Bernie Sanders is displaying his ignorance of matters economic here. Even, actually, his complete disregard for basic arithmetic. But then you know, politician in election season, we are really going to hold him to some standard of truth and honesty, right?
So, the basic idiocy:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“If Amazon can raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour there is no reason that McDonald’s, a company that took in $1.4bn in profit and paid its CEO $22m, can’t pay its workers a living wage,” said Sanders in a statement. “I am proud to stand with workers demanding $15 an hour and a union.”[/perfectpullquote]I’ll assume that the living wage being referred to there is that $15. That accords with Bernie’s previous statements.
So, how many McDonald’s workers are there in the United States? Including the franchisees some 300,000. So, we’re talking about $4,600 or so per worker – that’s what the $1.4 billion in profits is. Divide that by the standard US working year, 2,000 hours, that’s $2.30 per hour. The complaint currently is that all too many of those workers get $7.25 an hour, add $2.3 and we’re not at $15, are we?
OK, sure, we can play games, say that they’re averaging $9 now – perhaps about right. Say they’re each working 30 hours a week, not 40. It’s still only $3 an hour, which doesn’t get us to $15, does it?
The very numbers Bernie gives us state that the reason McDonald’s cannot pay $15 an hour is because McDonald’s doesn’t make enough to pay $15 an hour.
And this is the platform that someone is running for President on? What is the thinking here, the entire nation are Barbie? You know, math is hard?
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Brilliant by Tom. Saint Bernie will not rest until all the international capitalist pig dogs deploying the franchise system go broke. What's remarkable is how far you can go in this politics game if you come across as a basically nice well-meaning person without the brains. Bernie is one example, Jezza another, and Ruth and Boris too but the lack of brains is relative with them.
i think the key is the answer to your last question -- he perceives today's voters to be mindless and not interested in policy specifics.