to recover from the mistake by cutting aid. For example, compare the cost of a useful degree or trade school in America to one in Scandinavia. And how many kids nowadays are afraid to get a degree because of the amount of debt they will have to pay?
        “I’m perfectly capable of helping those less fortunate. And I do. But I am utterly opposed to bureaucrats taking my money and spending it on what *they* want to instead of what *I* want to.”
        I’m sure you are, and thats good. But when, in the entire history of the world, have the fortunate voluntarily donated enough to end poverty, homelessness, or even starvation? What percent of the population donates as much as you do? Maybe 1%?

    3. “So really what is comes down to is what is your ideal society?”
      Not exactly. Maybe, as a member of “society”, I just don’t like the idea of somebody being able to enforce their “ideal” on the rest of us.
      Every totalitarian was only trying to create the “ideal society.” I’m sure your conception of ideal is more mature than Pol Pot’s, but I’d rather not take the chance.
      Government’s job is to protect the individual’s right to be left alone, not to determine who has too much of what and to enforce its warped sense of economic morality on the rest of us.

      1. Governments job is to ensure the sustainability of a nation. Anything else is extra.
        You completely missed my point. I’m not taking about any type of “economic morality”, though the media spins it that way. I’m talking about a sustainable and growing economy. And it just so happens that history has shown that an economy where all the wealth is hoarded at the very top is not the most efficient. So this so called “morality” is merely a by-product of attempting to create a better economy. A better economy allows more military spending, more military spending makes people scared to mess with you, when nobody messes with you and you have a strong economy you have a sustainable nation.
        I am guessing you watch too much mainstream news and don’t read enough.

  33. Remember Ayn Rand ( Paging Mr. Galt?.) applied for social security and Medicare when she found out she had lung cancer.
    There is no such thing as a free market when huge corporations have immense power to crush the competition– if you think they compete fairly I have a pet unicorn I want to sell you.
    Here’s how the Libertarian hero folded when she saw some bucks to be saved at gubmint expense :
    ========
    A Failure of Ideas, Not the Individual
    No, the really important fact that this episode reveals is not Rand’s hypocrisy, but the utter failure of her ideas. Even she couldn’t live without the social safety net. Here’s how the woman who persuaded her to take part in socialism explained it to a fellow objectivist in 1998 (emphasis added):
    “The initial argument was on greed,” Pryor continued. “She had to see
    that there was such a thing as greed in this world. Doctors could cost
    an awful lot more money than books earn, and she could be totally wiped
    out by medical bills if she didn’t watch it. Since she had worked her
    entire life, and had paid into Social Security, she had a right to it.
    She didn’t feel that an individual should take help.”
    McConnell asked: “And did she agree with you about Medicare and Social Security?”
    Pryor replied: “After several meetings and arguments, she gave me her
    power of attorney to deal with all matters having to do with health and
    Social Security. Whether she agreed or not is not the issue, she saw
    the necessity for both her and Frank. She was never involved other than
    to sign the power of attorney; I did the rest.”

    1. Here I am! Sure, why wouldn’t she? As you can see from one of my above posts, people respond to incentives. I don’t fault anyone for accepting money from the govt, I DO fault the system that provides incentives to take said money.
      And I agree with you about crony capitalism. But usually how it works is the big players in the industry collude with government, not each other, and come up with regulations to “save the children” or the “elderly” or other such nonsense, in order to build barriers to entry to keep out start up competitors (one example – Big Pharma endorsing Obama Care). The big corporations have much less power to derail competitors without the government “help”. I speak from experience as I have been a C level exec discussing policies with federal politicians (Dems as well as Repubs…you would be amazed how similar they are behind closed doors!)
      – John

    2. I agree with Mr Pointyface that it’s freaking hilarious and disgusting in equal measure that Galileo folded like a cheap suit and foreswore his beliefs when the chips were down. What a hypocritical little shit, and history rightly condemns his despicable ass. There is, as we know, no moral failing at all, except that of lacking a rigid internal consistency in your beliefs, which is what we call hypocrisy, the greatest horror.
      It helps if one has no principles to begin with, of course, because you then are the highest of beings, the non-hypocrite, and can freely sneer at the failings of others. One may look down and call out, these were pacifists, yet expected the help of the police when attacked: laughable hypocrites. These over here were forced to obey the odious dictates of a tyrannical regime, yet did not go to their deaths instead: swinish hypocrites! Into the fire with the lot of them.

