[nerdponx]

And that's $17/hr * 40hrs * 50weeks = $34,000 / year. A single person could be comfortable on that kind of money, but they won't exactly living the luxury life either. I think that's a pretty reasonable baseline for a full-time-employed resident of the USA.

[fzzzy]

You're just missing one thing -- there is no way in hell mcdonalds will ever give you 40 hours a week.

[nerdponx]

Good point. The best case scenario is that you can make a decent living for a single person on $17/hr. The more realistic scenarios are uglier.

Point being: we need to stop thinking of $15/hr as a high hourly wage.

[lumost]

This Mcdonalds had a rather extensive line, I wouldn't be surprised if they're paying overtime to keep serving customers.