Okay, it's all over the internet. Larry O'Donnell teased it throughout his entire show Tuesday night. HuffPo has covered it. It's invading the Twittersphere. Almost every FaceBook wall has someone referring to it.
So what is it that's got tongues wagging? It's what would happen if McDonald's doubled every one of their employees salaries. We're not just talking the fries salter and the burger wrapper. Everyone, from workers earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour to CEO Donald Thompson, whose 2012 compensation totaled $8.75 million. Everyone gets double.
Common sense says everything on the menu would have to go up to maintain the companies record setting profits. It always comes down to the bottom line and that is always passed off to the consumer.
So Arnobio Morelix, an undergraduate student at the University of Kansas crunched some numbers. And here's what he found and published. This move would cause the price of a Big Mac to increase just 68 cents, from $3.99 to $4.67. Perhaps pricey but what about those who don't want such a huge burger. What about the wallet friendly dollar menu? Well, that's going up across the board. The sign will now have to say it's the "$1.17 Menu."
Seventeen cents more for those special, selected items. That doesn't seem too much. Hell, sometimes gas prices go up a dollar or more per gallon in just a two week period, and we grin and bear it. We may grouse a bit, but it doesn't stop us from paying the money. We just accept it. And we don't get anything in return but the satisfaction of putting billions more of profit in the pockets of big oil.
What will we get if we double those McDonald's salaries, including CEO Thompsons? We'll get an improved work force, hundreds of thousands moving into a livable wage, and less cost to the public for social programs like SNAP and public housing as people will be able to support themselves. Tax revenues would increase greatly, health care would be that much more affordable as we wouldn't have nearly the numbers of people without coverage that slip through the Affordable Healthcare Act and the economy would immediately spike upwards as there will be more people with more money to spend. And it will be on all sorts of goods and services. Barbers as well as builders will feel the impact. All of those services that people have been putting off because of the cost and priorities, like feeding their family, will become manageable and maybe even comfortably affordable. $8,75 million to $17.5 million.
Oh, and did I mention that increase also includes doubling benefits, like health and pension benefits.
Sadly, the Republicans don't understand this and say it's going to lead to inflation. Is that so bad? Is it worse than living in poverty? Is it worse that the recession and the depression that the GOP has led us into and and slowed our recovery from? How's that austerity plan they have tried to force on us working out? Are you doing better now than you were before? I would say some of you are, but most of you aren't.
We have a general strike going on by fast food workers right now. Pay attention to that. And watch and see what kind of argument these huge corporations use to stifle down wages. It better not be that the costs are too great. This study shows that's not the case at all. A recent survey by HuffPo showed that over 63% of those voting would play the additional sum. That's overwhelming. And the truth is, just like with gas prices, you may end up driving less, or buying less Big Macs in this case, but you still buy. I've yet to see the gas station that went out of business because they gouged us raising prices in a usury fashion.
If you'd like to see this all summed up in an under three minutes video, check this out. You'll be asking yourself why we're not doing this and now. Our economy nationally can't wait.
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