How much more will your Big Mac cost if we raise the minimum wage?

Sharkbiscuit

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The source I posted showed that franchise fees are 4% of gross sales and that rent averaged around 10.7% of gross sales, which puts that around 15% total. Even if rent was 25% of gross sales, that would not be far off from what a typical restaurant pays.
MCD is publicly traded and you didn't account for the franchisee having to buy the food from MCD. I trust your source's assertion of average profit margin for the franchisee, and that's a far bigger leap of faith than trusting a publicly traded company's profit margin available from any stock portal known to man.
 
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Sharkbiscuit

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For Fecal and others I would highly recommend reading the following book available for free on line. Its a simple quick and easy read. I really lays out basic economics nicely:

That book has nothing of value; it was written by Thomas Sowell, who is completely economically illiterate.

There's about as much valuable information in one of AOC's tweets.

First page: Ludwig Von Mises Institute.

LOL.

Von Mises was an incompetent retard.
 

grapedrink

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MCD is publicly traded and you didn't account for the franchisee having to buy the food from MCD. I trust your source's assertion of average profit margin for the franchisee, and that's a far bigger leap of faith than trusting a publicly traded company's profit margin available from any stock portal known to man.
Ok, so then what are the food costs? Food costs average 30% in the restaurant world and the retail price needs to be at least 3x the cost to be profitable. Which, given how cheap McDs burgers are, are probably not that much.

Again- look at the number of McDs employees relative to the profits. If I was running a business, I would hope to profit a whole lot more than $3k/year for every full time employee I hire. Manage 20 people to make an extra $60k/year? No thanks, I'll stick to FOREX day trading or something a little less stressful.
 

plasticbertrand

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I'll give you another example. Take child care for instance. Highly labor intensive, and each employee is only allowed to supervise a certain number of kids, therefore extremely sensitive to wage increases. Minimum wage goes up, which in turn raises the cost of child care. Therefore the person trying to raise kids on a McDs paycheck who all of a sudden got a raise is already losing a lot of that raise to the minimum wage increase. Same goes for where they buy their groceries.
Nobody should/would take a hit for raising the minimum wage except the very top, because they can very well afford it. They've been overpaid for decades.
That's why wealth inequality is out of control.

The crux of the problem is that infinite growth is not sustainable. Corpos want to suck shareholder dick and that's the only reason people at the bottom get paid pittance.

I don't know how or why you were talking about franchise owners because they are in the same boat as their employees.
 

Sharkbiscuit

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Ok, so then what are the food costs? Food costs average 30% in the restaurant world and the retail price needs to be at least 3x the cost to be profitable. Which, given how cheap McDs burgers are, are probably not that much.

Again- look at the number of McDs employees relative to the profits. If I was running a business, I would hope to profit a whole lot more than $3k/year for every full time employee I hire. Manage 20 people to make an extra $60k/year? No thanks, I'll stick to FOREX day trading or something a little less stressful.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

MCD profit margin is publicly available. I don't need to account for what Wall Street Journal told Reader's Digest told Mashable to come up with it.

On the one hand, the argument is made that raising the minimum wage has a 100% inelastic effect due to inflation and everyone else's bargaining power.

Except the franchisee. The franchisee, well there's some elasticity there because they are getting squeezed. And the child care. And the grocery store. And.....
 

plasticbertrand

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I like when people who have cell phones, nice cars, cable tv and smoke weed daily say they can’t afford rent.
Why do you care what they spend it on? None of your business.

Cell phones and cars are as necessary in the US as food and rent.

You constantly use dumb excuses not to pay people a living wage.
 

Sharkbiscuit

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I see people at the bus stop in MCD uniform with ratchet ass metro pcs phones that barely text.

Back to Hazlett and his profound stupidity:

There is a similar effect when personal incomes are taxed 50, 60, 75, and 90 percent. People begin to ask themselves why they should work six, eight, or ten months of the entire year for the government, and only six, four, or two months for themselves and their families. If they lose the whole dollar when they lose, but can keep only a dime of it when they win, they decide that it is foolish to take risks with their capital.
What a stupid potato. Like everyone under the sun works per-diem, has a choice about sitting out their job because they might get in a higher tax bracket, or even resents paying higher rates.

