9 years ago
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What paying fast food workers a living wage would do to the price of a Big Mac
Would you pay 17 extra cents for a Big Mac if it meant the person who prepared it could earn a living wage? What about an extra 30 cents each time you ate out at any fast food restaurant? These are the small prices we would have to pay on average to ensure that fast food workers around the country earned an hourly-wage of $15, according to a new study by researchers at Purdue University's School of Hospitality and Tourism Management.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com
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This study probably just investigates the effect of minimum wage increase and not the increase that all employees have to see, if a manager is making $15 an hour currently and now a new employee makes the same, well, there's no incentive for that responsibility anymore, so originally he/she was making double the min. wage, so they're going to want to see a significant increase as well, so if you pay managers $30 an hour now, the district manager who makes $30 an hour is going to want more, and it moves straight up the ladder.
This doesn't sound so much like an argument against increasing the minimum wage as an argument for paying everyone at least a living wage.
I'm for getting everyone to a point of living comfortably, but at that same rate, it's going to increase the cost of living by increasing everyone's wages and companies have to cover their overhead and that gets built into the pricing of goods. So if the cost of living climbs, then that $15 is no better than that $7.25 people were making from the start.
Also, companies are more concerned with bottom line, so at $15 an hour per employee, you could reduce your labor in half and effectively be paying $7.50 per person, but still expect the same results, from one employee as you would from two. Justification? You're making double the money, you should be capable of producing double the work.
Cost of living doesn't decrease by increasing wages, it comes from efficiency of producing goods/services/food. Reducing bottom line allows companies to sell at a lower rate and increase sales to people who wouldn't have normally bought the product to begin with.
You want everyone to have a living wage? Increase the efficiency and productivity of existing companies to reduce the cost of goods and services, not raise their bottom line.
Since wages have been divorced from productivity for a long, long time I don't see how your argument will do anything to improve the lives of anyone but the elite.
Goods would be cheaper while the elite would make the same % profit. That said, an ideal situation involves both. Cheapening the cost to produce and the price to buy goods through efficiency along with rising wages doubly improves the average Joe's buying power while allowing company to maintain similar profits, if not improve them through economic health.
It sounds lovely, but again we haven't seen this. Productivity has skyrocketed, living costs have risen consistently and wages have stagnated or declined for all but the top 10%. Labor is now being treated as a fungible cost rather than a necessary investment. So again, I don't see how this argument will improve the lives of anyone but the elite.
I assume you're still talking about the7egend's initial post, since I just argued for increasing wages and cheapening goods. (not sure how you could see that only improving the lives of the elite)
What he's (I believe) trying to get at is just increasing people's buying power without increasing their wages. I think its only half a solution, especially since its already happening everywhere. The price of a 50 inch TV is less today than its ever been, even without inflation adjustments. So while increasing people's buying power wouldn't only benefit the elite, its a bit of a half measure for a healthy economy.
The problem I have with this is that progress has been uneven. The price of luxury goods like a 50" television has dropped like a stone, but the cost of living is still rising. It's those daily costs that are killing the middle class. How do we drop those costs? Increasing productivity hasn't done the job or costs would have dropped consistently, making our wage stagnation less of an issue. So again, with wages disconnected from productivity we find ourselves in a world where the only people really benefiting are the elite. The middle class has cheaper toys but that doesn't help with the way wages have not kept pace with the cost of living.
My take on it is that wages are divorced from productivity because, increasingly, companies divert money to shareholders at the expense of the people who actually work to provide their profits.
Right and the argument being made is if the progress were more even that would help. You're locking into the wages and productivity being disconnected, and we're saying that it can be acceptable as long as buying power is evenly increasing. We know its not happening now, that's why everything we're talking about is prefixed with "we should" and not "we do."
So how do we fix this? As you say, we're discussing what should happen but it's not. /u/the7egend seems to be arguing that all we need to do is increase production and the wealth will trickle down. Certainly we've seen some benefits such as in the electronics industry but that still hasn't helped the disparity in the overall cost of living. So what's the solution?
I'm pretty sure most people already know my answer, but since socialism is still dismissed by invoking the military dictatorship variety I'm looking to see the capitalist answer to income inequality. So far the only answers I've seen are "give it more time for the wealth to trickle down" and "the poor are poor because they do it to themselves," neither of which are solutions.
