I'd like to see McDonald's CEO and department VPs also fill out those budget cards.

I guess they're being offered free food from work. That's why zero dollars for food.

So if we take the 20% of their profits that come from sales ($1.1B), spread it over all US workers, that gives $1571.43 extra to each worker per year.

If we assume each worker puts in 30 hours a week through the year, that's an extra $1.01 per hour.

More if the other $4.4 billion in profits is up for grabs.

@2,

I kind of doubt it given that fast food is frozen food, and so there's probably not a lot of waste at the end of the day. At least not enough for employees to live off of. The employees filled out McDonald's version of a budget, which includes food (a necessity of life that tends to take up at least 10-15 percent of an American's budget) in the "other" category.

The real profits are coming from franchise fees. Not that confusing, actually...

You're not supposed to earn a living wage from standing at a register computing change via the keyboard since your math skills are so poor you couldn't do it mentally.

Similarly, a living wage digging ditches or picking fruit or vegetables is an unrealistic expectation.

I earned minimum wage level income twice in my life. Once when I was a kid working fast food and then only for a few months, and once more recently when starting my own business until it started making money.

Sorry, but if you want grown up wages you actually have to do the work of a grownup.

@7: I take it you make all your own lunches and brown-bag it everyday, right? If not, kindly STFU about what constituted "grownup" work.

where the fuck can you live for $600/mo rent?

tornado alley?

@6: You mean the category in this particular man's budget exercise that includes prescription drugs and childcare and FOOD? He's paying $100 a month for drugs, $100 for childcare (which is pretty damn low), and paying for groceries that include himself and two kids, one of which he notes is growing really fast.

@7 According to...? From what moral authority do you derive this conclusion that low-skill jobs must result in perpetual poverty?

What is the benefit to our society and economy in having a huge and growing impoverished underclass, sinking under the weight of the most basic neeeds of American life?

Why is the concept of a decent wage for a day's work anathema to you, unless the work crosses your imaginary threshold of "grownup work"?

@ 7, McDonald's and other fast food places hire only grownups these days. Likely because they are better at providing customer service.

If McDonald's wants to pay wages fit for a teen, they should go back to hiring teens for these jobs.

(BTW, did you read this yet?)

@10, I'm boggled that anyone can only spend $100 on childcare and $600 for food for a family of three. There must be relatives to help out with watching the kids, who also feed them while they're there.

@7

Dude, shut the fuck up

@9,

Detroit.

@ 13, he might be feeding them at McDonald's all the time. Obesity is a problem with the poor and indigent because fast food is absolutely dirt cheap. (Also, on his wages, the kids likely qualify for free or reduced lunch at school.)

@7:

Clearly, you've never worked an actual cash register, otherwise you'd KNOW that the primary purpose of using one isn't to help the counter person make change, it's to record the total number of cash-in/cash-out transactions (which at a typical QSR can run well into the hundreds) in order to make sure the till comes out even at the end of the shift; doing the math is just a side-benefit.

What is the work of a grownup, Seattleblues? Is it measured in education, experience, capacity for empathy? Maybe the universality with which the service at hand is used or valued?

Any job could become a minimum wage job. As you noted, in running your own business, you lived on it for a time. As I run my own business, I'm doing marginally better than that, but then, I have to account for my business expenses. What's more, most of the people in both of the industries where I do my primary work often moonlight at minimum wage (or paltry wage) jobs (food service, admin, retail, etc.) because a) much work in these industries is done for free, on the premise that visibility will get you more paying work, and b) because paying work is temporary and sporadic.

The point isn't that people working a counter should be able to afford premium cable and a Prius. But if you work 40 hours, you should be able to pay rent, invest in better future work opportunities, eat a healthy diet, get around the city in which you live, and maybe take a romantic prospect out every now and again.

@7:

You're not supposed to earn a living wage from standing at a register... digging ditches or picking fruit.

Why not?

Seriously, why not? All those activities have a value in the market. People who go to fast food restaurants need their orders taken, filled, and paid for. Ditches need to be dug. Fruit needs to be picked. All these things contribute something of value to the economy, and they all need SOMEONE to do them.

No one is suggesting that the cashier should be paid the same as the restaurant manager, the ditchdigger the same as the foreman, or the fruit picker the same as the orchard owner. The phrase is "living wage", that is, a wage capable of providing at least a subsistence level of income for full-time work.

What kind of arrogant, Dickensian, lunatic are you that you believe that people doing real work, work of value, value even to you - assuming you enjoy fruit, do not like flooded streets, and eat the occasional fast food meal - should not earn at least enough money to make it to the end of the month without skipping meals or medical appointments?

You have on other occasions railed against people taking welfare and social services as parasites, picking the pocket of hard working people like you. Now it seems that you begrudge even people with jobs - people working just as hard or harder than you - their rightful earned wages.

Look into that dessicated lump of rock you call a heart and examine why you hate poor people so much.

Hi, Seattleblues! Remember calling me out in last Saturday's Morning News? I responded as to why i didn't immediately reply. Go do me the favor of giving it a read. Thanks!

Actually, the interesting thing about @7's comment is the fact that he's not even bothering to pretend that the poor people in these jobs deserve a path to bettering themselves.

