In recent months, protests staged by fast food workers across the country have gained national attention. Fast food workers claim minimum wage — as low as $7.25 an hour in some states — is not sufficient enough to make a living and support a family. Moreover, they assert that employees of fast food giants such as McDonalds, a multi-billion dollar industry, should not be scraping by while executives rake in profit.
On Thursday, Sept. 4, protests took place in about 150 cities nationwide. Nine people were arrested in Boston for blocking traffic while protesting their low wages and demanding $15 an hour.
The Heritage Foundation calculated that raising the minimum wage in the fast food industry to $15 an hour would lead to a 77 percent decrease in profits, as well as a 38 percent increase in prices. Essentially, paying employees $15 an hour would wipe out the profit margin of fast food companies and make it more difficult for those who rely on cheap fast food for meals to afford them.
The protests, however, are not so much an issue of economics, but of principle.
As a former high school student and current college student, I’ve worked a fair amount of minimum wage jobs in my lifetime. I’ve scooped popcorn for the opening night of Harry Potter and I’ve made ice cream sundaes at a busy restaurant in a crowded, outdoor shopping center. At times, both of these jobs have been stressful and tiresome, especially on days when I would work both.
I have bills to pay, college debt, gas and car insurance and textbooks.
Would it be nice to make $15 an hour? Of course.
Do I deserve $15 an hour? Absolutely not.
Minimum wage jobs are minimum wage because they require minimal skill. It would be ludicrous for me to walk up to my boss and demand $15 an hour for scooping popcorn, yet fast food workers are demanding the exact same thing and this belief is somehow recognized as legitimate. Demanding $15 an hour for pushing buttons on a computer terminal and flipping burgers is laughable. And no, “working hard” is not defined as long, unforgiving hours at a thankless job. Working hard is acquiring skills to put yourself in a position of success; working hard is going above and beyond and setting yourself apart from the rest.
You have a family to support, so you deserve a higher wage? Here’s a brilliant idea: don’t start a family if you are unable to support it. I can walk into the local McDonalds right now and get a job at $8 an hour, but if I impregnate a girl next week at some college party then apparently I am worth more as an employee, although my skill set is exactly the same.
If the unpredictability of life has thrust you into a position at a fast food joint when you previously held a more lucrative job, I’m sorry, but my advice is still the same. Work hard and become a supervisor or manager, take up a second job or get a job as a waitress or waiter so you can make tips.
Don’t demand that whichever fast food company you work for pay out of pocket simply because you refuse to do more than work a single job. Corporate executives earned their money, and are by no means morally or financially obligated to give it to their employees.
Taking to the streets and demanding higher wages, but doing nothing to earn them, is cleverly disguised as fundamentally American because of the peaceful assembly and the equality it promotes. But these protests are shamefully un-American, replacing values of determination and persistence with finger-pointing and indolence.
The protests over fast food wages are not isolated incidents either, but symbolic of a larger problem in this country: the lack of accountability for one’s own position in life.
Maybe the fact that you are relying on a job to make a living intended for high school and college students is not a product of the oppressive capitalistic economy of the United States—maybe it’s a result of your own poor work ethic. The only person you have to blame for your own stagnancy is yourself; believe it or not, you can move up in this world, and expensive education is not the only way of doing so.
Life isn’t fair. People are born in different places, with different socioeconomic backgrounds and different advantages and disadvantages, and that’s the way it is. I think I can speak for many of the students at UMass when I say that many of us are here at least in part because of the relative cheapness of state schools compared to private universities.
Yes, we are the 99 percent. Yes, we deserve to lead successful lives. But I’m tired of the large economic disparity in the United States being used as an excuse for our own shortcomings. I’m tired of external factors being used as scapegoats for our own incompetence, and the flawed notion that an individual is not ultimately responsible for his or her own fate.
You want to get ahead in life? Do whatever it takes.
Don’t demand $15 an hour for grilling McDoubles and mixing McFlurrys.
Steven Gillard is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at [email protected].
lolz • Oct 4, 2014 at 3:26 pm
Thanks for the screed, lazy pseudo-intellectual douche who has never worked a real job a day in his life and whose mommy and daddy pays for everything.
carson • Sep 21, 2014 at 10:07 am
you obviously don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about . you should be quiet and listen
Atary Yuchino • Sep 19, 2014 at 1:11 am
Dear Steve,
Reality will hit you eventually. For someone who will graduate from a lit program at a mid-tier school, chances are… you will most probably work a job that earns you slightly above minimal wage.
Have you hating your life and regretting everything you’ve said here.
