As the Occupy Wall Street movement of hippies is coming to a well overdo demise, these same people are now turning their attention to fast food restaurants. On their website it reads the following:
Rise Up New York! Smash Austerity! Support Workers! The article had the above picture along side of it. Call me a little paranoid but doesn’t their slogans and the picture have a strikingly similarity to the slogans and pictures of the 1917 Russian Bolshevik Revolution led by Lenin? Well if it doesn’t, it should.
Now the Occupy Wall Street movement has turned their misguided attention and communistic diatribe to the fast food industry. Calling for a living wage, they demand fast food companies increase their minimal wage from 7.25 up to 14 or 15 dollars. Emotionally, I hope one day all people can earn a livening wage. Rationally, what I know that these people in the Occupy Wall Street movement fail to realize, is that such a rise would essentially bankrupt all small business.
You may scoff at this statement, but crunch some of these numbers. I will low ball it. Say McDonalds is open 16 hours a day and has on average 6 employees there at a time. It would be an increase of 7 dollars an hour X 16 hours X 6 employees = 672 dollars a day. Then you times that by 363 days open and you have a total of $243,936 dollars per year.
Because the profit margins are relatively low for fast food restaurants, there is not much room to make up the difference. Fast food comes cheap and for a reason. The only way they would be able to pay 15 dollars an hour is if they raised their prices. And if they did that, no one would go there- especially when the hot ticket items exclusively come off the dollar menu.
Plus, who would have to make up the quarter of a million dollar increase in expenses? The answer is, the owner of the local McDonalds chain. And I can tell you that if that owner received a pay cut of a quarter of a million dollars, they would be bankrupt. Then, they would have to shut down their store and not ever open a new one. And where does that leave all those employed by that McDonalds or the possible future employees if the owner opens up a few more restaurants? It leaves them unemployed. Also, not to point out the elephant in the room, but who is going to pay all their health benefits once Obamacare comes into play? Money doesn’t grow on trees.
You want a true American solution to the problem and not another socialistic/communist approach that raises taxes or makes running a business no longer profitable? How about the government make proper monetary incentives for the business owner to raise the employees’ income and start new businesses. Instead of making the economic burden always on the entrepreneur or tax payer, give that person financial incentives to raise their employees pay and grow their business. That’s how the government can help. That’s why Obama’s plans are all failures and the Occupy Wall Street movement has no legitimacy- because neither understand how the real world works!