  34. There is a terrible epidemic spreading in America today. It’s called “Something for Nothing Disease.” The President caught it in his youth and now he’s doing his utmost to infect every corner of our once-great nation.
    Why should anyone get something for nothing? You have to *earn* what you get in this world. The world doesn’t owe you jack.
    Want more money than a worker job at McDonalds? Stop bitching. Bust your ass and become shift supervisor, then manager. Go to school at night and learn a trade. Improve yourself to improve the value you can add to an employer, then ask for more money. Change jobs if you feel your employer doesn’t value you correctly.
    This entitlement mentality is killing America.

  35. Roosh I am amazed that a Red pill guy like you calls McDonalds a “restaurant” and calls its production “food”
    A restaurant by defintion is something where you choose a table and a waiter approaches you gives you menu and you order food that is prepared just then not before that.
    Calling McDonalds a restaurant is language manipulation similar how feminists manipulate language. McDonalds is not a restaurant it is fast feed shop. It sells feed not food.
    McDonalds is directly responsible for the fattening of population that causes shortage of attractive women. I don’t understand why you care for it. Perhaps you visit it a lot since as an American traveler visiting other countries you don’t know where to else go. Believe me if you are able to discover best clubs and pull foreign and the like you are also able to discover local true restaurants and local non corporate food shops and there is no need to patron and support this miserable fat factory

  36. I just read all the comments to this post. Holy cow there are a lot of socialists here who feel entitled to the labor of others.
    Consider that everything has a cost. It feels very well and holy to vote for a politician who says “Everyone *deserves* to have food on the table and a roof over their heads. We’re going to give free stuff to people to make sure they have that.”
    But there’s no free lunch.
    Few people realize that every entitlement automatically creates an obligation. The money has to come from somewhere.
    Government extracts wealth from those who work in order to provide the entitlement. Often, that extraction is against the worker’s will. It’s also done under the threat of force (“Pay your taxes or go to jail.”)
    There’s a word for being forced to work for someone else against your will — it’s called slavery. In a very real sense, government transfer payments necessitate a form of slavery.
    Government transfer payments also create dependency on the government and increase the unemployment rate. Pay people not to work and guess what? You get more people not working. This is not rocket science.
    Margaret Thatcher said it best — “The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
    I completely fail to grasp why people don’t take responsibility for bettering their own lives and instead demand that other people give them free stuff that they didn’t earn and don’t deserve.
    Oops — oh yeah I do understand it. It’s easier than working. And when the politicians say “I’ll give you free stuff if you vote to increase that other guy’s taxes” it’s a whole lot easier.

    1. But it’s the working class who create the wealth, so by paying taxes, money is being distributed from the bourgeois capitalist who owns the wealth, and is transferred to the people who created the wealth, via public services.

  37. Another thing – McDonalds is in no way responsible for the fattening of America.
    Has Ronald McDonald ever held you down and stuffed a Big Mac down your throat? I didn’t think so.
    Individual choice is responsible for the fattening of America and Australia (Aussie took the title a few years ago http://www.theage.com.au/news/health/australia-worlds-fattest-nation/2008/06/19/1213770886872.html).
    Goddammit, stop blaming everyone else but yourself. Take responsibility for your own life and choices.

  38. Good to see you outgrew the Matt Taibbi lefty shit, at least in the economics department. Keep the ‘denouncing corporate/government collusion and corruption’ part tho, that is still good.

  39. For those that are arguing for low skilled workers to be paid low wages, how does the US reconcile the fact that it pays its teaching staff a wage so abysmally low for a job that is pivotal to a nation’s future (i.e.the nuturing of its intellectual capital). Our McDonalds workers here in Australia make better wages than your educators.
    And you wonder why your country is going to shit at light speed. I used to want to move there until I realised that;
    1) Your education system is fucked.
    2) Your health care system is fucked.
    3) Your political system is fucked.
    4) Fucked religious conservative zealots
    …and there’s probably plenty more I can add, but all this talk about burgers is making me hungry. 🙂

    1. Part of why we don’t pay teachers better is that if you’re the world’s shittiest teacher, we can’t fire you. One of the teachers in my high school taught for the first five minutes of class (everyone ignored him) and then passed out behind his desk for the rest of the hour. The school district couldn’t fire him. And, he got paid far better than younger teachers who actually did their job.