Good luck and have fun.
Holly Galvin • Sep 15, 2014 at 10:24 pm
Edit: Your ed/op makes me ashamed for The Collegian. Hoping karma rewards you come graduation with a minimum wage job of your own but let’s be honest, you’ll probably end up writing for the Boston Herald. In all seriousness, the utter sincerity of this piece is heartbreaking. People are struggling- not everyone has had what those of us who went to UMass have been fortunate enough to have had. Popping popcorn at the premiere of Harry Potter back in high school doesn’t lend much weight to an ed/op on labor law and economics by a full-time college student.
Riggsveda • Sep 13, 2014 at 4:20 pm
Jesus, Collegian…clickbait much? No one can fault a little paper for publicity-trolling, but if you’re going this far out into fairies and Easter Bunny territory, why not publish something really juicy, like “The Memoirs of Tea Party Pedophiles” or “John McCain Remembers When He Stopped Beating His Wife.” Although, neither of those would pack the bullshit-per-pica of this pitiable rave.
JTC • Sep 13, 2014 at 1:03 pm
C.A. Pinkham, one of the writers at Jezebel, has already laid complete and utter waste to the nonsense in this article, so I won’t repeat her spot-on critiques.
http://kitchenette.jezebel.com/college-kid-writes-dumbest-possible-op-ed-on-fast-food-1633254322
But let me add something to them. Steven, do you appreciate weekends? Time and a half wages when you work overtime? That employers are legally obligated to maintain a safe workplace? How about child labor laws?
All good things, yeah? Why do you think we have those things? The generosity of employers and corporate executives? Hell no. Those things we take for granted exist because people went on strike and enacted (sometimes disruptive!) demonstrations and protests.
To suggest that protesting in order to improve one’s wages is un-American is both dead wrong and betrays a deep, fundamental misunderstanding of history.
The companies you’re talking about make enormous profits. Many of them are Fortune 500 companies. To suggest that they should be able to get away with paying poverty wages to the very people that allow these profits to be made day after day is obscene. Who is more fundamentally necessary to McDonalds’ profitability? The people who cook and sell the food, maintain the restaurant, and oversee deliveries of product? Or the guy sitting in a Manhattan high-rise overseeing the marketing department’s latest attempts to appeal to a hip, urban demographic?
Oh, and to echo Pinkham’s article: citing the Heritage Foundation is about as impressive as citing Urban Dictionary.
JTC, UMass Class of ’03
John McKinney • Sep 13, 2014 at 9:30 am
I love how most of these comments indicate that someone working at a fast food establishment deserves to be making enough to support a family. $15 an hour is more than I make working at a hard manual labor factory job. Yet these asshats want to make more than an enlisted soldier for pushing buttons. I’ve worked at McDonalds so I know there isn’t even flipping burgers anymore. You literally put the meat on the grill, push a button, and it is cooked for you. Absolutely no skills involved in this. The machine even tells you when its done. Same for getting the drinks. The drinks are hooked right up to the order input computers and the whole thing is automated from selecting the cup size to putting in the right amount of ice and liquid. All the employee has to do is put a lid on it and hand it to the customer. And what you idiots don’t realize is that if minimum wage increases so do the prices of everything else, not just in fast food but even at your local walmart. It’s basic economics.
rekt • Sep 13, 2014 at 12:53 am
“You want to get ahead in life? Do whatever it takes.
Don’t demand $15 an hour for grilling McDoubles and mixing McFlurrys.”
So do whatever it takes as long as it doesn’t involve speaking up against your superiors and disrupting the social hierarchy.
Cool • Sep 12, 2014 at 11:03 pm
Way to go kid! spread the word, also to these douche bag wanna be tough guys. If things are so tight how do you afford “net” access or have the time to be on here. Whoops, run along Michael Moore wanna be’s. Better yet get the FUCK out of this Country and try making it in the other one hundred sixty countries in the world if you think you can do so much better and you are that smart. Talk about inbreed morons who think they are special and everything is owed to them, just because they “Showed up”.
Just sayin • Sep 12, 2014 at 6:11 pm
Someday, kid, you’re gonna graduate college. And when you do, you’re quickly going to realize that the 200 dollars a month you pay your parents for car insurance and your cell phone doesn’t hold a candle to the cost of living in the northeast. You probably won’t even attempt to move out on your own, in which case, you’ll keep bitching from the comfort of your parents basement, eating their food. But maybe you won’t. Let’s say you try to act like an adult and make it on your own. Soon you’ll realize that your generic degree from a state school in communications or business won’t do shit to get you a job. Like a good little graduate, you’ll take a low-run job in your field. You’ll be okay for 6 months, until your student loans kick in. Then you’ll start to realize that EVEN YOU (yes you, the *white male?* college graduate!) are having a hard time making ends meet. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll realize that this doesn’t just affect the people that you consider to somehow be lower class citizens and dehumanize completely as lazy fast food workers.