I pay a higher rate on the 2nd 10k I earn above the bottom bracket. Somehow, I don't resent the next $10k I earn.

His analogy about business losing money and taking risks holds water. In a literal casino. Basically zero blue chip investments are the equivalent of craps or roulette.

He then literally applies it to earned income. Like someone spends 40 hours/week and then has to roll a 7 or 11 to get their paycheck.

HMMM. I can invest in Procter and Gamble.

If I make money, I'll have to pay 15% capital gains tax.

Or a blue chip that's been around longer than I've been alive could spontaneously combust and go to zero.

100% downside potential, infinite upside, but I'll have to pay taxes on that profit.
 
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grapedrink

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Nobody should/would take a hit for raising the minimum wage except the very top, because they can very well afford it. They've been overpaid for decades.
Like my math clearly illustrates, any significant increase in wages will have to come from raising prices. Which is like, kinda the topic of the thread. If the corpos are only make a few dollars per hour off of each employee, exactly how much money is left to pay them more money? How much is your life improving with an extra $1 an hour?

The crux of the problem is that infinite growth is not sustainable. Corpos want to suck shareholder dick and that's the only reason people at the bottom get paid pittance.
You can’t squeeze blood from a rock either. Again, raising prices is the only way to pay people more and stay profitable, which will put some downward pressure on the amount of people who walk through the door.

I don't know how or why you were talking about franchise owners because they are in the same boat as their employees.
No, they aren't. If you are a franchise owner, it means that you had access to a few million dollars of your own or somebody else’s money to start up the location in the first place. Money that they could’ve invested in the stock market, their own restaurant concept, or any other kind of business. They chose to invest it in a McDs because they see value in the branding and marketing.

I personally would never want to open a franchise because I wouldn’t want to be the bitch of the corpo masters and forced to do everything by their rules, but some people are willing to put up with that. They’re choice.
 

Sharkbiscuit

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Like my math clearly illustrates, any significant increase in wages will have to come from raising prices. Which is like, kinda the topic of the thread. If the corpos are only make a few dollars per hour off of each employee, exactly how much money is left to pay them more money? How much is your life improving with an extra $1 an hour?
A whole lot more than the equivalent earnings per share affects the shareholders - I promise you that as someone who has owned stock and worked in a restaurant.

No, they aren't. If you are a franchise owner, it means that you had access to a few million dollars of your own or somebody else’s money to start up the location in the first place. Money that they could’ve invested in the stock market, their own restaurant concept, or any other kind of business. They chose to invest it in a McDs because they see value in the branding and marketing.

I personally would never want to open a franchise because I wouldn’t want to be the bitch of the corpo masters and forced to do everything by their rules, but some people are willing to put up with that. They’re choice.
I'm with FecalFace. The franchisee is getting screwed by capital (MCD), just like the employee.

They're like the officer in a small unit. They get some better perks, but they're still in a foxhole.
 
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GromsDad

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West of the Atlantic. East of the ICW.
I see people at the bus stop in MCD uniform with ratchet ass metro pcs phones that barely text.

Back to Hazlett and his profound stupidity:



What a stupid potato. Like everyone under the sun works per-diem, has a choice about sitting out their job because they might get in a higher tax bracket, or even resents paying higher rates.

I pay a higher rate on the 2nd 10k I earn above the bottom bracket. Somehow, I don't resent the next $10k I earn.

His analogy about business losing money and taking risks holds water. In a literal casino. Basically zero blue chip investments are the equivalent of craps or roulette.

He then literally applies it to earned income. Like someone spends 40 hours/week and then has to roll a 7 or 11 to get their paycheck.

HMMM. I can invest in Procter and Gamble.

If I make money, I'll have to pay 15% capital gains tax.

Or a blue chip that's been around longer than I've been alive could spontaneously combust and go to zero.

100% downside potential, infinite upside, but I'll have to pay taxes on that profit.
Tell us where in the book I referenced the quote you posted appears. Thanks.
 