      1. Ok, and the younger teachers that do their job, after they see how little they will be rewarded for doing it, where does that leave them?
        This is such a narrow minded view. Why do you think bright minds don’t want to be teachers? In many societies, it is considered an honor. Here its more like, where did you fuck up?
        You think its hard to fire a teacher? How hard do you think it is to fail or kick out a student?

  40. i’m with mc’d workers on this one. it’s capitalism and no one has to bo loyal to anybody. if workers can squeeze more money out of the emplyers, then they should do it. if employers can get away with paying less, then they should take advantage of it. customers are going to take the hit? fuck ’em! they don’t care about the crew serving those burgers.
    it’s silly to think that the workers sold be the one to be concerned with the larger picture (increased price of food in restaurants, lower profits for shareholders and so on till the business collapses) while everyone else only take care of their own interests. capitalism has been known for sawing off the branch it sits on so why should this case be exception?

  41. i agree with uncle on this one. if you can squeeze out more money from a billion dollar company like McDonald’s – more power to you. In this capitalist world, almost everybody is disposable, so why not take as much as you can, when you can? Loyalty? That’s a joke. everybody has a story of a friend who worked at some company all his life just to be fired one day because management changed.
    also, McDonald’s could easily afford to raise wages w/o raising prices for burgers, it’s just these greedy shareholders who need another rollce royce/ another island andother 9023423 room mansion to maintain their status. human greed is limitless. Roosh said himself in one of his articles that he is gonna chase pussy as long as he can.
    coming myself from an ex-socialist country it’s pathetic to see how brainwashed you americans are with this capitalist thinking. you defend companies who’d rob you w/o an eye blink. it’s like stockholm syndrome big time.
    like they said in one russian movie “brother 2”:
    “Why do they ask how are you all the time?”
    “Do they care about me?”
    “No, they just say it like that”
    “In USA everything is just like that, except for the money”.
    Sorry for offtopic and broken english, but i really didnt expect such a post from Roosh..

  42. Capitalism is only as effective as the quality of the people engaged in it. Adam Smith was a man from the enlightenment who believed that people were capable of reason and they would apply it to their economic decisions. This is what was meant by “self-interest.” Like many people in his time, his ideas for society were based on the expectation that people would be “enlightened” or would pursue “enlightenment.”
    However, America became an unreasonable country a long time ago, and a lot of the abuses under capitalism, comes from the fact that the vast majority of the American consumers are unenlightened and poorly educated. If we were to be an enlightened society, the free market would have demanded the end of McDonalds a long time ago regardless of how much crony capitalist policies were passed in its favor. Reasonable people don’t eat food that kills them.
    The fact is that a lot of the major corporations that are responsible for our public education today and those who designed and funded it, understood that by redirecting American people from enlightenment to the pursuit of utopia through consumerism, that a. they could increase profits immensely and b. they could reduce competition by teaching kids how to memorize facts rather than solve problems which is the essence of entrepreneurship. That’s why our schools are more concerned with teaching people how to memorize data, than to utilize data and create something out of it.
    That being said, the guy working at McDonalds shouldn’t be mad that he’s making $8.75 an hour. He should go out there and learn how to go into business for himself where he can be his own boss. People have problems, they’re willing to have them fixed if you know how to and they’ll pay you for it as well. You can make that 8.75 an hour on your own, and not have to take the abuse from managers who are probably even less educated than you. But then again, if you don’t know how to think on your own; you’re a product of the public education system, and you’re not willing to pick up a book and think for yourself – might as well bend over and accept your fate, just like you would in prison if you were a scrawny kid.

  43. Nice to see this common sense economics in a post. You have come a long way from recommending Noam Chomsky books.

  44. They should use whatever means necessary to extract as much money out of their employer as possible. Their employer is going to utilize whatever means possible to push wages down.

  45. I might be talking crazy here but why not cut prices on food and raise wages? This is costco’s business model and it seems to be working. There profit margins are 15 percent on everything. They also find ways to cut prices elsewhere. Really no ads of any kind, no grocery bags, Lots of windows so the electric bill is cheaper. I think your average employee there makes like 17 an hour.
    Maybe if McDonald’s stopped all advertising they’d have a little more money to spread around to the hard working employees.
    And how many of these employees are actually getting 40 hours when they want it?
    And your real gripe should be with that god awful food. Wtf is in a McRib anyways? It has like 150 ingredients.