In this day in age “do whatever it takes” no longer means “work hard, learn new skills by doing your job and advancing in your field so that you can make more money,” but rather, “pay more money to take more classes that don’t apply to your real life job, so that you can get a piece of paper that says your qualified to advance in your field.” We did that. We bought into the lie that higher education and a piece of paper is worth more in the job market that good hard word and skill development.
And yet, minimum wage hasn’t been raised despite the skyrocketing costs of higher education that is now absolutely necessary to advance.
As a white college graduate working in her chosen field helping children with mental disabilities (doesn’t that sound like good, honest work?) with in a well-to-do school district, while working extra hours overnight on the weekends, I still find myself choosing between paying bills and buying groceries. I don’t spend frivolously. I won’t be able to advance in my field without a masters, that I can’t afford without taking out even more crippling student loans that prey on college students with outrageous interest rates and fees. I mean, c’mon, let’s at least make it doable and address that there’s something seriously wrong here.
Not to mention the fucking insane statement, “Essentially, paying employees $15 an hour would wipe out the profit margin of fast food companies and make it more difficult for those who rely on cheap fast food for meals to afford them.”
I mean, do I really even have to say it? Maybe people wouldn’t depend on fast food if their wages were even remotely compatible with the cost of living? And then fast food companies would lose profit? Which they don’t want to happen? So they want to keep people down? Duh?
Justin • Sep 12, 2014 at 5:46 pm
Nothing will propel the development and wide scale adoption of robots in the service sector faster than pushing thru legislation that requires $15/hr for jobs that can be done by a machine….and then there will be even more people out of work.
If the problem is too many people competing for too few jobs (which drives down the pay), then perhaps Obama should do something about the 100’s of thousands of low-skilled workers flood across the border.
If there is less people in the work pool, than companies will need to pay more to attract workers.
Ovadia • Sep 12, 2014 at 3:58 pm
Way to be kid. You nailed it. Know that you aren’t the only sane one out there, in spite of what most of the other comments seem to imply.
Michael McSweeney • Sep 12, 2014 at 2:25 pm
I’m sorry that you listened to enough people to have this worldview drilled into your skull. Won’t be getting this 5 minutes back.
jefe • Sep 12, 2014 at 7:35 am
If yer working full time, you deserve a living wage, thats just all there is to it, 77% less profit sounds completely pulled out of your ass, and the price increase is also bullshit, there still gonna make billions
TMLutas • Sep 11, 2014 at 7:53 pm
I’ve come to this article from elsewhere where they hold this up as nasty right wing economics. It’s not, actually because it’s omitting an important point, labor supply. In North Dakota and other areas where there is a labor shortage, even minimal skill jobs earn more than minimum wage. That’s the market clearing price.
If you want a durable living wage, stop protesting for a raise in the minimum wage and start protesting the legislature’s illegalization of perfectly respectable and moral work. Stop putting barriers up in unnecessary licensing laws, stop killing off small businesses by the death of a thousand regulatory cuts, and definitely stop educating people to be good little factory workers for an industrial age that is long since over.
The ending of India’s “regulatory raj” and the PRC’s maoist economics have led to the biggest jump in economic liberty in the history of humanity. Literally billions of people got dumped into the labor market, vastly increasing supply. This has global consequences that span decades and it means that everybody’s competing against a vastly expanded pool. The guy who 50 years ago would be a draftsman lost out that job to somebody in Mumbai and he’s got that fast food job that normally would have gone to somebody lower down the skill chain.
Unless you’re in favor of slavery, it’s hard to be upset at the end of maoism or the regulatory raj but these happy events have consequences and that includes lower wages in the USA. Increasing the minimum wage won’t fix the problem. Increasing labor demand will. You’d be surprised how unpopular that is among the incumbent business world and the political class.
Dust • Sep 11, 2014 at 5:10 pm
I understand the whole op-ed thing, but there are things in here that are blatently false. For example, minimum wage does not mean minimal skill, it means the lowest wage permitted to be paid by law. Why were simple fact checks not performed? Why did no one look out for poor Steven?
Kris • Sep 11, 2014 at 5:03 pm
Yeah, but Zac, what if I pay you $100/hr to fight me, or are you you too much of a dick douche stupid wussy? I eagerly await your reply, kid.
