Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Fast food protests for minimum wage hike.
I wish reporters would ask more questions. Notice the language of the signs being held by the workers. Some are English, some are Spanish, but all are in the same colors and type font. Plainly, they were professionally printed specifically for this event.
By whom? Who put up the money to rouse this rabble? And where did THEY get the money?
It would be annoying to learn some non-profit community outreach group is being funded by my tax dollars to promote this nonsense. Or worse, if this were just a union tactic to increase their own wages by legislating an increase in the floor wages since they can’t negotiate a raise in this economy.
Annoying? Certainly.
But looking at the production quality of the signage, I’m not betting against it.
SEUI.
It is the dream of every socialist thug to run a union whose members are low-skilled, with a low-education level, and a high turnover rate.
I suspect the robotic burger makers that will replace these pawns in the game of life will be professionally manufactured. Or even (3-D) printed.
Outstanding article on SEIU’s shamefully wasteful spending on this project. http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2013/08/27/a_fast_food_strike_staged_to_benefit_a_rich_union_100576.html
I should mention that “low-skilled, with a low-education level, and a high turnover rate.” describes a good deal of Obama’s one-time legislative district in Illinois (state senate district 13).
The whole thing reminds me of “spontaneous protests” in various parts of the world where the signs are impeccably printed in English–yeah, that’s “spontaneous” all right. You wonder if the protesters even know what’s on the signs, like the time when Al-Qaida advocates had their “Bert is Evil” poster showing Osama Bin Laden with a ham and a bottle of whiskey.
And as much as I sympathize with low wage earners, I would also hope that an SEIU capable of putting together these “spontaneous” demonstrations would also be capable of reading the balance sheets McDonald’s puts out every quarter for the SEC and realize that $15/hour labor would eliminate their profit margin. The math is not that hard.
The simplest way to explain it, is forcing wages up by law just SHIFTS THE SAME LEVEL of demand, it doesn’t CREATE anything.
Even if the owner sits on the money, the issue is his bank isn’t lending it out: it’s being sucked up by the trillion dollars a year the Obama is borrowing and spending on unproductive activity.
Follow the money, The FedSucks. The Jones family spends $50/wk at fast food restaurants. After the wage increase, the bill now comes to $75. The Joneses either pay the extra $25, reducing there spending on other items by $25 (that’s bad), or they reduce the amount of fast food they buy by 1/3 (that’s bad, too).
The people who buy their lunch at Arbys aren’t millionaires.
Do these “picketers,” if indeed they are the actual underpaid and exploited employees, realize that if their demands are met, they may move from under -employed to unemployed?
If you were a business owner and had to pay $15/ hr, would you choose hires from among a group comprised of: non-English speakers, the illiterate (who need photo display cash registers), the heavily tattooed and pierced, those with elaborate but work-inhibiting fingernail “art,” those with criminal records, those who are physically and/or cognitively disabled, those who have cultural speech patterns, unusual attire, and other traits that require special accomodations?
Or would you choose to spend your $15/hr on employees who are members of demographics who are likely to be ready to start and perform as expected at the moment of hire?
Good luck to the picketers. Once they find themselves on the other side of the counter, they may find themselves unable to afford that Big Mac they used to enjoy …
At $15/hr, I imagine you’d get a lot of retirees who’d like to supplement their SS checks with casual employment.
A thousand hours a year at $15/hr would add up to enough bucks to put a grandkid through a state college.
“The people who buy their lunch at Arbys aren’t millionaires.” It doesn’t even matter if they are.
Nothing is created. Nothing better that creates demand on it’s own. No efficiencies.
Pie slicing.
Ryan Winker went to Harvard.
“Ryan Winker went to Harvard”
One of the hard sciences, no doubt. Harvard has a pretty good astrophysics program.
History–which makes his “I didn’t know ‘Uncle Tom’ was an insult!” comment even more hilarious. Or pathetic.