  46. What does it matter if they “deserve” it or not? What matters is whether they can get it this way – if they succeed in getting raises, more power to them.
    And it doesn’t necessarily translate to higher prices, really. Regardless of how much wages the company has to pay, they’ll price their product at the level where they think most profit is to be made (the sweet spot between volume and profit per sale) – if raising their prices would result in more profit, they would’ve fucking done it already. They’re not running a charity, not for their employees and not for their customers.
    Production cost per burger is slightly changed, yes, but there’s no guarantee that straight up adding that into the burgers price is the most economically sound move.
    It will decrease the revenue naturally, unless the pay raise would directly translate to getting more productivity out of the employees by the same amount due to them being more motivated and staying longer (which isn’t likely). But what is the management of the company gonna do? They can’t just go and lift prices, close shops and/or cut staff sizes as a direct response, it might easily hurt their bottom line even more than just sucking it up. Or if it does help – they probably should’ve done it regardless of the starting wage.
    Ideally to me, every burger joint would be ran independently with their wages determined independently. Like a free market, you know. But when the employer side is organized into big franchises like McD’s, Burger King, etc., it makes perfect sense for the employee side to organize as well to be able to negotiate with them on a more even level.

  47. Christ, look at all these libertardians working up a rage at slightest hint that someone might be getting “something for nothing”. Guess what retards, we don’t live in a libertarian world, and we never will.
    The system we live in is called Capitalism. In this system, if you have enough money or talent preexisting to separate you from the vast majority of people you can get far ahead with hard work. Many people are not blessed with those gifts and must work for the people who are, who set up businesses that employ people to make things that make our lives better. Most of the time they also “work hard”. People who are blessed do not “deserve” a right to live any more than someone who is not. And their “hard work” does not “entitle” them to the astronomic profits that many of them reap. There is no person in the world working hard enough to “deserve” tens, or hundreds of millions or billions of dollars while the people they employ are barely scraping by.
    To anyone with a brain, that tells you that capitalism does not on it’s own provide justice. To a libertardian, apparently, that tells you that if you’re a good little pussy worker bee like JohnGalt2 you can dream about sucking on your bosses dick while he smokes a cigar, if you work hard enough to get there anyway.

    1. “And their “hard work” does not “entitle” them to the astronomic profits that many of them reap. ”
      What profits do you think is just for the McDonalds corporation? Would you implement a cap of some sort where money above that line is equally distributed to the workers?
      I do agree that McDonalds gets government farm subsidizes that enables them to buy corn syrup for cheap, but the fault for that lies with the government and the lobbying system.

      1. You could go all the way and mandate a fixed ratio of management/ownership to worker salaries. You could even let the workers decide what it would be. There are examples of that, Mondragon being one. But the problem is much deeper than that. Do your own research.

        1. Why not just nationalize Macdonalds and everything else and have a Communist System, that works so well. Everyone is equal in their misery and poverty with no possibility to change anything. Perfect.

    2. ugh ty somebody commenting hear with not only logic and sensibility but compassion I was loosing hope reading comments till i got to yours very insightful and well said.

    3. That’s BS… the CEO of Kelloggs started on the streets in Mexico City selling those small packs of cornflakes, he later became George Bush’s attorney general. You can start in Macdonalds mopping toilets and become CEO if you want to. You only remain ignorant and unskilled if you WANT to.

  48. “2. Is there not another employer who would hire you at the wage you believe you deserve? If so, why don’t you work for them?”
    Good question, but regardless of his answer what’s wrong about trying to get a raise in your current one, if it seems possible?
    “Is it the moral duty of McDonald’s to provide a higher wage than the market supports so that Mr. Lopez can purchase the latest smartphone with a 4G data package?”
    How’d you find out the exact wage of what the market can support?
    “If McDonald’s provided all it’s workers with $15/hour jobs, their profits would decrease. Shareholders will not accept decreasing growth, so McDonald’s will have to raise their price of food to maintain profits and their share price. This means that Mr. Lopez will be funded not by capitalist money but by McDonald’s customers, who now have to pay higher prices.”
    Pure assumption.
    “The “livable wage” movement doesn’t hurt employers—it hurts customers.”
    No. It might hurt both employers and customers, or either one, or neither. There’s too many variables to tell beforehand.
    Where’d you come up with the notion that someone else earning money is consequently making you poor?

