More rightwing propaganda from Mr. Busler on wages. Hey, you know what might keep food prices down? Don't pay workers ANYTHING -zero. That should bring costs down right?
First, the snide insertion of "unskilled" workers- there certainly is a level of skill in working fast food, though I doubt Mr. Busler ever had to subsist on that work for a living!
Large fries at McDonalds have a profit argin of 75-90% Repeat- 75-90% I worked at a Burger King in college and management repeatedly told staff to really stuff the fries in the container because potatoes were cheap and they wanted the customers to feel like they were getting good value.
I worked at a 7-Eleven for a while. A 99c Big Gulp base cost for cup, lid, straw and soda was 25c with profit of 74c! I have to assume similar profit margin for sodas at McDonalds where the most expensive and lowest margin product is the meat patty.
By the way, in 2023, McDonald's reported the following profits:
Gross profit: $14.563 billion, a 10.26% increase from 2022
Net income: $8.469 billion, a 37.09% increase from 2022
Operating income: $11.65 billion, an increase of over $2 billion from the previous year
Revenue: $25.494 billion, a 9.97% increase from 2022
The price increases are corporate GREED, not labor costs. But we know the rightwingers want to keep people poor and begging and living marginal lives. The CEO of Kellog blamed workers for prices increases a couple years ago, but was caught on an investor call saying Kellog was in a good position for price taking... corporate speak for "we can raise prices because we can." #GREED
Minimum wage from the very beginning was always supposed to be a LIVING WAGE- not a wage relegated to the alleged unskilled.
And why are you lying about Red Lobster? It wasn't labor costs that closed the business. It was a vulture private equity company, San Francisco-based Golden Gate Capital, with $10 billion in assets who paid $2.1 billion to buy Red Lobster in May 2014. In case some reader doesn't know what private equity does, they buy companies with BORROWED money, then put that debt onto the company they just bought. This added debt load increases cost pressures on the company invariably leading to a downward spiral of employee terminations, bad customer service and eventual closures.
But guess who makes out like pirates? The private equity firm who not only got rid of the initial debt to by the company, they also pull in huge "management fees." Imagine I buy your car with my credit card but then transfer the debt to YOUR card as well as charge ongoing fees to you for me to maintain it.
