Let Them Eat Big Macs

(Thank you again for your patience as I work through a week that threw me--and my church family--some curveballs.  I'm back now, though I won't be preaching this upcoming Sunday. -E.A.)

So a lot has happened in the world, perhaps most prominently (from an American news perspective) the George Zimmerman acquittal.  I'm still working on my post in response to it, and given the nature of the case--and my own emotions about it--I have been doing so with kid gloves, and that post will not be ready until next week.

Right now, though, I want to talk with y'all for a bit about something else that has been making the news: McDonald's trying to tell its employees that yes, you really can live on America's $7.25 minimum wage.

When I read this budget, I immediately thought of the old McDonald's jingle from my childhood, "Do you believe in magic?"  McDonald's obviously does, because magical thinking is the only way to make a budget like this one workable.

Now, lots of commentators have already noted several ridiculously out-of-touch characteristics about said budget, like the fact that it doesn't account for dependents or local cost-of-living variances.  Other commentators have noted how there are no line items for basic living expenses like gasoline or heat.  These are all excellent critiques of this intellectual exercise, but are ultimately incomplete critiques.

Why?  Because even when you discount the above two factors--having kids and where you live--the math reflects a terribly exploitative system of poverty economics.

Take, for instance, the ludicrous amount of $20/month penciled in for health insurance.  Part of the reason that figure is so absurd isn't just because individual coverage at an average level costs ten times that, it isn't even enough to pay for McDonald's bare-bones health care plan for its own hourly employees.  That plan costs $14/week, or roughly $60/month--three times what McDonald's is telling its employees that they should be paying.

And to add insult to injury, that $14/week plan only covers the first $10,000 of medical expenses.  That's not a whole lot more than a trip to the emergency room.

See, this is why the McDonald's sample budget should be so galling to us, as Christians and as Americans: when you are not paying your workers enough to even be able to afford the lowest level of health care coverage you offer, you're committing an injustice.

And I could go on and on in this vein--this is a budget that assumes someone will work full-time at two different jobs for minimum wage.  That's an 80-hour workweek, but none of it is covered by laws regarding overtime pay because that workweek is split between (presumably) two different employers, both of whom have long since learned that they can create more "jobs" by making all such "jobs" part-time.  Sure, this looks better on paper, because these employers are driving down the unemployment rate, but it's not helping out their employees at $7.25 an hour for three days a week.

There is also only $150 budgeted for a car payment.  Why is this a red flag?  Lower monthly payments imply a longer life of the loan, which means more of that $150 is going to interest on the loan rather than to the principal on the car.  And take it from someone who is still paying off his used Nissan Sentra: $150 is very low as far as car payments go.  The same goes for the $600 allocated to rent or a mortgage in the case of the latter: a low monthly payment indicates more interest is being paid.

The bottom line is that this budget represents the view a company that is not only fine with compensating its employees below a living wage, but is fine with financially punishing its employees for being paid so little by forcing them into higher-interest loans, into functionally working overtime without being paid for it, and into being unable to afford the company's own health care plan.

And like I said--this should offend us.  It should offend us as Christians because God and Jesus Christ are on the side of the poor (Isaiah, Luke, and James especially attest to this reality--there are far too many verses for me to cite here in one go).  And it should offend us as Americans because private corporations are functionally using our tax dollars to subsidize their profits by having us pay for their employees' food, rent, and health care through SNAP, Section 8, and Medicaid rather than doing it themselves.

Scripture tells us to pay the worker their wages (Deuteronomy 24:15, 1 Timothy 5:8).  But McDonald's instead says, "Let them eat Big Macs."

If only their workers could afford those, much less more nutritious food and safer living situations.

Yours in Christ,
Eric