It’s not fiscally viable closed system. Restaurants operate on tiny margins and come and go as frequently as software startups.
We keep trying to hitch biological necessity to ridiculous memes of social capital accumulation, inventing more abstract and Byzantine math as if literal reality will implode if the rich can’t earn a profit.
Like healthcare, the routine is eating is obviously necessary. Is the industrialization?
If you are a KFC/Burger King/McDonalds franchisee then it seems to work but I have lost count the number of establishments that open/closes in that one spot of our local mall.
Pub/Indian/Pizza/Chinese/Fish & Chips/ - they come and go.
I would draw a further distinction. Some franchise operations (thinking Subway and Little Caesars) don’t really care if you make it: They get their money up front and you have to pay to get out.
McD is more strategic: They want a good business plan, location, etc. and are very picky at the cost of some false negatives.
McDonald's and similar jobs used to be an entry level job for teens and college students. When I was 16 I was happy to work there for minimum wage ($3.35/hr at the time). Nobody other than the mangers did it to support a family. It was never understood to be that kind of job. I don't know how we got to the point where a no-skills-required job that anyone with a pulse can learn to do in a few hours suddenly became required to support a family of four.
> I don't know how we got to the point where a no-skills-required job that anyone with a pulse can learn to do in a few hours suddenly became required to support a family of four.
That's an odd way of looking at it. Surely what happened first isn't that the expectations of fast food jobs changed out of the blue. Could it instead be that other jobs which adults worked to support their families went away?
> Nobody other than the mangers did it to support a family. It was never understood to be that kind of job
Wrong.
"From the beginning, the minimum wage was meant to be a living wage—meaning families could live off of the pay comfortably, rather than struggling paycheck-to-paycheck" https://www.lendio.com/blog/minimum-wage-livable/
You're correct, McDonald's (and plenty of other large employers) probably never thought or cared whether or not their minimum wage jobs were for teenagers or parents with families. To them, it was just the least they were legally allowed to pay, and therefore just a cost to be minimized as much as possible.
1) The idea that McDonald’s used to be primarily staffed with students doesn’t carry water. How would the store run during school hours? Students can’t run a store when they need to be in class, someone else has to do that.
2) Have you actually looked back and compared that salary to the cost of living back then? I think you might be surprised how many people could, and were, supporting a family on a job that “anyone with a pulse” could do.
Spouses who needed to get out of the house while their other half was at work. They loved going to work with the same friends every day, chatting while cleaning up after the lunch shift... There was enough work to not be bored.
There are a lot of people who like having a job, but don't really need the money. Those that need the money move up to management if they can.
> There are a lot of people who like having a job, but don't really need the money.
These people exist, I do not believe that any of them work at fast food restaurants. That’s an incredible amount of stress to put yourself through to “get out of the house” and meet new people.
> Those that need the money move up to management if they can.
I think you’re overestimating the size of management by quite a bit.
Did you read the article? It directly countermands everything you’re saying. I personally can’t figure out why you’d make a claim that’s such transparent nonsense.
> Most people decide fast food management isn't for them, and move elsewhere.
Exactly. There are all kinds of better social outlets if you don’t need money; book clubs, knitting groups, and game nights exist precisely to fill that need. The idea that you’d go work at McDonald’s for funsies rather than out of economic necessity just doesn’t pass the sniff test.
I don't know how we got to the point where a no-skills-required job that anyone with a pulse can learn to do in a few hours suddenly became required to support a family of four.
Deskilling, derisking, outsourcing. Companies used to run their own email, which required a competent mailadmin, nowadays you outsource it to Google or Microsoft.
I don't know where you grew up, but it still looks that way in fairly affluent suburbs. In the city, the fast food workforce is 75% immigrant single mothers.
The minimum wage was set to $3.35/hr in 1981, a time when 22.2% of Americans were employed in manufacturing vs. 10% today. There were many alternatives to working at McDonalds that stopped existing in the US over the last 40 years. The ultimate answer to what Americans would do instead of manufacturing turned out to be restaurant and retail work.
Also, consider the relative increase in housing, education, and medical care over that period of time. The inflation adjusted median home was about $178,000 in 1981, It’s $314,000 now.
People always need to eat.
It’s not fiscally viable closed system. Restaurants operate on tiny margins and come and go as frequently as software startups.
We keep trying to hitch biological necessity to ridiculous memes of social capital accumulation, inventing more abstract and Byzantine math as if literal reality will implode if the rich can’t earn a profit.
Like healthcare, the routine is eating is obviously necessary. Is the industrialization?