Over the past few years, the mask has been slipping off conservatism. Remember when George W. Bush promised compassionate conservatism? We mostly derided it for the oxymoron that it was, but apparently, judging from all that they say and do these days, it was unpleasant for conservatives to pretend to give a shit about anyone else, too. They don't want a land of opportunity; if you aren't already born well up the ladder, fuck you, your lot in life is to serve me my burger, or remodel my basement if you're lucky. You exist for me to exploit. I will pay you as little as I can, deduct out of it what I can, and make you buy your goods from me so MY money isn't in your grubby little hands for so long.

Of course, the hilarious thing about such sentiments coming from people like SB is that they, too, are kept in their place by the ones at the top. Sure, since your dad worked for us in some capacity, you can be allowed to dream that you can "work hard" and "be your own man" and "get ahead." Oh, I'm not saying that SB hasn't done well for himself (as only someone born at least middle class and before 1980 can), but he's deluded to think that he's any more of a free agent in his life than the poor immigrants selling him his Big Mac are. Try rolling with Kemper Freeman sometime and see how well you fare, SB.

Stalin renounced his own ethnicity and became a chauvanistic Russian nationalist such as Russia had never seen, because he came to view Georgia and the Georgian people as weak, deserving to be subjected to Great Russian rule; so does the average conservative, like SB, come to identify with the oppressive wealthy, seeing them as "winners" even though none of them have earned what they have fairly. (No, I don't consider inheritance "earned," and I don't consider the means by which they pay themselves "fair.") Stalin saw the Russians as the winners in his world and wanted to be one; SB and the other conservatives see the Wall Street psychopaths who tanked the economy, and direct the GOP to obstruct the government when it won't serve their purposes, the same way.

Yes, all that was revealed by how he began his comment. "You're not supposed to earn a living wage...." No. In the conservative world, that's not the point of employment. A new kind of serfdom is the point.

@15

that place is worse

@21 nice. Armchair psychology is always dicey, but I think you actually unpacked SB's brain pretty well. I always find it fascinating when people who proclaim themselves "job creators" and Captains of Industry can be found posting messages in Slog (or, perhaps especially, Yahoo Comments.)

There will always be a certain number of individuals who work low wage-minimum wage jobs. Whether that be do to factors ranging from cognitive or physical disabilities, lack of education and opportunity, or hey, maybe some people love working in retail or food service. The expectation that you are either a teen or retiree, or otherwise you should be a professional or trade person is great; if there were anywhere near that number of jobs for people out there. So why the hell not pay a living wage? Especially if you are a McDonald's or Walmart instead of having employees forced to go on public assistance, medicaid etc? Multi billion dollar corporations are using US Taxpayers to supplement their employees wages.

I can get this guy under the line without too much trouble. First, we'll get rid of that cable and phone bill. Luxuries. And prescription drugs? Come on, suck it up, wildflower. There's no reason you should be paying rent when you can just get some cardboard boxes and live under the freeway. Heating? Gone Electric? Gone. Car payment? For what? You're homeless now, and therefore you've lost your McDonald's job, so where do you have to go? Other? Look, there's a perfectly good half a sandwich in that garbage can over there. Quit whining!

See? Easy peasy.

@22,

I know, but that's how he can afford it. He's living in a city where rent is dirt cheap.

Sorry, not buying it.

Nobody worth more than minimum wage makes minimum wage, not for more than a few months.

Benjamin Franklin wrote that people should be uncomfortable in their poverty, so they'd be more motivated to escape it.

Look, you could raise the minimum wage to $40 an hour and you'll change nothing. All you'd accomplish is massive inflation and ruinous devaluation of our currency. A burger, a stereo, rent and so on are interlinked as to price and follow basic immutable rules. If you make basic unskilled work artificially sell at a premium all you do is raise the price of everything else.

Or you could practice what you preach and pursue the actual betterment of those without saleable skills. Rather than offering a half rotten overpriced fish, you could stop making excuses and force them to learn to fish.

But at heart you don't think people are any more capable than the average toddler. You think nobody could possibly figure out their own lives without 13 government programs to show them how.

Me, I think most folks can feed, clothe, house, obtain a means of income and all without your condescending disdain and certainly without government treating them like retarded children.

@27: To go back to your post @7, running a cash, digging ditches, and picking fruit are "saleable skills".

They are jobs that need doing.

There are people out there willing to do those jobs.

There are people willing to pay others to do those jobs.

All the ingredients are there for a REAL job. All that is required is that the people doing them earn a living wage.

We aren't talking about handouts or government programs. We are talking about REAL JOBS.

Why don't you want employers to pay their employees a living wage?

@ 27, it's funny how you simply fail to address any points that specifically addressed your first post. You're really just that wedded to your dogma, aren't you?

As usual, Mr. Blues, your post in no way addresses the points it claims to contradict. You offer not an argument, but an assertion. Your prerogative, yes, but neither conducive to dialectic nor--and this might be the important part, from where you stand--likely to convince a neutral reader that your position has a rational basis. That is, even if you have given up on convincing us (probably not a bad idea, thought probably not for the reasons your epistemic filter allows you to surmise), it seems you may want to convince someone who happens along. Otherwise, why bother? Just because someone like me can't take you outside and break your nose like we would if you pulled this shit in a bar?

@19 May there be more like you!

Angry Beaver makes a little bit more than that. But not much. Public transportation can be $80 a month. It's depressing but it's not as expensive as a car and insurance.

$90 for electricity? damn.. I pay city light $20/month