Maynard • Sep 11, 2014 at 4:22 pm
How did the editor of the Daily Collegian ever think this would be a good idea to publish? Did anyone else over at this “independent, student-operated newspaper” with clear unbiased journalistic integrity even read this?? I need answers.
Zac Bears • Sep 11, 2014 at 4:27 pm
This is an opinion column written by an individual and in no way reflects the opinion of the paper or its editors.
Kris • Sep 11, 2014 at 4:06 pm
While I don’t agree 100% with the author (citing Heritage Foundation is a big time no no), I LOVE the outpouring of those dopes who read Jezebel, and the fact that the Collegian is willing to publish some of these comments!
Maybe I’ll drop some of these names on Zac Bears next piece, and see if that gets published. What do you think, Zac???
lil pinky • Sep 11, 2014 at 4:00 pm
And the troll of the century goes tooooooooo
Heritage Foundation • Sep 11, 2014 at 3:55 pm
This was a very eloquent and well-writted application for our summer internship program. This year we had the privilege of receiving many applications from extremely well-qualified white male 20-somethings who dress like their grandparents.
Unfortunately, we will not be able to accept your application.
Benjamin Kendall • Sep 11, 2014 at 2:47 pm
Thank you for publishing yet another article showing how stupid conservatives are. If this isn’t satire then may god have mercy on your soul.
RecentGrad • Sep 11, 2014 at 2:33 pm
First, you should know that your Facebook and all your comments are public right now.
That said, you said on your facebook that you are where you are because your grandparents and parents worked hard. Yet you seem to believe pretty strongly that anyone can make it if they work hard enough. Have you ever thought that you may not be qualified to speak on this issue given your obvious position of privilege? I challenge you to go out and find some of those workers you claim can just make it if they work harder. Go into a Dunkin Donuts in Roxbury. Find a McDonalds in Lawrence. See what they say.
College Graduate, Real World Worker and Citizen • Sep 11, 2014 at 1:58 pm
Oh, Steve. Lil’ Steven.
Congratulations, Steebee Weebee. Upon reading some of your Facebook comments and diatribes, yes. You are very lucky your grandparents and parents busted their asses, and didn’t block traffic, to put you through college. This also affords you the time and money to really think about other folks and their points of view, instead of broadly labeling your opponents as “liberals and feminists” and discounting their points of view– neither of those are bad things, also. Not any worse than “conservatives”, or “dicks”.
I could say you are misinformed and terribly misguided– but the internet already knows that. Perhaps you should stick to writing on topics, like your buzz-kill, teacher’s pet bullshit “piece”, “The Case for a Shorter Winter Break” (l”https://dailycollegian.com/2014/01/21/the-case-for-a-shorter-winter-break/”). You’ve found your true calling! You will likely be very successful writing douchey, right-wing, conservative-minded “think pieces”. Maybe your next article can push for more assigned homework, at the expense of your groaning classmates.
Try working a service job, you callous Ayn Rand reading douche.
Meghan • Sep 11, 2014 at 1:41 pm
I know he talks about having worked minimum wage jobs before–sometimes even TWO in ONE DAY, whoah!–in high school, but I’m just kind of curious as to whether or not the author has ever actually had to depend solely on the income earned from those types of jobs. Or had to do a 40+ hour workweek to make those ends meet.
The thing about high schoolers like (how I at least assume) this guy working minimum wage jobs is that they are usually just doing it to make extra pocket money. Not trying to make rent, pay for food (often for more than one person, which you sort-of addressed but not very convincingly so I’m setting it aside for the time being), pay for gas, pay for insurance, pay for utilities, & etc.
Also, uh, just those 2 jobs? Scooping popcorn and making sundaes? With those part-time jobs under your belt you think you’re qualified to say that nobody deserves more than minimum wage for doing what you see as similar ones?
Furthermore, I think you’re ignoring the bigger picture here. It’s all nice and well to say that the people at the top worked harder than the people below them to earn all of the money that they did, but that’s just simply not true. When you have executives making literally hundreds of times more than one of their low-level employees, it’s almost as if you’re trying to say that those execs worked HUNDREDS of times harder. It’s insane. They have built a system for themselves that lets them profit, it’s true, but that doesn’t mean that they 100% deserve everything coming their way–they couldn’t have MADE that money without all of the people below them.