  49. Another problem is that the kids act like they’re doing Micky D’s (or wherever) a favor by consenting to work there. They skip shifts, they’re late, they leave early, they do sloppy work…any time a McD’s manager has a chance to hire an actual adult for $2 more per hour they jump at the chance, as adults will actually show up on time and do a decent job. Until they find something better, which for anyone who is smart enough to show up on time and do a decent job is not much of a problem.

  50. You’re approaching the argument from the wrong angle.
    Current labor market situation: in one corner, McDonalds, a multi-billion dollar corporation; opposite corner: Joe the low-qualified worker, alone. Guess the outcome? Joe gets screwed. However, if there’s a union with some weight in the employee corner, all the Joes can have a shot at an fair and equitable outcome.
    In each society, a huge number, if not most people are low-qualified Joes. We’ll never all be highly sought after information workers with enough clout to choose employers based on work conditions. Therefore, balancing the scales slightly towards labor and away from capital is not an overall bad thing. Yeah, you might pay a bit more for your burger, but on the other hand, less inequality can make society work better in many other ways (lower crime, higher job satisfaction of most people etc.)
    Australia has a high low-end wages ($15+ I reckon), and crazy high prices to go with it ($10 for the cheapest meal), and I don’t hear to many natives complaining too much about unfairness.

    1. Except unions will quickly be taken over by a professional political class, and then used to split the profits between two elite groups. Joe still gets screwed. If Joe doesn’t like it, he can live on less, house pool, car pool and hustle until he makes it. The reason the economy consumes everything is because Americans consume way too much.

  51. ‘If McDonald’s provided all it’s workers with $15/hour jobs, their profits would decrease. Shareholders will not accept decreasing growth, so McDonald’s will have to raise their price of food to maintain profits and their share price.’
    or perphaps share price will remain unaffecfted,increased labour costs would decrease profits but at least a profit will still be made,if you believe in a free(ish) market you have to accept that labour can organise itself and leverage benefits such as increased wages,if this happens across the job market share price will account for this (if you really believe that stock market is rational ).scarcity of labour is only really affected by a country’s immigation policy.I believe in a free dynamic market system but I also believe in a livable wage for low wage workers for my fellow countrymen.

  52. Mandate 2yr service from ages 17-30 get them all in the armed forces,their problem solved,they like it,they stay,as for me I work at a mcDs and I’ve been working hard,they had notified me on my promotion to grill manger,ive been here for a lil over a year,always early and almost last one out,I do my job well I like it but I don’t love it.

  53. Well i work at a mc donald’s and I don’t think that what they pay us.is enough either. Sometimes I juzt feel like my managers don’t care about us at all.
    I try to stay positive all the time, but sometimes it just becomes too frustrating

  54. I work in a busy mcdonalds. I agree with what people are saying about it being an unskilled job and that ‘mopping the floor doesn’t deserve such high pay’ or whatever, but working in one near the university’s night club over night serving aggressive drunk people probably does and at any McDonald’s, the workers get treated as stupid just because of their job and the customers get very aggressive and talk down to you. I’m not saying we should be paid a fortune but the wage is pretty low. Also, the amount of work should be taken into consideration as well as the skill. Out of all the jobs I’ve had (all of which have been ‘low skilled’) McDonald’s is the one which involves the most work but pays the least. I got paid more for standing behind a kiosk in a small supermarket or sitting on a checkout all day, with cleaners to do the cleaninf every morning, than I do for running around in constant circles with a queue out of the door at McDonald’s plus having to keep on top of cleanliness as well. No the wage shouldn’t be doubled, but it should be higher. Instead of putting the food prices up to compensate, when someone comes to the counter with about 5 chips in his box saying they weren’t very full, try not giving him another portion for free! Anyway I’m sure they wouldn’t HAVE to put the prices up just for a small pay rise, they make shit loads of money.

    1. You’re going to deal with shitty people when society promotes degeneracy en masse. If you hate it, never go to bars, clubs or drink alcohol in excess. It never ends well anyway for any of the patrons; you lose your money, often your dignity, and sometimes your freedom.

  55. The question shouldn’t be about employees, the question should be whether or not McDonald’s should be allowed to operate. The real theft would be to allow employees to earn outrageous amount for toilet based food.

    1. The employees don’t have anything to do with the product other then putting it togethet. The corporate heads making millions are the ones who push it. So tho we agree the food is crap your view is deeply flawed, it would be theft to pay the employees a fair wage (i think 10 or 11) for putting together product they have no control or say over? But its not theft for the heads actively pushing the crap burgers to make millions while there employees make so little they require gov entitlements I’m almost certain you oppose.

