Oh, if one person does it, everyone must.

just takes a second to look up, you realize that, right?

Nothing there that demonstrates that if someone ever eats at McD's then they're greater than 50% to eat there 5 times a week.

Well yes, I was engaged in a slight amount of hyperbole originally. But clearly a large chunk of the population that eats fast food eats way the **** too much fast food.

One study I found said the mean times per week of FF consumption was 2.2 for men, 1.6 for women. I think the 25% of the pop that ranks in at 7 a week skews that number a bit, no?

Edit for quick and dirty math

Using men at 2.2 avg/wk and assuming 25% of men eat 7 times a week (we know men eat more ff than women, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt), that means the other 75% eat fast food 0.6 times per week.

Thus, you either barely eat fast food, or you eat it all the ****ing time. QED

I think you're misinterpreting the statistic. The wording in your link is ambiguous: "over 25 percent of Americans consume fast food every day." Does this mean 25% are eating fast food 7 days a week? Or does it mean on any given day, 1 in 4 Americans eats fast food?

As best I can tell, the number comes from the 2001 book Fast Food Nation. This page, an interview with the author, has the same statistic in a clearer way: "Every day about one quarter of the U.S. population eats fast food."

This doesn't really detract from the larger point: Americans (especially kids) eat a lot of fast food, and it's really unhealthy. But the idea that 1 in 4 are eating it literally every day of their lives is overstating reality.

Why do any of you care what someone makes where? Or, about min wage whether it's 5 an hour, or 35 an hour?

A. Those of you against higher wages (in context of this thread) act like companies are forced to hire people they don't want to hire.

B. Those of you for higher wages (in context of this thread) act like workers are forced to take crappy jobs.

A Rebuttal: If I have a small business, and I have to pay minimum wage of $20 an hour, I could never profit.

A Re-Rebuttal: Then, either don't start the business here, you don't have to, or charge amounts that make you profitable, and like any small business, make it worth it. If it's not worth it, then you're dumb for starting the business.

B Rebuttal: We all need jobs, and in this economy you have to take what's out there or starve.

B Re-Rebuttal: No you don't.

Good summary, except B Re-Rebuttal is clearly wrong. Food and shelter do cost money, without which one cannot routinely obtain either with any regularity.

market equilibrium reaches a point where n workers can satisfy n+k population needs...

guess what happens to k part of the population (or what is constantly happening in low growth industries that are close to eq. point. like McDonald's)

the problem is when wages are low you start a business,and 5 years from now when margins are razor thin you get hit by the minimum wage increase...

Haven't been there in a long time but when I ate at McDucks in Paris they served beer and the idea go eating American cuisine made it popular. So is there carry out or drive up escargot joints in France? Not sure.

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/06/1440...-big-fat-told/

I have actually changed my stance on minimum wage increases. **** 15$….

Hopefully these cities start implementing $20 or $25 dollar min wage…

Then more people will be laid off…….less people will be hired…..which means more people will do drugs and sell them…….which means more and more and more episodes of derelicts getting arrested on Cops. Heart.

Maybe more people will stop living under the delusion perpetuated by the rich that jobs are this limited thing and because they're limited, supply and demand demands low wages and they'll start making their own jobs.

But nahhhhhhhhhh.

I like

It's always interesting when people believe that the economic principles of pricing don't apply to the pricing of labor, and that government price fixing is somehow exempt from the well-known effects that price fixing always has on a market.

Maybe because there are studies with econometric models that suggest minimum wage hikes have minimum effects on employment levels.

http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/min-wage-ff-nj.pdf as an example.

Sorry, Econ101 isn't real world economics. Data suggests that the doom n gloom right wing forecasts of unemployment after minimum wage hikes is not exactly the entire whole hearted one hundred and one percent truth.

In the late 60's min wage was 5 silver quarters…

So someone making min wage in the last 60's was living like a person making $17.50/hour today.

I don't get how it alludes you people that raping coin money and the Federal Reserve are not huge factors in why people are drowning and can't get ahead.

Your government and corrupt politicians are the culprits behind this.