I think the weirdest part of people fighting against a raising of the minimum wage is that they for the most part haven’t really seemed to take into account how much it really winds up being. If you multiply $7.25 by 40 hours, you get roughly under 300 bucks a week. After taxes, let’s say it’s maybe 250 or so. if you’re working steadily, 8 hours a day 5 days a week, for a month, you wind up with $1000. That maybe sounds like a lot to a hilarious little baby college student w/ daddy paying the real bills, but consider the cost of living, well, anywhere. It’s literally below the poverty level. $12k a year won’t get anyone anywhere, and it certainly won’t lead to a path of someone getting a decent education and getting to move anywhere near where you think they should be trying to. Money aside, there simply aren’t enough hours in a week.
The system is fucked, basically, is what I’m trying to say here. It’s all nice and well for you to have your opinion, but if you think it’s grounded in any sort of reality that everyone else is living in, you’re really just not the brightest bulb in the pack, are ya.
wisdomy • Sep 11, 2014 at 1:02 pm
You’re tired of what, now? Kid, you don’t know what it is to be tired. It delights me to know that you’ll find out.
Lauren • Sep 11, 2014 at 12:56 pm
Amen, and don’t let the haters get you down. People don’t like seeing themselves reflected in that way, but it is true. Keep on doing your thing.
John • Sep 11, 2014 at 12:45 pm
This is what completely unexamined privilege looks like.
Entering the real world with a BA in English and six figures in non-dischargeable student loan debt is going to be quite the wakeup call.
Jander Elijah • Sep 11, 2014 at 12:00 pm
WOW…it saddens me that privileged little douche bags like you have a bully pulpit to spew your garbage. You’re a young conservative dick head, enjoy daddy’s money and your BMW, but good luck finding a soul. Actually, I take that back…I do not wish you good luck, I hope you struggle all your days.
Tqueen • Sep 11, 2014 at 11:59 am
Minimum wage is not called minimum because it requires minimal skill or effort. It’s called minimum because the law says it’s the absolute minimum you can get away with paying a person to work.
mizzemm • Sep 11, 2014 at 11:36 am
Since when do college kids have libertarian phases? Aren’t you supposed to be less of a dick when you’re young, and then gradually turn to conservative values as you get more greedy through the years? If this is how you’re starting out, you’re going to be one hell of a douche bag by the time you’re 30.
Dan Balaban • Sep 11, 2014 at 11:10 am
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when privileges is so far ingrained that is has made its host perpetually and completely self-unaware.
Using big words does not hide the fact that you are incredibly classist/racist, and also remarkably ignorant of the realities of economic mobility.
Tamsavvy • Sep 11, 2014 at 11:04 am
So you’re an English major, huh? Best of luck outside of the comforts and security of university life. Come bust your ass with me at Starbucks where my co-workers and I all have MAs. We’ll try not to talk over your head. By the way, we’re all white and privileged, too.
SmallBizOwner • Sep 11, 2014 at 11:02 am
Steven,
You’re going to get a lot of hate for this article rather than thoughtful discussion. I hope it doesn’t cause you too much harm. People can get crazy when someone expresses an idea they don’t agree with. Some folks seem to forget that college is a time of learning and discovery when they hear a college student express an idea counter to their own. Both sides are guilty of this and it’s ridiculous.
You bring up good points about relative value of labor but I’d like to share my POV as a business owner who leans left: the situation with our minimum wage, our health care, and the general way we care for those in our society who aren’t deemed as “valuable” is shameful. Take a look at some other countries with healthy societies and economies and you’ll find that their take on what the “minimum” should be (often including nationalized healthcare) should be. You’d be shocked to see what some countries can do with a comparable tax rate to ours (hint: they spend more of their tax revenue on their people). Our minimum wage is too low. California just raised our min wage to $9/hr and even that, in most places, is not enough to support a single person’s basic needs with full-time hours.
To take your point ad ridiculum, why don’t we just pay the lowest “value” members of our society $1/hr or 1¢/hr? How about we make THEM pay US to stay inside our air conditioned buildings and get a shift meal? It’s better than being on the street, right? There are good answers to these questions. Answers that were borne of the idea that there is a “we” and an “us” not just an “I” and that when we take care of “us”, “we” are all better for it.
Please also take a second look at some of the things the Heritage Foundation has supported over the years before you put yourself in their corner. The Heritage they aim to preserve is not necessarily the most honorable one.
Hello • Sep 11, 2014 at 10:56 am
I would really, really like to know how you’re paying for college.
Doing that all on your own I bet, right buddy?
SFJD • Sep 11, 2014 at 10:53 am
Dude…you better go out and change the world while you still know everything.
B • Sep 11, 2014 at 10:27 am
Ummm… ANYONE who sites Neocon/Bagger “Heritage Foundation” for its “facts” is gonna be a massive dickhead. Period.