Its not easily fixed, and I'm perfectly willing to admit I don't have any concrete solutions. I can however, identify the main blockers. First, companies can and do tell us to fuck off when we try to regulate them by force. The only way to get them to cooperate is to massage the system in such a way that their greed can only be satiated by a successful, well represented middle class. I don't know how the hell to do that, but in our current world enacting socialism would unfortunately destroy our country economically as companies flee our shores for more business friendly countries. We'd have a great moral and humanitarian victory to show, but we'd all be extremely poor, just equally poor.
Enacting socialism would destroy our country economically? Companies would flee our shores? These are the sort of myths that continue to block progress. To counter them, let's look at what has been successful at creating the middle class in the past and what is currently working to protect the middle class in other industrialized nations.
The economist and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich outlined twelve steps to restoring our economy and saving the middle class based on these lessons. They're worth taking the time to watch the videos or read the transcripts.
http://robertreich.org/post/118372382285
http://robertreich.org/post/118451954660
http://robertreich.org/post/118958136170
http://robertreich.org/post/119312658065
http://robertreich.org/post/119531027110
http://robertreich.org/post/119938747675
http://robertreich.org/post/120107784670
http://robertreich.org/post/120693077100
http://robertreich.org/post/121116739240
http://robertreich.org/post/121924725970
http://robertreich.org/post/122118187155
http://robertreich.org/post/122221596470
It is not a myth that a corporation gives zero fucks about its host country. A corporation is not a person, it's a terminator whose goal is profit rather than the death of Sarah Connor. Every. Single. One. of those ideas appeal to me on a moral level, but I can't see them being successful on a practical level. Here is my only link to contribute:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/...whopping-amount-of-money-by-moving-to-canada/
As long as we're the strongest economy in the world, we can get away with a lot. The post war period showed this in the surest fashion. When there is no where else to go to make money, a 90% tax rate is acceptable. The raw truth is that we're not the only game in town anymore, and the shipping of various things overseas (jobs, production, entire companies) is a reality we have to contend with now. As much as I want all those things listed and see the truth in his reasoning for why they will work, I just think that is a huuuuge dice roll to make. In 1950, I'd say fuck it, go all in. Now, there are just too many other markets available to start agitating our resident parasites that also happen to keep us in our tedious position as number #1
The myth is that businesses will flee the country if they aren't coddled. We can raise taxes, strengthen regulations, support unions and all those other "socialist" activities that free-market activists swear will drive businesses away without hurting our economy. Both history and current events demonstrate that companies that do this will be in the extreme minority and will be more than offset by the benefits from such policies. Economies are driven by both supply and demand and right now demand is severely stifled. McDonalds isn't going to pick up their ball and take it home because we won't play by its rules. They'll adapt just like the twenty-two other times the allegedly economy-killing minimum wage was raised.
@Orestes910 technology is not the same as food. Technology is made by robots and once they moved labor to China for cheaper wages the price of things in technology went down. A 50 inch TV set made in the USA in the 1980s will cost more than one made in China today. Food is grown by farmers on farms and then sold to places like McDonald's it is based on the cost of gas to harvest it and ship it. They add in costs to cover the salaries of the people at McDonald's and the utilities, etc.
A TV set is made in a factory in China and then shipped to the USA, people in China don't earn $15/hr or even $5/hr they earn pennies on the dollar to work in a factory for 18 hours a day 6 days a week. So comparing a TV set to a Big Mac is an apples to oranges comparison. If you paid the Chinese workers $15/hr then the TV set would cost a lot more to sell.
Myths? What a load of bullshit.
http://dailysignal.com/2014/08/10/seeking-lower-taxes-companies-flee-the-u-s/
Tell me, who wants to work when 100% of his income is taken away and he's an outright slave? That's right, no one. Now tell me, who wants to have 50% of his income taken away? That's right. NO ONE. We pay taxes because otherwise we go to jail. (Want to help The Poor®? -You could do that voluntarily too!)
Now if you can choose between having ~40% of your profits taken away, and wasting lots of money on "compliance" and having say, ~15% of your profits taken away and not having to deal with bullshit regulations.. which option would any sane person choose?
And to support your argument you link to a propaganda site. Thank you for your contribution, but I have no interest in arguing your religious beliefs.
Another load of bullshit. It's not a propaganda site just because you declare it one. Surely you must understand that much, at least?
