Should a person making food at McDonalds be able to afford rent and groceries with their paycheck?

[Will Ross]

L

Meanwhile there's a thread dozens of pages long with daily posts for months talking about IT industry layoffs. Any job you can do sitting at a laptop remotely can be done for a fraction of a price by Pradeep and 'nem in India. Or AI will become smart enough to do those jobs the same way manual labor gets automated. It seems like common sense that any desk job is on the chopping block to get outsourced or automated by technology.

No one here ever talks about trades. But getting into a trade ain't always easy either. Apprentice plumbers are expected to buy their own work trucks on an apprentice wage. Many of these trade apprenticeship programs require people to sign contracts to be with the same employers for years under market value and if they break contract, they owe tens of thousands in debt.

Ain't no clear cut path to success in America no more. Boomers could work at the same factory down the street from after high school graduation to retirement, buy a house, have new cars every few years, raise 3 kids, put them through college and retire on a fat pension all without working more than 40 hours a week or going into any debt.

Boomers who went to college could pay off their student loan debt with a part time summer job and were pretty much guaranteed well paying white collar work post graduation. But America is the land of personal accountability for its citizens, but corporations are never held accountable for their deliberate acts to fukk us all over.

It’s way easier today to be successful than ever before. Fast food workers are making the same as skilled workers. And yet keep talking about the need more pay

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

It’s way easier today to be successful than ever before. Fast food workers are making the same as skilled workers. And yet keep talking about the need more pay

it's not, there's absolutely no study to back what you're saying:

• economic mobility is tougher Socioeconomic status in the U.S. harder to change than any time in past 150 years | Penn Today
• job requirements are higher, sending more people into debt 'Degree inflation': How the four-year degree became required
• basic living costs are a great deal higher vs the average salary - more people are spending more than 50% of their income on housing that ever before Home prices are now rising much faster than incomes, studies show
• people can't save money and definitely aren't able to save enough for retirement New Survey Says You Probably Aren't Saving Enough for Retirement | The Motley Fool
  

  ‘At 75, I still have to work’: millions of Americans can’t afford to retire

  Number of US workers aged 75 and up expected to increase 96.5% over next decade as some say ‘we must work until we die’

  www.theguardian.com
• healthcare costs more
  

  Why health-care costs are rising in the U.S. more than anywhere else

  Health-care spending is rising in the U.S. more than anywhere else around the world.

  www.cnbc.com
• childcare costs more
• gas costs more
• cars cost more

don't let the fact that there are more long hour, low wage hustles like gig work or one in a million high income leisure jobs like being a influencer skew reality - it's harder than ever to be successful/survive

and please clarify what min wage workers are making the same as skilled workers? a fast food worker out here makes 15-25/hour, a plumber here makes $60 (new plumber) - $150/hour, the skilled worker is clearly making more

 

[richbosszar]

it’s a low skilled job that is associated with teenagers. We don’t go to school to work at McDonald’s

very rarely do you see a mcdonalds run by teens, its usally not that many, its always 25+ is the majority

 

[Lhark]

Absolutely if they're working full time

 

[$cam-U-Well_Jack$on]

I can already guess the race that says no.

Including some of these posters. But that comes of no surprise.

 

[jadillac]

Absolutely not!

Why should someone working full-time on their feet all day preparing food for other people to eat, deserve to be able to afford food and groceries themselves?
















Its really a shame other humans would feel so entitled to even ask this type of inhumane question

 

[Youhadasparkwhenustarted]

Forget the talks about class and who deserves what for a second. Let's talk about how INSANE it is to underpay and overwork the people who handle your food. Do people realistically expect workers to give a fukk about your food when they're not getting paid enough?

 

[Thanos]

Saying no is simply saying you are okay w/ workers being exploited and only people who are "skilled labor" should have the right to live well.

 

[Eternal Tecate]

Follow up question, are you a eugenicist?

 

[Will Ross]

Saying no is simply saying you are okay w/ workers being exploited and only people who are "skilled labor" should have the right to live well.

