Did you know? Think Progress says, “if McDonalds were to double the salaries and benefits of all of its employees, from the CEO down to the minimum wage cashiers, it would still only cost an extra 68 cents for a Big Mac, according to a new report by the University of Kansas. As fast food workers across the country are going on strike to demand a livable wage, University of Kansas research assistant Arnobio Morelix tells the Huffington Post that it would cost the average consumer mere cents to give them just that.”
So how come capitalists are so mean when we can solve all these problems for 68 cents?
Now the guys at Think Progress may not realize it, but a lot of people don’t have the extra 68 cents. No truly they don’t. I’ve seen retired people very carefully pry out coins for that special once a week treat, the Big Mac Value Meal. They pay in the exact amount because they’ve actually saved up for it. Sometimes when they’re flush, like when the pension checks have just come in, they can spring for a soft-serve cone, a little extra something they can suck between their missing teeth before going down to the discount supermarket to buy the knockoff versions of famous brand names that only poor people have heard about. Krats peanut butter, S&M Mayonnaise, Groot Roops cereal.
I’m not sure Think Progress will have heard of these.
You see the same thing with schoolkids and young people. The coins come out. The pockets are emptied to upsize that order of fries. Or even working adults who are trying to make ends meet; travelers trying to stretch a dollar on a trip in Europe, or even in Bangkok. One of the things that McDonald’s has done is make a hamburger — once a luxury to poor people in the world — sort of affordable. Just go to Manila and watch a lower income family take their child to a never before treat. A hamburger.
Sixty eight cents is a lot of money.
Gerard Van der Leun comments on Facebook, if they’re such geniuses at economics why don’t they implement the idea themselves?
Think Progress should start their own line of fast food restaurants and charge $20 a hamburger; pay $20 a hour per employee; and hold their breath till the company turns a profit. They can call the burgers “Progress Burgers.” I’m sure it will be a hit.
Sure it will be hit. That’s so obvious they don’t even have to try it to find out. I think Marie Antoinette was there before Gerard. If people can’t afford the extra 68 cents well let them eat cake.
But I’m sure the Think Progress people have the 68 cent deficit problem solved. They’ll say, “why not increase the old age pensions so the old can afford the more expensive hamburger? Similarly, just give the kids some government money so they can plunk down the extra. And come to that, why not hand arriving travelers to any destination an extra bunch of money so that next time in central London they can eat something they can actually afford.
Plus that will create jobs! Like the department of old age burger subsidies, or the department of schoolkid grub subsidies, the department of tourist subsidies. That’s just for openers.
But wait a minute. Just a moment. But what about the transfats?
Oh I forgot about those. I forgot that eating burgers is bad. Making them affordable to the third world kids is a crime even worse than paying food servers a low wage. Burgers teach the simple peoples of the world the vile habits of Western consumerism. Plus surveys show that if you eat 30 burgers a week your cholesterol will definitely rise.
So ban burgers. Fire all the food servers at Burger King and McDonald’s. Shut ’em down. Close ’em up. Move ’em out.
But what about the unemployed food servers you say? Why after they’re unemployed, put them on welfare. Simple. That will give them time to call their friends, and enrich their lives. To that end, give them an Obamaphone.
You may say all this costs money. So how does government pay for all this? Why it’s easy. Studies have shown we can pay for all this by raising taxes on each individual by only 73 cents. Its only five cents more than 68 cents.
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