Look, you can actually check if the US has super high corporate taxes or not. I haven't checked, but I'm willing to take the article's word for it. I have read that they actually do tax worldwide profits too, which is just fucking insane, and onerous. The US has shitloads of regulations too.
Considering that kind of stuff was what the article brought up as the reasons for why companies are leaving the US, it's obvious that it's not a propaganda article, but one that describes reality instead. In other words, you, Sir, are either full of shit or a complete idiot.
I don't see how an argument does anything at all.
Ah, yes, because companies will certainly lower their prices if they could find a way to reduce costs. They wouldn't take that extra profit and say "Nah, we don't need this."
Unfortunately, the only way to get everyone to a living wage is to enforce everyone having a living wage.
Companies reduce the price of things all the times when their initial investment has been returned or they can source cheap materials to produce the same product. Most commonly you see this in the electronics sector. They are keeping the same profit, a company is designed to make money, but they're reducing the cost be it through manufacturing efficiency, reduction of costs through new material contracts, etc. The lower they can get their cost while retaining their same profit the better. If they can cut a $100 item by $50 while still retaining the same profit margin, they're going to do it, because more people are going to buy at $50 vs $100. That's just basic stuff. If you can sell a 1000 units at $100, or 10000 Units at $50 with the same profit margin, which one are you going to do?
They would sell 10,000 units at $100 if they could. The only reason they sell for $50 is not because of any reduction in the manufacturing cost but because of competition.
Enforcing it is fine, but you have to take into account the inherent evil/apathy in modern companies. Enforcing doubling the minimum wage sounds fantastic to me, but I know that companies will either lay off half their staff to compensate, raise prices, (this decreasing the buying power of those people who just got the pay bump) or both. Because they're shit and they only care about money. You could then try to enforce price locks, and not allow them to lay people off. Good luck, they'll go to another country. They have so many options that the average person doesn't have for skirting around the rules its baffling. I think we can all agree that the goal is to stop middle and below class citizens from being screwed over, but that's a problem much larger than the minimum wage. Tackling it in the wrong order will do nothing but fiddle around the numbers in people's bank accounts while they continue to live in a state of financial anxiety.
http://www.dol.gov/minwage/mythbuster.htm
That one is #2.
Fair, but given the current number, an increase to $10.10 is significantly more feasible than $15. On top of that, as you've mentioned before, it hasn't kept pace. So yeah maybe raising it in the past hasn't caused disruption, but that's almost certainly due to how comically low it was both before and after the increase.
I'll gladly change my tune if the McDonalds situation proves me wrong, but again, stagnant wages are a symptom, not the problem.
$10.10 an hour is still far below the curve and doesn't begin to address the need for a living wage for families.
That sounds like you'd actually prefer a tyrannical Command Economy? .. The Soviet Union is out of business already, but you could still visit Venezuela and see how well it's working out for them.
Or just stop intervening in their lives and let them produce goods and services subject to free competition? Remember, a government can't force anything good to happen.
I bet that was a large part of why you got so many upvotes.. :p
But it's more like when you're selling half as many burgers[1], you need half as many workers too!
[1] Naturally, if the wages are doubled, there's a hefty increase in prices too, which lowers consumption, which lowers revenues, so.. Yeah.
The moral of the story is: you can't force prosperity to happen. Quite the contrary, you have to LET it happen.. but our rulers prefer just looting us as much as possible, and there we go.
It could be used as an argument against raising the minimum wage. After all, the money has to come from somewhere, and customers wouldn't be willing (or even able) to pay a lot more for their Big Macs.
That's the problem with supply-side economic thinking: you ignore the fact that if people don't have money to buy your product then all the supply in the world won't bring customers to your door.
I'm actually not ignoring anything. You might be ignoring that if customers aren't willing to pay higher prices, then businesses can't just double the lowest-paid employees salaries either. It's not that complicated.
You might want to argue that the execs or owners should just take lower salaries to compensate for the higher costs of paying higher low level salaries, but that's not your decision. Here in the real world, they will just do whatever they see fit. If the business owner wants to take out as much money as he possibly can, it's his prerogative, because he actually owns the company. He started it and worked really fucking hard to make it successful.. and so on.
Note that even a filthy rich company owner is actually giving people jobs and livelihoods with them. How many people have you employed lately?
