'Course, with the loss in sales McD's training costs and real estate management/maintenance costs would go down as well.
BTW, I don't buy this $0.68 bullsh*t. What's the next step if you buy that? This: "what's a measly 68 cents compared to giving someone a 'living wage'? Certainly you can't be opposed to doubling the minimum wage if it's only going to cost you an extra 68 cents to buy your favorite fast food, right?"
The proof is, in fact, right there in that same article from agit-prop mouthpiece ABC:
Another estimate suggests the price of a Big Mac would jump 5 cents, or 1 percent, if the minimum wage was raised to $10.50, according to a letter signed by 100 economists in favor of raising the U.S. minimum wage.
“McDonald’s could cover fully half of the cost increase by raising the price of a Big Mac, on average, from $4 to $4.05,” the letter said. “The remaining half of the adjustment could come through small productivity gains or a slightly more equal distribution of companies’ total revenues.”
(Emphasis mine)Aww, c'mon,it won't hurt a bit (but you may feel a little sick).
That this story is simply carrying water for the liberal/progressive political agenda is further buttressed by this mouthwash:
Amy Traub, senior policy analyst with progressive public policy organization Demos, favors raising the minimum wage for larger economic reasons, explaining that when low-wage workers have more money in their pockets, they tend to spend it immediately.
That smacks of the same b.s. the democrat party ran up as an excuse for increasing unemployment welfare benefits: if you give them the money they'll spend it and create an economic "miracle" recovery.
What Ms. Traub - who clearly got her degrees (if she has any) from We Dun Edukamated U. - is indulging herself in, without being honest about it, is the functional equivalent of single-entry bookkeeping. Ms. Traub, where, pray tell, have you accounted for the lost economic activity caused by the forcible reallocation of spending from other economic activities to fast food? There are free lunches out there, Ms. Traub, and money doesn't grow on trees, so if people who buy fast food are forced to spend more of their money buying fast food, they necessarily have less money to spend on other goods and services, which necessarily means that those other businesses will suffer, they will earn less, and their employees will earn less, and they will have to start firing staff.
That's correct, Ms. Traub: what you've conveniently ignored, or covered up, is the fact that there would be little or no net economic gain once
all of the effects are taken into account because raising the minimum wage would put people out of work, to cut right down to the nub of it. It is one thing entirely to establish a very low minimum wage as an outer limit on the otherwise unfettered bargaining positions of employer and employee - that usually has only small negative economic effects, principally because the losses occasioned by fewer hired people are generally offset by the additional transaction costs saved by taking off the table any negotiation over just how low an employee is willing to go to be an employee. It is another thing entirely to establish a minimum wage that cuts so far up into the current pay scale that the foregone transaction costs - which are marginal costs, not fixed costs - can no longer offset the massive economic damage caused by the number of people who would no longer be employed as a result of that too-high minimum wage.