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Eggs $1.39/dozen!
A guy walks into the little grocer to buy some eggs. The sign on the display case says eggs are $1.39/dozen, but there aren’t any eggs there; the case is completely empty.
Frustrated, he goes out and walks across the street to the little mom-and-pop food store on the opposite corner. They’ve got eggs, but they’re asking $2.59 a dozen. He grudgingly buys a dozen, but he pauses on the way out to grumble to the owner that the eggs are only $1.39/dozen across the street.
“So why don’t you buy them across the street?” the owner asks.
“Because they’re out,” the man replies.
“Well, when we don’t have eggs, they’re $1.39/dozen here, too,” the owner says.
How do you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs — or golden arches, in this case? You increase mandated minimum wage to the point that one of the greatest engines of entry-level job formation in history, McDonald’s Corporation, finds it cost-effect to replace unskilled kids with machines.
Fortune Magazine reports that McDonald’s will add automated ordering kiosks to another 8,000+ of their U.S. locations over the next year, more than half of their U.S. stores.
I’ve read varying statistics, but all of them put the percentage of the American workforce that held an entry-level job at a McDonald’s restaurant in the double-digit percentages: it seems likely that more than one in ten young people held a McDonald’s job early in their career. (Two of my six kids did.)
Entry-level jobs are critical. The people working them rarely have the skills to do anything else. They rarely have to earn a “living” wage, because they aren’t supporting themselves. They’re making money and learning the fundamentals of work: showing up, being punctual, following instructions, dealing with customers. Some of them also learn deeper lessons about taking on responsibility and being rewarded for it; most of them learn that they aspire to do more, and move on when they can.
McDonald’s Corporation doesn’t really love us, no matter what the advertisements suggest. They’re a business, and a well-managed one. When it stops being cost-effective to hire unskilled young people and teach them how to fish, they’ll buy machines instead. And they’ll never go back.
And someday the McDonald’s manager will patiently explain that, why yes, they pay $15/hour for entry-level positions.
They just don’t have any.
Published in Economics
It’s not so bad. Really. Just don’t hold up the show for the people in line behind you.
Taco Bell is one of just a handful of fast food joints I simply won’t eat at. Jack in the Box is another. Why would you go to taco time when you could go to the taco truck, instead?
Nazi.
(That isn’t a CoC violation, is it? Can I get an opinion here?)
It’s bizarre. Why would a Nazi go to the taco truck?