So the workers will make $15 an hour, the manager will make $30 an hour, and everyone above that will have their wages adjusted accordingly. I'd submit that the wage increases of management would have a comparatively small impact as they make up only a small fraction of the company workforce relative to their minimum-wage workers. I'd be happy to sacrifice a fraction of my comfort if it means that a great many people could have a greatly improved quality of life.
Can we call this the "trickle up economy?" ;)
That's a rather large and broad assumption. Assuming it was 100% true, it doesn't necessarily have to remain so going forward. There's always benefit to having more control over your situation, and ideally responsibility should be paired with parallel authority.
Manager's at the fast food place I worked at were making only about $2 more than the minimum, not twice ($9.50 compared to $11.25 ish).
Being a McDonald's worker (not a manager) shouldn't pay a living wage because it's not a job for grown ups to start a career. Fast food places are already looking to automate cashiers so that they can rid of all but one of them. This is going to speed up that trend.
French fry maker shouldn't be a job that people have for 20 years. It should be a temporary job that either leads to a management position (and then real money) or a stepping stone for another career. Unemployment amongst teens is sky high, why not leave these jobs for them?
Oh dear. I think that's the first myth busted here.
Just because minimum wage jobs weren't aimed toward primary income earners doesn't mean that's still true today. Plenty of people are working three and four minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet because they don't have the means or opportunity to advance. Just because you were able to raise yourself up out of that level doesn't mean everyone has that capacity, but that doesn't negate their need for a living wage.
That's not the business owner's problem; It's not their responsibility to compensate you based on your situation in life. Workers are paid to perform a task, the value of that task doesn't change based on who's doing it.
That's precisely why we turn to the government to solve the problem, because business owners aren't invested in the lives of their workers. Labor has been transformed from an essential investment into a fungible cost, especially since productivity and wages have been divorced. The value of the labor being performed hasn't been reflected in wages in a long, long time.
It's not businesses' job to solve this "problem" though, just like it's not their responsibility to be "invested in the lives of their workers". Labor is transactional: you perform a task for which you are compensated; that is the beginning and the end of the relationship. It's none of your employer's business what you do on your off time, nor is it their responsibility to compensate you for it. If someone feels that they're not being fairly compensated for their labor, then they're free to either renegotiate, or to seek other employment, but this notion that employers should be forced to overpay for labor because of conditions and circumstances that they have absolutely no control over, is flat out ridiculous.
And the value of minimum wage labor is absolutely reflected in the wage, as it always has been. Sweeping floors, mowing lawns, waiting tables, flipping burgers, these jobs are largely the same now as they've always been.
It's not possible to renegotiate or find better employment when "industry standards" keep wages artificially low. We have an unequal power relationship between businesses and their employees with businesses holding the lion's share of the power and keeping the lion's share of what the employees produce. The result of what you describe is that businesses get subsidized by government as workers turn to public assistance to survive. If we're going to keep doing that then it's perfectly appropriate to have the government regulate businesses in proportion to the amount that they're being subsidized through cheap labor.
This is where we get different schools of thought. Should everyone work together for the good of the collective or should things stay the same and whoever is born in a good situation or gets lucky get all of the wealth and power?
When we have an increased population, but a huge decrease in available low skill work, what should people do?
The minimum wage is not "artificially low", it's low for a reason: these are jobs that require no special skills, than can be done by nearly anyone with little to no training.
Of course the employers have the "lion's share of the power" as it relates to their employees, they're the employers. As for"keeping the lion's share of what the employees produce", again, of course they do- they're the ones paying for the production in the first place. Employees are not partners, they're not owners, they're entitled to their agreed upon compensation and that's it. Period.
You have this ill-conceived notion that businesses are some kind of social program- they're not; businesses exist to make money, that is their sole function. A business pays you to do a job, that's it; your situation in life is neither their responsibility, nor their problem. As I said earlier, you are perfectly free to negotiate- be it individually or collectively, for higher wages, or to find other employment.
Another name for "luck" is hard work. You are never locked into your station in life in this country, there is always the opportunity for advancement if you are willing to do the work required. There are countless stories of people who were born into bleak, oppressive, Dickensian levels of poverty, and not only have they risen above, but they've gone on to become some of the most successful people on the planet. Go read Oprah's life story, and then tell me how hard life is for someone working at a fast food joint.
Success- hell, life in general, is not easy, and anyone who tells you it should be, is selling something.
They are most certainly artificially low. Try running the fast food industry without workers. Then come back and try to tell me their labor isn't worth anything.
