We start tonight with our love affair with fast food. Well, not so much a love affair, as an unhealthy one-way relationship with something that is trying to kill us. But lately, that relationship has become a bit more strained.
WOLF BLITZER (7/30/2013): A nationwide push — workers calling for a much higher minimum wage.
CAROL COSTELLO (7/30/2013): Workers at McDonald's, Wendy's, Domino's Pizza, and more, will walk off the job today. ... Here's what they're asking for: the right to unionize, and an increase in wages from $7.50 an hour to $15 bucks an hour.
WORKERS CHANTING: Keep the burgers, keep the fries, make our wages super size.
(audience cheering)
Yes! Yes!
Corporations be less greedy, give our wallets diabetes! Yeah!
If you won't make us a deal, we'll shit in your Happy Meal! Yes!
Look, look, this is clearly a complicated issue. And there are obviously economic consequences to any action, and reasonable people can disagree on how to help low-income families, whether it's with wages, tax cuts, or a golden ticket that may or may not lead to future ownership of a chocolate factory. But how can these fast food workers even be sure their company can even afford to give them raises?
CAROL COSTELLO (7/30/2013): McDonald's made $5.5 billion dollars in profits alone last year.
OK then. To be honest, I didn't realize the golden arches were literally 24-karat gold.
Also, just to be honest, that $5.5 billion isn't all from food sales. 2/3s of that the Hamburglar made by speculating on cattle futures.
Totally legal! That's the incredible thing, he didn't commit a crime.
Look, deep down, most businesses would love to help the most vulnerable members of society. Their question is just, what's in it for them?
JACK TEMPLE, NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT LAW PROJECT (7/30/2013): You put money in the pockets of workers, they're going to spend it, often at the very establishments that they're working at. It's going to fuel a positive cycle. If we were to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, that would generate about $32 billion dollars in increased consumer spending.
Well that would be good news for everyone! $32 billion dollars! Fast food workers would make more money, they would then spend that money on more fast food, meaning that they would have to spend more money in turn on Imodium to combat the inevitable diarrhea! (audience laughter)
So that's the case for a higher wage. What is the case against?
NEIL CAVUTO (7/30/2013): Only in America can our politicians bemoan a livable wage, forgetting a lot of folks would be grateful for any wage.
FOX NEWS GUEST (7/27/2013): People are not in poverty because they're making minimum wage.
CHARLES PAYNE (7/27/2013): What we're talking about is rewarding mediocrity.
GREG GUTFIELD (7/27/2013): The first step on a ladder is not supposed to be comfortable. You're not supposed to be hanging out there. You double the salary, you turn that rung into a hammock.
(audience groans)
Exactly. You remove the incentive. If you raise the minimum wage, people will never stop working in the fast food industry. They'll get so comfortable in those hot kitchens, in their acrylic uniforms, relaxing in that grease fog, smelling like processed meat no matter how many showers they take. (audience cheering and applause)
It's luxury! It's luxury, that's his point. Kind of.
Of course, a story like the fast food worker strike is also going to be boom business for the saying stupid stuff on television industry. Well, not so much an industry, as a company.
(audience cheering and applause)
But when you think about it, if you think about it, they actually work very much along the lines of the fast food business model. They sell you something that looks appetizing, but leaves you nauseous for hours afterwards. (audience cheering and applause) And anyway, if these workers want a raise, why don't they ask their liberal messiah?
ANDREA TANTAROS (7/30/2013): What a sad commentary it is that in the Obama economy, we're sitting around a table talking about people begging for minimum wage increases. If the economy were strong, McDonald's would be paying higher wages.
(audience groans)
Yes, because that's how capitalism works. Companies always pass on higher profits to their lower level workers. That's a fact! That's just how the system operates. (wild audience cheering and applause) Everyone remembers how during the economic boom of the '90s, fast food workers were just flinging pizzas out of their Rolls Royces.
But it took Fox News's Neil Cavuto to lend this argument the personal touch.