WE NEED HONEST SOUND MONEY. NOT CONVERSATIONS ABOUT HOW MUCH WE HAVE TO RAISE THE MIN WAGE FOR MCDONALDS WORKERS. THIS STUPID CONVERSATION NEVER GOES AWAY AND IT WILL NEVER STOP GOING AWAY UNLESS THE MONEY IS FIXED. WE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE IN 25 YEARS ALSO. LIKE IT IS GOING TO HALT AT 15$ WITH AN EVER DECREASING UNSTABLE DOLLAR VALUE?

YOU PEOPLE AREN"T IDIOTS. WHY NOT solve THE PROBLEM INSTEAD OF FIXING IT TEMPORARILY, EVEN THOUGH IT WON'T BE FIXED TEMPORARILY BECAUSE THERE ARE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES.

I go to school for Economics. You #feel things. I will choose what the data says over knuckleheads like you who think you know how things work from what you read on non-empirical sites on the web.

What is so knuckle-headish about what I am saying???

Sound honest money is a real thing. We don't have it.

Historical "data" will tell you that all fiat currencies collapse.

Minimum wage whiners continue to whine and whine about it how it needs to go up. Will that stop at the $15 dollar mark? In 20 years will $15 minimum wage be enough? No they will keep whining. And you idiots will still be championing them, while at the same time championing the corrupt ******* politicians who say they want to help the poor oh poor riffraff, when they are really only continually **** them harder and harder.

How about fix the goddamn problem instead of letting it go on indefinitely???

How about instituting sound money principles? No we can't do that though….we want our scumbag politicians and the corporations that control them to get richer and richer at the expense of the poor.

Certainly those economic models you refer to would indicate there is a threshold where the minimum wage would be harmful to job creation. For instance raising the minimum wage to something ridiculous like $50 an hour would have a far different effect than raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour. It would be interesting to know what the models predict at various minimum wage levels.

Fiat currencies aren't the only currencies that have collapsed in economic history. Governments have mismanaged monetary policy throughout history. With that said, tell me who the most egregious corporations are that are controlling politicians in exploiting the poor. Is McDonalds one of them?

Someone is mad their shiny pile of coins keeps eroding in value and lashing out.

Lol at transacting in shiny coins settling the issues with low skilled worker pay.

Feel free to cherry-pick your studies, when there is also a huge established body of work showing the empirical negative effects of minimum wage laws in every time and every place they have ever been put in place or raised. The only thing most economists really debate is the effect of small relative increases to an existing minimum wage in the short term (which might sometimes appear net positive, or at least have some desired effects). Over time the pricing of labor behaves exactly like the pricing of anything else, and price fixing has the same effect on labor as it does on other things.

That said, it can be true that raising minimum wages can have some desired effects that may be more important to policy makers than the inevitable negative effects. But those consequences shouldn't be ignored when setting policy.

I bet the chicken got smaller too...

I don't eat at McD's much, but I'm certain that the egg is smaller in the Egg McMuffin. And they only put a half slice of cheese on a Filet o' Fish now... These changes were done some time ago...

we should differentiate when the increase in minimum wage is to negate inflation level and when the ppl on minimum wage get an increase in purchasing power...

we should also understand two factors:
a) when the increase cuts into profits (this often produces no harmful effect cuz labor is like a commodity)
b) when the increase spills into reduction of jobs because the margins and profit were too small to absorb the increase

I am not cherry picking. There's plenty of literature that states hikes in minimum wage has little effect if any in employment levels from the past twenty or so years. And, no, the pricing of labor is different than pricing of other things. That assumption is absurd. You basically are stating every good or service has the same elasticity.

Often an increase in minimum wage doesn't lead to an increase in net payroll. Usually the $ spent on labor stays about flat when all-in costs of labor are counted (wages, training, benefits, etc). So assuming a wash there, the negative effects are far more broad than simply looking at an employment statistic (even though the number of employed workers sometimes DOES go down).

When we examine the real goal, which is to reduce poverty or increase mean standards of living across a population, minimum wage increases never do that either. Usually just the opposite happens. Other effects include changing the labor distribution in detrimental ways (like fewer teens able to enter the labor market and thus don't become productive citizens as soon as they would have, or not at all), increased turnover (and it's costly to replace existing workers with higher skilled workers who provide value to match the higher wage), price increases to make up the costs, and other ripple effects.