The thing is not everyone is provided with the same mental and intellectual tools in life. Should someone be punished to poverty for lacking the intelligence or emotional fortitude to rise above the station they were born into? I don't think weakness is something to be punished.
So, to your mind, expecting people to take responsibility for themselves and their situation in life, is a "punishment"?
There are very few conditions in life that cannot be overcome with hard work and determination. Is it easy? Of course not, nor should it be, but it's certainly possible, and not that uncommon. If someone isn't willing to put in the work, then that's their choice, and one they're free to make, but that doesn't make it someone else's responsibility to subsidize that choice.
Not a problem. We've had the ability to create nearly fully automatic fast food restaurants since the mid '60s, but the concept was just too outlandish back then, but now that people are comfortable with automation, and had half a century's worth of technological advancement, take a look at the answer to $15 an hour. Self-checkout lanes are popping up more and more, iPads and touch screens are replacing servers at some full-service restaurants, and ordering/paying from mobile devices is becoming downright commonplace.
Really? You think automation is just "fire and forget" and the owners can soak up the profits without worrying about employing anyone?
Good luck with that.
But it's not about hard work and determination. For one, there are still tons of manual labor centered jobs that are necessary for society to function. We'll likely always need retail staff regardless of how automated retail becomes, custodial staff, construction centered manual laborers, fruit pickers, among others. Those are all typically minimum wage, but they're absolutely necessary, and most low-skill jobs are backbreaking work in high-pressure environments.
And yes, I do believe that forcing people to work for a pittance for a job that's incorrectly perceived as being low value is a punishment. And I think it unjust to view a worker as being lesser for doing a job that some believe is for lesser people. I'm sorry, but your attitudes about this are extremely frustrating to me. It seems as if you think that a person's job and position in society are a reflection of their morality and value as a human being. Do not confuse someones economic worth with their absolute worth; they are absolutely independent of one another.
You can make all of the emotional appeals you want, it doesn't change the basic economic facts, and those are what we need to deal with.
When you have jobs (like the ones you mentioned) that require no special skills, and that can be done by anyone, with little to no training, the value of those jobs will always be low, there is no changing that; whether you're a 16 year-old looking for a summer job, or a 35 year-old single mother with two kids to feed, the value of the job remains the same. It's not a company's responsibility to pay more for a job than it's worth, simply because the worker "needs it more".
If I'm wrong, then there should be nothing at all to worry about. The Government can keep mandating higher and higher wages and everything will be just peachy. Time will determine who is right, and who is wrong.
No one is arguing that the value of low skilled labor is and should be low compared to that of high skilled labor where skilled labor is in short supply. The question is what should the floor value be for labor? Even today's meager minimum wage is set to a value higher than that dictated purely by market forces. Are you suggesting there should be no floor? If so look to Bangladesh or China. Is that the kind of labor market you want? The minimum wage should not be determined by market forces only, there should be safeguards built in to ensure a decent quality of life for all workers.
Whether you like it or not- whether you agree with it or not, wages are subject to market forces, namely supply and demand. When you mandate a wage that’s higher than market value, you create an imbalance in the market that the market will correct. In this case it means that people are going to lose their jobs. When you increase the cost of wages, you increase both: the quality of labor that employers have to choose from, and the quality of labor they demand; this means that the lowest-skilled, least-educated workers (the very workers you’re claiming to want to help), are going to get priced out of the market.
If you want wages for low skill jobs to go up, then you need to reduce the surplus of workers we have in this country, and that’s all there is to it. The real unemployment rate is still over 10%, and the labor force participation rate is at its lowest point in nearly 40 years; to put it plainly it’s a buyer’s market for labor right now.
I love how no one ever complains about market forces when they work in their favor, well this is the other side of the equation, and you have to take the good with the bad.
Not only are you demonstrably wrong just like the last twenty-two times people predicted doom when the minimum wage was raised, but people are trying to prevent the government from doing what we need it to do.
I'm skeptical. Increasing wages isn't going to change at all the skill levels available in the labor pool that companies can draw from. Prices will increase to offset the increased cost of labor, but consumer spending will also increase which will more than offset the escalation in prices. It's been shown that higher wages for low income workers increases spending which feeds back into economic growth. I also happen to live in an area where the minimum wage was raised to double the national average and the local economy is one of the strongest in the nation.
I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong on this one.
