Quote (Thor123422 @ 17 Feb 2021 15:50)
Oh yeah. That is definitely the central point. You totally aren't missing the important part.
I missed nothing. First, I showed that you yourself can make a burger that's higher quality than McDonald's for less than a dollar. Second, you're paying way higher than what McDonalds is paying for their pre-prepped super-processed, nasty garbage. They get cheaper EVERYTHING than you, they pay no retail markup and have an independent supply chain to minimize all costs.
However, based solely on the national average that the mcdonalds worker produces 60-75 burgers an hour, and the above figures for you making the burgers yourself, that $0.23 profit you'd make selling your burger for $1 while producing 60-75/hour would be $13.80-$17.25/hour. Now, that doesn't include any overhead costs, which would have to come out prior to figuring on pay scales. So your power costs, building maintenance costs, etc. etc. Suffice it to say, you'd likely make less than minimum wage.
As far as taxpayer handouts for McDonalds and such, I'm not sure I see the point on this. The majority of taxpayer handouts go to single mothers, who are the recipients of 90% of all welfare payouts. The primary reason for this? Insuring the children have a home and food and clothes. And I'm not certain that this would change even with a minimum wage increase to $15/hour. It didn't in Seattle, and hasn't with increases to anywhere from $12-$13.75 elsewhere. In fact, what we've seen more of is people who were full time freaking out due to hitting over $25K/annual and seeing the potential loss of benefits, and getting their employers to cut them down to part time, so they'd still get both benefits and the steady source of income that'd reward them with real cash and earned income credits.
Like, the point was mostly trash in general. The question of could McDonalds pay more? Sure. How much more? Depends on the specific McDonalds. Some 4 years ago a manager for McDonalds broke down the cost to make the dollar burger, and after all overhead was figured in, including payroll, they make $0.08 profit for a dollar burger, and $0.21 for the $1.29 "McDouble" cheeseburger. Unless it's a franchise, the profit goes to corporate, who only doles profit back out to the individual stores as it sees fit.
McDonalds, much like Amazon and Walmart, are not making some massive killing on a "per item" basis. All three of their business models requires massive amounts sold for the model to work. How much of that total profit should be kicked back down to the basic worker? I honestly wouldn't even know where to start to answer that question. I know that at least in the cases of Walmart and Amazon, they have "Company Minimums" that are higher than standard minimums, making them preferred employers in low wage low cost of living rural areas. But how much more should they pay? Dunno.