What is stopping someone from getting a skill in America today?

 

[silk scarfs]

the alternative is having some of these people stick a gun in your face and take your shyt. either we pay people more or give ubi and food stamps to people so they not drowning and they kids dont end up robbing and killing people cause they parents too busy working to raise them.

 

[Adeptus Astartes]

Follow up question, are you a eugenicist?

They likely are. It's a very small step from, "low wage workers shouldn't be able to afford rent" to "the poor shouldn't breed".

 

[Contrefaire]

…and? Are you saying jobs at mcdonalds and wendys should afford to live in those cities? The surrounding areas of those cities dont cost that much to live in. California is a very large state. That law will be state wide. Cali is more than just LA/SF

Plus california has plenty of rent control laws for low income people on top of many assistance programs.

I don't know of a single place in this state - outside of a handful of extremely small and underpopulated rural communities - where $22/hr would far exceed the local cost of living and apparently be too much money or whatever tf you're trying to say. Especially since in most of those rural areas there are also no studio apartments or duplexes; just 2-4bdrm homes on a quarter acre of land which means there are landlords who want their mortgages paid in full. And that's ignoring the fact that you pulled that specific wage out of some future hypothetical proposed sum rather than reality, because the current min wage as of 1/1/23 is $15.50/hr.

No idea what you're talking about with the so called "rent control laws" either since as far as I know they only apply to specific building types built before a certain year and only in a handful of cities meanwhile there are also many loopholes even with that caveat. I should know. From the age of 18 I rented apartments in various areas in the city and somehow the rent was always arbitrarily raised at random intervals and for varying amounts. One complex actually raised the rent by nearly a third halfway through my lease in order to subsidize the cost of the mandatory seismic-retrofitting the city told them to do.

And with regard to the "many assistance programs", please enlighten me of them because I currently have several clients on my caseload who are DESPERATE for housing and other assistance like food stamps but keep getting denied because they allegedly "make too much" or simply don't qualify for bullshyt reasons...

 

[Contrefaire]

Ultimately in a free market society, the true answer to this questions is one we should ask ourselves.
Would you ever eat at mcdonalds if they were charging sit down restaurant prices for their food, because if you increase the pay the food prices will inevitably increase as well. Mcd's value is in its value, you not willing to drop $20 on a bigmac then you essentially agree that fastfood workers don't deserve a living wage.

A $20 Big Mac meal is already here lmao. Big corporations have been raising the cost of their products for years and it only got worse post-pandemic so it's time to dead all the fearmongering.

They were always gonna raise the price regardless...

Unfortunately a lot of you nikkas parrot capitalist propaganda talking points without even realizing how stupid you sound.

 

[itsyoung!!]

where $22/hr would far exceed the local cost of living

who said that ? like where is that in this thread ?

Especially since in most of those rural areas there are also no studio apartments or duplexes;

I dont know a single city from san jose to sacramento that doesnt have small 1 bedroom places for rent

No idea what you're talking about with the so called "rent control laws" either since as far as I know they only apply to specific building types built before a certain year and only in a handful of cities meanwhile there are also many loopholes even with that caveat. I should know. From the age of 18 I rented apartments in various areas in the city and somehow the rent was always arbitrarily raised at random intervals and for varying amounts. One complex actually raised the rent by nearly a third halfway through my lease in order to subsidize the cost of the mandatory seismic-retrofitting the city told them to do.

Richmond Rent Ordinance - Astanehe Law

Employee & tenant rights attorney handling unlawful termination, discrimination, wrongful eviction & tenant harassment!

astanehelaw.com

Learn about rent increases | San Francisco

Learn how a landlord can increase a tenant’s rent for a rent-controlled unit and by how much.

sf.gov

also;

S.F. has 305 affordable housing units sitting empty, despite more than 20,000 applications from potential residents

Hundreds of San Francisco apartments set aside for low- and moderate-income families are...

www.sfchronicle.com