It does actually. It increases the number of people who are willing to work these jobs, meaning that employers will have their choice of a much wider field of applicants, a field that will include higher-qualified, higher-skilled workers; workers who weren't willing to do these jobs for $7.25 hr, will be willing to do them for $15 an hour.
No, it really won't.
You're talking about over $16,000 in additional revenue, per minimum wage employee, that a business would have to generate in order to simply maintain their current level of profitability. That's to say nothing of all the supervisors and assistant managers, making $10 - $15 an hour that are now going to have to be bumped up.
From where did people ever get this notion that businesses can simply generate additional revenue on demand, markets be damned?
No it hasn't. Not ever. That's an economic fallacy that was disproven over 160 years ago by Frédéric Bastiat. Raising wages does not create economic growth, it redistributes wealth. The only thing that creates economic growth is production.
I didn't say that most of the jobs are done by teens, I said they SHOULD be done by teens. Propping up a straw man as if I made a different argument is disingenuous. And I wouldn't trust the Department of Labor website you linked, since they can't seem to even calculate the actual unemployment rate.
Again, working the fry-a-lator is not a career, nor should it be an income for some trying to start a family. It's a job to get out of, not to stay in. Having a minimum wage at all is just another regulation control by big businesses to drive little businesses under. The minimum wage will rise when corporations decide that their pawns in Congress will allow it, but don't expect it to pay for a real living standard for very long, if at all. Remove the price controls and you will have teens at full employment because employers will be able to pay them at a rate that matches their labor. As for the 40 year old still making hamburgers, he might have to get a gig that requires more training, like working at a Home Depot (something a teen wouldn't be allowed to do since it requires training and access to equipment that can be dangerous).
If minimum wage actually worked, it would've solved the employment problem a long time again. Government controls don't work on business because the government is terrible at running things and big money has plenty of time to sway the rules in their favor.
It's always fun to talk about what SHOULD be, but we have to deal with what IS. And the reality is that there aren't enough jobs to go around so a lot of adults are stuck working minimum wage jobs while they struggle to make ends meet. The "free market" has never cared what people are paid and has never offered realistic solutions for social and economic problems. This is why people have repeatedly turned to the government to resolve what businesses have no incentive to correct.
That's exactly what the Roman Empire did and you can see how well that worked out. A realistic solution to the problems of this world is to stop going to the people that caused them for the answers.
That's a new one. I've heard that the Roman Empire fell because of reliance on barbarian mercenaries, lead poisoning, paganism and even because of gay marriage. I've never before heard that the Roman Empire fell because it rejected the Free Market Fairy.
It was a combination of many things, but mostly economic. Devaluing their currency to continue wars and expand the Empire. The Republic had a better balance of competing interest, but the Empire was more centralized, like all dictatorships. All the resources in Rome were eventually gobbled up to continue the empire and like the U.S., you were either politically connected businessman that supplied the endless needs of empire or you were just another chump that got taxed into oblivion.
every job should pay a living wage. (By which I mean that if it were somebody's full-time job, they could survive on the money earned there)
Part of the problem is that the main consumers of fast food are people on very fixed income. Most middle class+ people don't go to McDonald's or Walmart or Taco Bell (unless stoned). They go to fast casual restaurants like Panera, chipotle, five guys, or the like. So the issue isn't "would the comfortable middle class pay $0.30 more for a McDonald's hamburger, the question is whether a person making minimum wage would do that, as they're the bulk of the clients of fast food. And at $10 an hour, an extra $0.30 a burger, over the course of a meal, would turn McDonald's from a monthly treat to a very special occasion meal. The Big Mac is already pricy for someone making that kind of money.
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How much does a Big Mac cost in America? Today in New Zealand, I got a medium Big Mac meal for $9.40
There are a lot of differences in how the economies are set up in different countries. You likely have additional costs going to the Government plus a lot of import fees we don't have to deal with.
Sure, but what's an extra 30 cents to you? Is it only a 3% increase, or what?
What import fees?
Didn't say anything about paying a bit more for something I have not had in over a decade. Minimum wage is unlivable in this country and that is complete garbage, but I'm not balancing the largest economy on the planet.
It would also appear New Zealand sources most there own ingredients in country, similar to how it is done in the US. You only import a few sauces and anything with pig. On top of that New Zealand exports $380 million in McDonalds raw product to nearby countries. Pretty cool.
Yeah, we're pretty amazing!