  56. i don’t care weather or not labor is scarce everyone deserves to be paid enough to survive. Fuck minimum wage a living wage is what people deserve in america. We are not some substandard third world country so if we are all we say we are why not be it. Not everyone wants to be a doctor lawyer or engineer. Why do only those people deserve to have living wages?
    Those people should be able to live luxurious lifestyles with there income and mcdonalds workers should be able to live livable lifestyles with there income. People get the misconception that working at mcdonalds is easy. I have worked at mcdonalds when i was younger and now work in a cushy office where i get paid more than 2x that to sit on my @$$ and do almost nothing. Everyone should be paid enough to live. People who dont work deserve poverty those who work do not. Just because you CAN pay somebody minimum wage does not mean you SHOULD. Then Americans bitch and moan about people on public assistance.
    Well when sitting on your @$$ all day and not working pays more than going out and busting your @$$ all day there you go. I dont care if the job is “low skilled” that has nothing to do with deserving to be able to keep a roof over your head. If your single and havent brought kids into the world you cant care for you should be paid enough to support yourself. A McDonald wage doesn’t even do that. Not everyone wants to go 10000 dollars in debt to have a CHANCE at making an affordable wage. I dont think public assistance abusers are lazy i think they are smart. Seems working honestly and diligently means nothing in america get to the top by any means attitude is all that seems to matter these days.

    1. Fuck your ignorance! Look, It is very simple stupid. A “living wage” for who? And where? Who decides what a living wage is? Does it have to include cable TV? How about “does it have to go up every time 3G turns into 4G and then 5G?” And then what happens, once the “living wage” is enacted that instantly raises the price of everything that a “living wager” works on becomes more expensive and they can no longer afford them, and up again goes the “living wage”. Look you libertard, minimum wage jobs are for the unmotivated, ignorant, (as most “living wagers” are) and people to do on their progress through life on to a more skilled, more demanding, better job. When did it become “choose your job and make your employer pay you what you think you’re worth?” The american way is to create a job to motivate people to self improvement. Either through training or even, (you might not want to read this libertard) scarcity; so thet a persons desire for a better standard of living motivates them to self improve…

    2. Most americans are the most ignorant, useless, selfish, egotistical, arrogant, mean-spirited and delusional people I have ever met. You go online, tell everyone they are bad people, and that you deserve more. You already receive more than 99% of the planet, and think you deserve more for just existing.
      You deserve nothing, none of the prosperity of this country. When I couldn’t afford my own place, I went out, made friends and roomed with people. Complete privacy and property are privileges, not rights, which is why the constitution says ‘pursuit of happiness’ instead of something completely unsustainable without the looting of other countries. Learn some self control, make sacrifices, and for god sakes stop buying useless shit like new phones.

  57. if working at macdonalds is so demanding that it deserves a higher pay, then don’t work there, work somewhere else. if it’s such terrible work, then macdonalds will have to pay a higher rate….because no one wants to do it…. why were you working there if it was so harsh ? guys that work on mines and oil rigs earn big money, and are not necessarily that skilled and don’t have to tolerate drunk customers….. go do that instead…… this socialist free handout BS, has gotta stop before the whole world turns into a techno version of the Soviet Union.
    FREE MARKET FORCES are what makes us FREE …Doh !…. Demanding rights and bemoaning our fates is what makes us comrades….you want some harsh working conditions go try the gulag…

  58. It’s funny, the same people who cry and moan about “the takers” are some of the same people who don’t support a livable wage. I often wonder do they even realize that these are the same jobs that make people “takers”. They say quit, find a better job. Where!? Someone has to work there, even if everyone in the world had higher ed. we can’t all be doctors, lawyers, CEO, etc.. even in the best economy those jobs are not there for all. And if you have ever worked fast food in recent times its a never-ending grind. Individual workers are expected to do the work of three. Managers often are told no overtime at all, period point black, just yesterday my gm told me when i show up sat to not clock in and they would put it on the next week in fear I would hit overtime. At another chain my gm had to use her own vacation and sic days to cut cost in fear of losing her job. At the franchised mcdonalds i work at now regular employees are not evenoffered any form of health care because of a loophole mcdonalds uses to its full advantage. They make 63% of there profits from various fees from these franchise but there not responsible for the workers. But if I apply for gov aid im a “taker”. Walmart gets all kinds of tax breaks and incentives to come to a community with promise of jobs and growth, then pay there employees crap and actively direct them to gov programs to compensate for the fact that many of the employees are kept under the threshold to qualify for benefits. That means the company gets another subsidy on the back of the workers and all taxpayers. And again, if you want your cheap crap someone has to work there. The benefits of a livable wage means these “takers” don’t have to be, and they can put more money into the economy. The min. wage now as adjusted for the value of the dollar and cost of living is lower then it was 50 years ago, hurray for free market, plz.just remember if you don’t support a livable wage you support welfare and other “entitlements”. Just some food for thought.

