Surreal.
Wow, employers are really out there trying to help their employees! Just yesterday Walmart was busy asking for charity to feed their employees. Now McDonalds is telling workers to live in unheated homes in order to pay their bills.The Economic Populist
Gets worse than that folks. McDonalds also told employees to return their Christmas gifts for extra cash. Sell your gifts on eBay! The website low pay is not ok has been tracking the absurdities and made the below video.
McDonald's Tells Employees To Make Rent Go Without Heat
Robert Oak
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBush:
ReplyDelete1.) Raised the minimum wage 2.00
2.) Increased government spending
3.) Granted Drug Coverage to Old Folks
Obama:
1.) Reformed healthcare
2.) Cut deficits and shrunk government
3.) Ended the war
Bush was called a blathering idiot that enraged Democrats. Obama is a good guy and gets a pass from Dems. Funny old world.
right Ryan this moron partisanship is funny to watch from the left...
ReplyDeleteOK now for this moron Oak:
I have the S&Ps (which includes McD's) this year turning out like this (globally):
Profits after taxes: $1T
of which those proceeds will be dealt with thus:
$500B will go to dividends most of which will go to the pension funds of the seniors that will use the USDs they get from said pensions to go to McDs in the morning for their egg Mcmuffins made by these workers who cant afford heat...
$350B will go to CAPEX which will will create income and jobs for current generation workers (other than at McDs)...
$150B will be saved or 'retained earnings' (and that is globally)...
So, I guess what this moron Oak is suggesting is that if McDs and all the other firms were to forego the 50% of this $150B in retained earnings that S&Ps earn in the US by I suppose just giving these balances to the employees as a raise that this would somehow bring widespread economic justice???
So this all must just be a $75B issue to Oak...
The cancellation of the payroll tax holiday this past Jan 1 for all workers lowered their collective incomes by more than twice this $75b figure and things WERE THE SAME before ....
Try again Oak you moron...
McDonalds has NO AUTHORITY to fix this situation...
That's the thing that is disingenuous in the latest round of the Dem rhetoric.(admittedly it polls well). To beat on Walmart, Koch and various other right leaning companies simply hides the fact that Dems are pushing policies that destroy workers.
ReplyDeleteIf Walmart doubled the wages of all their workers, it doesn't fix a damn thing for the nation. Of course Baker and the unions would use it as a symbol for justice, but it doesn't fix anything.
The only thing that fixes the system is for Democrats to work for policies that unabashedly cause higher incomes and wages across the board, trade, investment, education, research, labor, fiscal policies... everywhere all at once. Or to create a new party that will.
If they doubled the minimum wage over 10 years, Walmart wouldn't really care because all their competition is also paying more... Dems find most their support on the Coasts where wages are high and people maintain their cushy lifestyles by profiting from production that happens in low wage places so it is highly unlikely the old Donkey will change. I sometimes think we have a reversal in the parties, where Repubs who are sensitive to votes from the poor working classes are beginning to become the populist party for the poor and the Dems are the two-faced party of the elite for the new Rich. When you are from Texas that empty 1960s style Dem rhetoric is particularly nauseating because I see daily what Repubs actually do well and where they fail. They aren't the evil bastards that Dems imagine and Dems don't exactly create panaceas, look no further than the morass that is the upper Midwest or San Fran where exclusion reigns supreme...
What's needed is a rebalancing of labor share v. profit share and there are policy options for doing they through incentives or redistribution, as well as legislation and regulation strengthening labor bargaining power and addressing the embedded labor in imports. Should also address policy that favors US foreign investment over domestic investment that also disadvantages US labor.
ReplyDeleteCapital will argue that this is "inefficient" use of capital. Well, just how is high unemployment an efficient use of labor in which includes "human capital" in the form of knowledge and skill.
The game is tilt too far in favor of capital and against labor in the US at present. The resulting inequality, high unemployment, etc, are creating social, political, and economic dysfunction.
Policy needs to address that. Capital is not going to and labor is not in a position to do so. Unless government steps up, the US is headed for increasing trouble.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteThat is the Marxist "capital v labor" paradigm that should have died with gold imo...
We're going nowhere unless govt gets the govt topline moving north again via big spending increases for big public purpose projects, these "capitalists" so-called don't even know how our current system works.
govt has to get the topline going north and as "currency monopolist" start to do more direct price setting (ie 'price NOT quantity')...
Forget about the banks growing credit without the required leading increase in income that ONLY the govt sector can foment...
These people, "capitalists" or whatever, who think that the govt can hold the topline here at $4.25T annual for the foreseeable future and somehow the banks can start to grow bank credit in this environment and turn this thing around are ignorant beyond OUR comprehension...
AND the S&P 500 firms (not to mention McD's itself) cant solve this problem by converting to "non-profit" status as implied by Oak here...
ALL the $75B that the S&P 500 firms retain domestically wouldnt even put a dent into what is needed at this point...
rsp,
"In a monetary economy, production occurs not to satisfy 'needs';, but to satisfy the desire to accumulate wealth in money form. Production is not undertaken by a Robinson Crusoe type agent who is both a producer and consumer; instead, there are those who own private property, and those who do not — and so must work for wages. However, the existence of propertyless workers extends market demand, and extends the use of money as a medium of exchange. Unlike production in, say, a tribal society, capitalist production always involves money. The capitalist must hire workers to produce the goods that will be sold on markets. As production takes time, the capitalist must pay wages now, before sales receipts are realized. Furthermore, because the future is uncertain, sales receipts are uncertain. This means that interest must be paid on liabilities and that capitalist production is only undertaken on the expectation of making profits. Thus, capitalist production always involves 'money now, for more money later'. Since money contracts always include interest, and because contracts always are of the nature of money now for more money later, this means that monetary contracts will always grow over time at a rate determined in part by the rate of interest.... This generates a logic of accumulation: all monetary economies must grow. If they do not, accumulation falters and nominal contracts cannot be met. The logic of monetary production, then, requires nominal economic growth. It cannot be constrained by a fixed money supply, nor by a commodity money whose quantity expands only upon new discoveries." (Wray 1999: 180).
ReplyDeleteWray, L. R. 1999. “The Development and Reform of the Modern International Monetary System,” in J. Deprez and J. T. Harvey (eds), Foundations of International Economics: Post-Keynesian Perspectives, Routledge, London and New York, p. 171–199
(cited by Lord Keynes)