Sharkbiscuit

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Tell us where in the book I referenced the quote you posted appears. Thanks.
Page 25, Chapter 5 "Taxes Discourage Production"

It should be called "Oversimplification For People Who Pay for Palm Readings and Base Life Decisions on Such"

Hazlett would just love NAFTA and TPP, that's for sure! (Chapters 11 and 12).
 

GDaddy

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That book has nothing of value; it was written by Thomas Sowell, who is completely economically illiterate.

There's about as much valuable information in one of AOC's tweets.

First page: Ludwig Von Mises Institute.

LOL.

Von Mises was an incompetent retard.
Sowell has an undegrad, Masters and PhD in Economics

Higher education and early career[edit]
After his discharge, Sowell worked a civil service job in Washington, DC, and attended night classes at Howard University, a historically black college. His high scores on the College Board exams and recommendations by two professors helped him gain admission to Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics.[4][8] He earned a Master's degree from Columbia University the following year.[8]
Sowell has said that he was a Marxist "during the decade of my 20s;" accordingly, one of his earliest professional publications was a sympathetic examination of Marxist thought vs. Marxist–Leninist practice.[9] However, his experience working as a federal government intern during the summer of 1960 caused him to reject Marxian economics in favor of free market economic theory. During his work, Sowell discovered an association between the rise of mandated minimum wages for workers in the sugar industry of Puerto Rico and the rise of unemployment in that industry. Studying the patterns led Sowell to theorize that the government employees who administered the minimum wage law cared more about their own jobs than the plight of the poor.[10]
Sowell received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968.[8] His dissertation was titled "Say's Law and the General Glut Controversy".[11] Sowell had initially chosen Columbia University to study under George Stigler, who would later receive the Nobel Prize in Economics. When he learned that Stigler had moved to the University of Chicago, he followed him there.[12]
 

Sharkbiscuit

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LOL the minimum wage chapter literally starts with an assertion that the same rules govern labor as govern other "costs".

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Yeah, people get cheaper over time.

There are like, new discoveries of rich veins of people in Central Asian mountains and sh!t. You can just mine them.

Remember the time some of that chrome-moly we bought to fabricate parts went on strike?

Remember all the time we put into training the new batch of rubber on how to be a tire? We had to have orientation, OSHA regs....

LOLOLOLOLOLOL
 

Sharkbiscuit

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Sowell has an undegrad, Masters and PhD in Economics

Higher education and early career[edit]
After his discharge, Sowell worked a civil service job in Washington, DC, and attended night classes at Howard University, a historically black college. His high scores on the College Board exams and recommendations by two professors helped him gain admission to Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics.[4][8] He earned a Master's degree from Columbia University the following year.[8]
Sowell has said that he was a Marxist "during the decade of my 20s;" accordingly, one of his earliest professional publications was a sympathetic examination of Marxist thought vs. Marxist–Leninist practice.[9] However, his experience working as a federal government intern during the summer of 1960 caused him to reject Marxian economics in favor of free market economic theory. During his work, Sowell discovered an association between the rise of mandated minimum wages for workers in the sugar industry of Puerto Rico and the rise of unemployment in that industry. Studying the patterns led Sowell to theorize that the government employees who administered the minimum wage law cared more about their own jobs than the plight of the poor.[10]
Sowell received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968.[8] His dissertation was titled "Say's Law and the General Glut Controversy".[11] Sowell had initially chosen Columbia University to study under George Stigler, who would later receive the Nobel Prize in Economics. When he learned that Stigler had moved to the University of Chicago, he followed him there.[12]
Right, and he's a conservative, and therefore economically illiterate.

Look at his conclusion re: sugar in Puerto Rico.

You could come to the same conclusion about slavery and cotton, as if the cotton gin didn't exist.
 

afoaf

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I love these threads were people remind us who is really bad at economics
 

Sharkbiscuit

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I love these threads were people remind us who is really bad at economics
Nonononono, the US has been protecting its sugar industry for centuries, and right after the snafu in Cuba, some Cubans came to the US, and look who gets the most subsidies, and must beat Castro muh Cold War.

But it's some minimum wage policy that did it. Jones Act is irrelevant. Being on I-95 or I-10, irrelevant.

Minimum wage. That's what did it.

Okay, we have one example. Better apply it to all of Macroeconomics!
 
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