Aaron H
Aaron H
Jul 10, 2017 · 1 min read

I disagree here — I think market forces would probably offer LESS for these wages, if they it weren’t for that whole “minimum wage” thing.

The monetary valuation of labor is broken. If you were to temporarily set “net profit” expectations to 0% for a business, where all profits are redirected 100% to the labor that produces them, the resulting wages would be FAR higher.

Example: a McDonald’s that sells 100 meals at $5 apiece, staffing 5 people for 8 hours, would gross $12.5 per person per hour, and they’d only be cooking 1 meal every 4 or 5 minutes. Given that there are both takeout and counter windows, it would probably be closer to double that, meaning they could be grossing $25 / employee / hour. (these what-ifs are certainly far lower than the actual volume moved). There are Cost of Goods Sold to factor in, here, of course, as well as overhead and whatnot. I don’t know what those would be, off-hand, but if they result in $17-$18 per hour in production costs, perhaps McDonald’s should rethink it’s monetization strategy.

The system of “what can I get away with paying you and still make the profit I want” is very inhumane. Should be reframed to “what can I earn in profits if I’m paying you what I should be?”

    Aaron H

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    Aaron H

    Left-leaning humanist with passions for social / socioeconomic equality and equity and compassionate public policy for the betterment of all.