Joe • Sep 11, 2014 at 9:12 am
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2014/09/the-post-christian-right-and-the-coming-eugenics.html
Taylor • Sep 11, 2014 at 9:02 am
>”You want to get ahead in life? Do whatever it takes.”
I believe protesting and going on strike is included in the definition of “whatever it takes”, isn’t it?
See, that’s the main logical problem with your argument, Steven: You say people should fight hard and make an effort to move up in this world. But the thing is, organizing a movement to increase the minimum wage and going on strike and making other sacrifices for this movement IS one kind of fighting hard and making an effort to move up in this world.
Gus • Sep 11, 2014 at 7:51 am
Stopped reading at “the Heritage Foundation calculated…”
Chatsworth • Sep 11, 2014 at 7:43 am
Well done, Stephen. You struck a nerve among the layabouts who resent the idea of taking responsibility for their own lives. Your realistic attitude ensures that you will be the kind of person who gets ahead in life. It really isn’t terribly difficult — hard work plus intelligence plus discipline equals success. Losers always resent winners, it goes with the territory. Sucks to be them. All the best to you, and thanks for rattling their cages.
Otis Galloway (@DJO2is) • Sep 11, 2014 at 3:35 am
Congratulations!
You’ve now shown the world that you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
You (and the little douchebags patting you on the back) have a complete lack of understanding as to how economics or society works.
That’s not really much of a surprise…You’re in college…you think because you’ve read a few books now, you know everything.
But you will realise, just like I and many other like me realised…there’s a big difference between theory and reality.
Part of me sincerely hopes that you never have to experience hardship. Part of me hopes you do to teach you a lesson.
Realistic me knows someone will be asking you for fries with that burger…because there are a lot of college graduates working in fast food jobs right now.
Try learning some empathy and common sense.
Bre • Sep 11, 2014 at 2:07 am
Seriously kid? Seriously? This school gets a bad enough reputation without you running your mouth and not face checking anything you wrote about with non biased sources.
Sam Noyuno • Sep 11, 2014 at 1:49 am
As much as I hate dropping an ad hominem, I’d say the fact that Jezebel is hating on this article is the best possible argument in favor of this article’s credibility.
Now for all you people crying “ignorant” and the like… take a step back and look at yourselves. You’ve just been presented with an argument and the best response you can come up with is attacking the writer’s character. If you want him to reconsider his beliefs, you’re gonna have to do a lot better than that.
YO STEVE • Sep 11, 2014 at 1:22 am
YO STEVE, since you work so hard and have become so distinguished with Mommy and Daddy’s money while you are attending school, I’d like to offer you $100/hour to get in the ring with me. I feel you’ve earned it. The e-mail address is real, so feel free to reply to this job opportunity.
Brian • Sep 11, 2014 at 1:11 am
Your blind devotion to neoliberalism and enthusiasm to express it nauseates but doesn’t surprise me. I actually just barfed on my computer (which the government paid for).
College Kids are the Worst • Sep 11, 2014 at 12:57 am
Just because your parents made you bag groceries one summer when you were 17 to pay for your own gas (but not rent, bills, food, insurance, clothing, or anything else), and you read Atlas Shrugged freshman year, you’re not exactly the spearhead of intelligent socioeconomic thought, there, Stevie Boy. Must have been nice growing up economically privileged enough to be this dim-witted about the actual plight of the working poor, but self-righteous, myopic morons like you really should keep their mouths shut on this kind of issue. You have nothing intelligent to add, and one can only hope you will one day absolutely CRINGE at the fact that this idiocy was published with your name on it.
And, dude, the Heritage Foundation? Seriously? I mean, making fun of how stupid and gullible you are is just too easy after that.
Eileen • Sep 11, 2014 at 12:43 am
The Heritage Foundation? Really? One of the most biased, conservative outfits in the US — rabidly anti labor, pro corporate deregulation and anti taxation. Their statistic are not worth the cost of one McDonalds burger. Grow up, get a job and see what 7.25/hour before taxes gets you.