    1. Nobody reads it when you blow hard liberals write so much. If you have so much to say, get your own blog.

    2. Walmart makes $13 billion in profit, and if they’d paid $7 billion to their workers, each worker would have $6000 in their annual wage, leaving $5 billion spare for the Watsons.

        1. That’s placing the burden from the company to the customer, when customers should behave ethically.

        2. ‘Ought to’ falls short of the logical validity of following incentives. Mcdonalds and walmart employees’ labor is just not worth that much, and artificially elevating it destroys incentive for anyone to fortify their labor value, leading to underemployment, eventual brain drain and economic death.
          Try arguing with logic or facts rather than emotional moralism.

  59. I currently work at mcdonalds and i am a 24 year old woman. This is how it works at my restaurant. i only make 7.85 an hour. There is supposedly this new law where you cannot work more than 29 hours a week or you will be considered full time, which they HATE. if you work a 9 hour shift, you get 1 unpaid half hour break, and that is it. Due to this fact, i am lucky if one of my paychecks is 250 bucks every two weeks. My house payment is 400 a month. What about the rest of my bills? getting shit on by customers is the least of my worries because my managers love to make our lives a living hell.
    In a sense, i do not have much of a choice to work because nobody else would hire me. believe me. i have literally looked everywhere in my town. I cannot get a good job before i graduate from college with my degree and that is a year away.
    I have to.agree that $15 an hour is pretty ridiulous. honestly, i would be satisfied with just a 1 dollar raise, and i really feel the corporation can afford that.

    1. Maybe we shouldn’t have destroyed the traditional community support we had in this country for the sake of poorly defined ‘progress’.

  60. Well once AGAIN I was screwed at the drive thru at McDonald’s. I had to go back inside to have them correct the simple order. They absolutely do NOT deserve $15 an hour. Also most restaurants are owned by a franchisee that maybe make 10% over gross so doubling the pay for they employees means out of business in 6 months.

  61. I do think wages should increase, but not as high as $15. Wages are falling and are not rising with inflation.

  62. they don’t deserve a “high pay,” but they deserve a higher pay. they deserve a proper and dignified wage. all real men do.
    “If McDonald’s provided all it’s workers with $15/hour jobs, their profits would decrease. Shareholders will not accept decreasing growth, so McDonald’s will have to raise their price of food to maintain profits and their share price.” — that’s a bunch of bullshit. mcdonalds has MORE than enough money to spend to raise the wages of their employees to a proper wage and keep their food prices the same. the CEO is just a greedy jew. (that’s not a lie either. he’s actually jewish. you can look him up). besides, even if that was true, i’d rather have mcdonalds employees paid at higher wage, than being able to pay $3 for a disgusting synthetic non-food hamburger vs $6 /burger

    1. Any facts there? Numbers? People tell my father he is a crook all of the time because they are so astoundingly arrogant they think at a first glance they know all the costs to running a business in markets they know nothing about.

  63. In my own opinion. Fast food jobs (unless you’re a manager, or some other place higher in the ladder) Should be reserved for those highshool kids looking for their first job.
    Seriously, there’re are better jobs an adult can do. In example: Going to school (classes can take up to 3 days to a week, usually) to learn how to drive a forklift, or stand-up reach truck. Those jobs can net you 18$+ an hour working at some places.
    A fast food joint isn’t a place where you should think about working at the rest of your life at. It’s honestly stupid.
    Keep the pay low to force those people to learn actually useful skills and be a use to society. What are you going to get with a phd of Burger Flipping?

  64. the fine elected representatives of new york state clearly did not read your article roosh! but a few years from now when their utopian plan of million-dollar earning fry-slingers collapses, they’ll blame the evil companies and capitalism in general. it’s cool being able to see the future isn’t it?

  65. I know scientists who do not make $15 an hour. How long do we subsidize failures for being failures in this country?

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