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This is the wrong argument and I'm tired of it. The real argument here is - McDonald's et al don't need to raise prices because of the new wage law. They choose to raise prices rather than cut executive pay, or adjust profit margins, or make any other kind of internal adjustments.
This discussion needs to stop being "x raised prices because they had to and government bad" and start being "Billion-dollar-profit company is screwing over consumers because they can".
Even worse, they have empirical proof that they are able to use good ingredients, pay a living wage, provide paid parental leave, and give retirement and medical while having lower prices than they charge here. It's called Denmark.
This is like the housing shortage issue, the real issue is not that there are not enough houses and we need to build more, it's that wealthy people need to adjust their hoarding to leave enough for others to have a home.
We know of course wealthy people will not do this voluntarily, so that leaves two options -- we need more good people running for office to displace the psychopathic hoarder class (and people to vote for them, i.e. political reform) or some sort of revolution that eliminates that hoarder class.
so that leaves two options – we need more good people running for office to displace the psychopathic hoarder class (and people to vote for them, i.e. political reform) or some sort of revolution that eliminates that hoarder class.
Well, you say two options, but I only see one restated two times with slightly different wordings. As in, it's gonna be more or less both of those things, to some extent.
the real issue is not that there are not enough houses and we need to build more, it’s that wealthy people need to adjust their hoarding to leave enough for others to have a home.
Yep. It's fucking insane that we're having to pretend like there's not enough to go around when there's just not enough to satiate a minuscule part of the population for whom nothing will ever be enough.
It's like a hospital pretending there's not enough supplies to give patients with terminal cancer and broken bones pain medication because 95% of meds are being shot up by some junkies on the roof, and everyone knows it and even curry favour from the junkies (who wouldn't mind stealing your grandmas cancer meds.)
It’s like a hospital pretending there’s not enough supplies to give patients with terminal cancer and broken bones pain medication because 95% of meds are being shot up by some junkies on the roof, and everyone knows it and even curry favour from the junkies (who wouldn’t mind stealing your grandmas cancer meds.)
I love this analogy
Well thank you. Now that I thought about where it came from, one guy who definitely helped me realise how many traits proper junkies and some hustle-life hedgies share. Sam Polk.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html
IN my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted.
Wealth addiction was described by the late sociologist and playwright Philip Slater in a 1980 book, but addiction researchers have paid the concept little attention. Like alcoholics driving drunk, wealth addiction imperils everyone. Wealth addicts are, more than anybody, specifically responsible for the ever widening rift that is tearing apart our once great country. Wealth addicts are responsible for the vast and toxic disparity between the rich and the poor and the annihilation of the middle class. Only a wealth addict would feel justified in receiving $14 million in compensation — including an $8.5 million bonus — as the McDonald’s C.E.O., Don Thompson, did in 2012, while his company then published a brochure for its work force on how to survive on their low wages. Only a wealth addict would earn hundreds of millions as a hedge-fund manager, and then lobby to maintain a tax loophole that gave him a lower tax rate than his secretary.
It's literally the worst addiction there is, because with money, you can get any other thing you might also be addicted to, and with enough money, you don't just start perceiving the world differently (like say when you're reeeaally high on certain substances), your world literally and actually changes, twists, as no-one around you wants to be honest with you and you end up fucked up and delusional like JKR or Elon Musk.
And that sort of thing happens with drug dealers as well, now that I think about it, actually. A lot of them, even minor ones, start thinking they're hot shit because they have some drooling junkies chasing then anywhere, chasing freebies.
I wish there was a goddamn economic calculator. Revenue minus (operating costs + re-investment + R&D) then divide it amongst all employees. Let us rank companies based on how bad that number is vs what the employees are actually paid.
Not an economist.
Also, the amount they raise the prices is much more than necessary to “break even”. This is what they always do.