$15 for “You want fries with that?”

So, apparently, some fast food workers throughout the USA are planning to strike for a $15/hour wage.  This comes on the heels of a previous fast food strike last November in Detroit, Chicago, NYC, and Seattle.  AKA, places this Texan really doesn’t want to visit.

Ok, let me throw some cold water on this notion that’s full of bovine excrement.

First, minimum wage laws aside, employers pay employees what they are worth.  (And I’d encourage you to read about the minimum wage from a free market economist like Walter Williams, Milton Friedman, or Thomas Sowell.)  How many of us consistently get service and quality food from fast food employees?  You know, accurately filled orders, the correct change, and pleasant service. Would any of us be willing to pay sit-down restaurant prices for Nachos Bell Grande or a Big Mac?  If so, there are hippies in Austin and Berkeley that’d like whatever you’re smoking.

On a more passionate note, I can’t justify fast food workers getting this kind of pay when our armed forces and first responders don’t even make $15/hour.  This doesn’t even cover child care workers or nursing home staff, people trusted to care for the most vulnerable of us.

My heartless, insensitive side (you know, the part you come here for…) says that the free, open market shouldn’t pay $15/hour to subsidize your poor life choices.  Some of the strikers reciting their talking points (probably prepared by the successors of ACORN) say they can’t provide for their family on fast food wages.  Well, you made two bad decisions.  First, you’re not employable at any other position, whether due to a lack of education or a lack of workplace skills.  Second, you decided to have a family on these wages.  Your poor decisions do not make a crisis.  Sorry.  Your solution is education — whether in obtaining skills to make you more attractive to a better career or in family planning.   And education doesn’t necessarily mean a four year college degree.  Nothing wrong with learning a skilled trade.  (That’s another post for another day.  The myth that everyone needs college.)

In short, I seriously doubt that these fast food workers even realize what they’re on strike for.  My guess is that a….community organizer…. stirred this up. Maybe the $15/hour will disqualify them for the ObamaCare subsidy?

Comments

  1. Good post. I predict a lot of “Help Wanted” signs on franchises with striking workers.

  2. Good post. I predict a lot of “Help Wanted” signs on franchises with striking workers.

  3. So what is an independent franchise owner to do? Offset the wage cost by hiring fewer workers? Fewer workers to do the same job-but we can’t give the fewer workers more hours because that would put the shop owner over the ObamaCare hour limit…..

    damn, my head hurts…

  4. firefighter zero says

    Damn it people! Learn a trade! Quit working at McDonalds to finance your APPLE habit (while I pay for your college education in art history) and learn to weld.