NEIL CAVUTO (7/30/2013): That doesn't look anything like me. Anyway, what I'm about to say isn't what we call demo-friendly. ... When I was a kid, you'd be grateful for any job you could find.
OK, let me stop you right there. Because first of all, you don't get to joke that sounding like a cranky old man is not demo-friendly. Because you must be well aware that the median age of the Fox News audience is over 65 years old. (audience gasps with laughter) How much older? Well, no one knows, because — and this is true — Nielsen stops counting at 65.
But I'm sorry, you were romanticizing your childhood.
NEIL CAVUTO (7/30/2013): All I know is as soon as I turned 16 and heard that a fast food chain called Arthur Treacher's was opening a store ... I got the job. And soon rocketed to relief manager, then weekend manager, then by the tender age of 16 1/2, the result: full-time manager. Yeah, it's true. It all started at $2 bucks an hour.
Unfortunately, working at Arthur Treacher's was apparently the last job Neil Cavuto was actually qualified for. (audience laughter and applause)
Because he is certainly not qualified for his current position as financial analyst. Because, as others have noted, the median fast food worker today is actually a 28-year-old adult, and not a 16-year-old Neil Cavuto getting his first job to earn money for beer and porn. And furthermore, Cavuto's $2 an hour wage in 1974, adjusted for inflation, would today be worth nearly $9.50, which is more than $2 dollars more than today's minimum wage! (audience cheering and applause)
It's amazing! It's incredible that he had the incentive to leave that for his high-paid job on television right now. He really pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
Now to be fair, when they saw that some of these protesters were adults with children, some Fox commentators did acknowledge it. But, it somehow seemed to make them even more angry.
CHARLES PAYNE (7/30/2013): The guy there, he had a woman next to him with a baby. She was cradling a baby and talking about not being able to feed her kids. And you know, it's somehow, it was McDonald's responsibility to feed all of her kids, no matter how many she has.
(audience groans)
Whoa! "No matter how many she has"?? You're talking about an adult, not a poodle! "Oh, I'm so sick of these get-rich welfare mothers asking for handouts, mooching paychecks from their employers in exchange for the work they've just done for them! It sickens me!"
The general consensus seems to be that the minimum wage is like a Thai massage — if it doesn't hurt, it's not working. And no one knows that better than Fox Business anchor Tracy Byrnes.
TRACY BYRNES (7/28/2013): The goal in life is not to be on minimum wage forever. ... Your goal is to do a great job and get promoted and move out of it. So this notion that we're going to keep raising it just to share the wealth — 'cause well, we're almost socialists anyway at this point — is ridiculous!
(audience groans)
Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's terrifying what she just said! Who would have thought that the line between capitalism and communism in America is a double-digit minimum wage? I have to say, that woman looks familiar. I think I've seen her expressing sympathy for low-wage earners and the poor before.
10/18/2010:
FOX BUSINESS GUEST: It's interesting, whenever the rich want a tax cut, somehow we can afford it, but when we actually have to spend money....
TRACY BYRNES: $250,000 is not rich. You've lived in the city long enough to know that. It's not rich for a family of four sending kids to college. It actually is close to poverty.
(audience howls in disgust and shock)
That's right. Hey, she's right! She's right! If you want to earn Tracy Byrnes' sympathy, come back when you're making a quarter million dollars a year. Then you'll know what poverty is really all about. Clearly, Tracy Byrnes' apple did not fall far from the tree.
(audience laughter)
But that's not the point. Look, look, I don't like to often dabble in service journalism. Frankly, I think it's beneath me. But I would like to do that fast food workers of America a favor right now. You see these faces next to me?
All these people have been saying terrible things about you. So, I want you to remember these faces. And if any of these people happen to come into your restaurant... (wild audience cheering and applause) I'm not saying... I'm not saying you should give them the special sauce, I'm just saying I think it's pretty clear they deserve it. We'll be right back.
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