Chase Cross • Sep 11, 2014 at 12:41 am
I could offer a detailed rebuttal, rooted in concrete research by reputable sources (unlike the Heritage Foundation), regarding the state of the service industry — how it’s the only industry currently enjoying the robust growth necessary to accommodate the swaths of young people entering the workforce (and the older folks who are slowly falling out of it). I could provide some macroeconomic evidence from Nobel winners like Krugman Stiglitz that the current plight of the American worker is not a problem of laziness but a deliberate effort to enrich the few at the expense of the many by what amounts to a cabal of plutocrats and free market fundamentalists who have rigged our economic system to their benefit. I could refer to the heartbreaking anecdotal narratives of our country’s minimum wage workers — including my own! — who struggle desperately to eek out a living in a country that has increasingly left them behind. I could and I would do these things if you, gentle author, had shown the kind of respect such an effort would warrant by engaging this issue rigorously and seriously. But you didn’t. I understand, though. It’s because you’re spectacularly ignorant, and because you, having not been in a job market unpaved by privilege and littered with obstacles utterly beyond your making, cannot know what it’s like to be squeezed between global economic catastrophe, personal crisis, and crushing student debt all at the same time.
So I’ll just say what you need to hear: you are a gaping asshole, a gaping asshole so wide that your head has managed to lodge itself inside, like some inverted, sphincteric ouroborus. You are a small fraction of a person, and you aren’t worthy of the education you’re receiving.
But it’s okay. You’re in school. Maybe when you finally get to sit at the big kids table, that asshole will unclench enough from the panic of being confronted by a world order in which your position of untrammeled privilege is threatened by the reasonable demands of working people, and you can see the people who serve you breakfast as every bit your equals, and equally deserving of all the material privileges you have so far enjoyed.
Best of luck.
SKD • Sep 11, 2014 at 12:41 am
“Corporate executives earned their money, and are by no means morally or financially obligated to give it to their employees”.
You are a college student. You think you are “by no means morally or financially obligated” to give anything to anybody, or in other words “I have mine, screw you”. The fast food workers can starve, rely on public assistance (your tax dollars and mine) to survive, you could not care less as long as company executives make comfortable salaries, and shareholders enjoy profits.
Lack of empathy and selfishness are the nicest attributes you exhibit here.
Emiky • Sep 11, 2014 at 12:34 am
You are stupid as heck!
Cambria • Sep 11, 2014 at 12:24 am
Wow. You are the douchiest douche who has ever douched. Congratulations.
Douche.
Daniel J • Sep 11, 2014 at 12:06 am
This is absolute garbage.
1. You quoted only one right wing source for any statistical information. You spoke to zero workers, you know, the people doing the actual protesting?
2. Corporations like McDonalds CAN afford to pay workers more. Google executive salaries since that’s the only source you seem to be able to use.
3. You clearly interjected your personal opinion into this article. The second half of this “article” was a privileged, self-important, self-righteous attack on poor people. Basically you said some people deserve to be on the bottom because they’re not smart and hardworking like you. Meanwhile, you’re not even hardworking enough to try to interview or get ANY quotes from someone who disagreed with you. This isn’t journalism. You clearly displayed a disdain for people who don’t go to college and earn liveable wages.
4. I refuse to stand by and watch you suggest that asking for a LIVABLE wage is “ludicrous.” Also, by extension, you asserted that people working low paying jobs don’t deserve to reproduce. This piece is slanted so damn far to the right I think I’m cross-eyed now. I don’t care about your extensive experience as a high school and college student, getting most of your support from your parents. Even though you worked low paying jobs, you don’t understand the position that these people are in, and to deny them any respect or voice in your piece is cruel. I hope to God you’re not going to take your journalism skills in their current form into the real world, because I’m 18 and even I know this is trash.
Mary • Sep 10, 2014 at 11:49 pm
This article is just sad. The U.S.A. used to provide manufacturing jobs for blue collar workers. People could do good work, earn a living wage and support their families. Now manufacturing jobs have disappeared or gone overseas and the new blue collar worker is in a service position. They still deserve dignity and compensation for their work. I’d gladly spend 2 cents more per burger if I knew employees were making a decent living or getting health insurance.
Also, implying that only middle-class or wealthy people should have children (one of the most important, essential drives as a human being) is just insensitive and ignorant. I really think you will look back on this article one day and be ashamed.
Jon • Sep 10, 2014 at 11:13 pm
If there’s a job we decide as society we need or want, it’s worth paying a living wage for. Period. It is unjust to decide we want people to work for us but not pay them a wage they can’t support themselves on.
In this country, we need fast food workers, retail salesmen, and other service oriented jobs. And if we need them, we need to pay for them. Human value is measured in more than dollars and cents.
cocowednesdays • Sep 10, 2014 at 10:40 pm
You clearly know nothing about life and the real world. You’ll eat your words when you wake up and I pray you wake up very soon.
Brie • Sep 10, 2014 at 10:26 pm
You should probably educate yourself kid but since I cannot abide by useless people I’ll let someone else school you for me:
http://kitchenette.jezebel.com/college-kid-writes-dumbest-possible-op-ed-on-fast-food-1633254322/+burtreynoldsismyspiritguide1
bb • Sep 10, 2014 at 10:20 pm
besides the fact that this piece has been dussected by ‘Jezebel’ / me should write my point in as well on this site directly/ (i hit from all angles) i don’t want to use the ‘dude, you’re a dick’ – argument only/ it would like to add in the fact that ‘hard work’ also means cleaning your own shit out of your toilet ring and not paying someone to do it for you/ bu then you probably couldn’t handle the smell of your own shit/ because you are weak wussy
Caprese • Sep 10, 2014 at 10:20 pm
Incredibly ignorant.
Heritage Foundation • Sep 10, 2014 at 9:56 pm
Thanks Steve! We’re glad you got our backs!
Karin • Sep 10, 2014 at 9:54 pm
http://kitchenette.jezebel.com/college-kid-writes-dumbest-possible-op-ed-on-fast-food-1633254322/+burtreynoldsismyspiritguide1
Amen.
Brandon • Sep 10, 2014 at 9:44 pm
Ah, the folly of youth. There is no question at all this was written by a college student it their “Libertarian” phase.
Megan • Sep 10, 2014 at 9:43 pm
So basically … poor people are lazy and deserve to be poor. Why didn’t you just say that instead of writing this? Because that is clearly what you really wanted to say.
Daisy • Sep 10, 2014 at 9:21 pm
Dude, you are a dick.
Joe Somebody • Sep 10, 2014 at 4:19 pm
Steven – Refreshing to see an intelligent point of view in the Daily Communist (I mean, Collegian), untainted by the leftover 60s radicalism that has permeated Amherst for decades. Minimum wage jobs are meant as entry level jobs and, as you stated, are exactly indicative of skill-less workers. In the old America, these jobs were staffed primarily by high school students and college students working their way up. It served as pocket money and a valuable lesson in hard work and what it means to do menial labor. Today, those jobs go mostly to illegal immigrants, or legal immigrants for whom there is not enough sustainable, meaningful work to justify the entrance into the U.S. in the first place. Just yesterday, the World Bank released a report stating that the developed world (including emerging economies) needs to create 600 million new jobs to sustain the populations now out of work or severely under-employed. This mostly means total economic stagnation and wage reduction/stagnation in all nations, something that has been happening in the U.S. since at least 2008, but counting inflation has essentially been occurring since the 1970s. Workers at all levels are now entirely fungible, replaceable assets much as they were in the early days of our Industrial Revolution. Which makes any demand for a higher minimum wage all the more laughable not to mention economically intolerable. Fast food chains will close by the dozen if this ever passes nationwide, leaving even more people out of work. The entire concept of wealth re-distribution is nothing more than a communist, utopian fantasy being played out by our government in a slightly different form than all of the failures before it. NOTHING can replace hard work, higher education, adaption, constant training and change and innovation. In the future, fewer and fewer will get ahead. The best thing that could happen to our global society is for the baby boomer generation to die off quickly without consuming what’s left of their collective wealth in the form of health care and benefits. You have only touched the surface of a VERY inter-connected and signficant socio-economic situation, for which there is no easy answer. One very rational response would be to stop all non-essential immigration entirely in its tracks: other than innovators and those with necessary skills (i.e. scientists/doctors/technology innovators), NO ONE gets in. Another would be to clean out the jails of illegal immigrants which make up a sizable part of our very expensive prison population. Third, would be mass deportation of illegal aliens who are not working. Part of the problem is poor work ethic. Part of the problem is global stagnation due to a population that is about 4 billion too large to sustain the planet. Part of the problem is that developed countries are too aged while emerging countries are too young. Much of the problem is automation, as is seen with General Motors, which before the great recession had 500k workers and now produces more automobiles with about 25% of the workforce needed before. And so on, and so on. At the end of the day, the only real answer to the jobs situation is for America to turn inwards, create energy independence and a more self-contained economy as it once was. It wouldn’t hurt to lower the corporate tax rate to the lowest in the world to incent companies not only to stay, but to relocate from other parts of the world. At the end of the day, the world is as dog eat dog as it ever was, so I hope everyone at UMASS studies as hard as they party, because there is no pity out here in the wilds and few well-paying jobs. Another Obama-like administration, and it will be damn near impossible to make $100k annually, let alone $1 million. Try feeding a family on that.
Aaron • Sep 10, 2014 at 1:04 pm
Spot on! Kudos on pointing out the flaws in modern American mentality.