McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said the “two-tier economy” was a major factor in the fast-food giant’s decision to revive its “Extra Value Meal” combos last month.
“Traffic for lower-income consumers is down double digits,” Kempczinski told CNBC in September. “We needed to step in.”
Cynically unsurprising that they decided they needed to “step in” by offering a menu of lower priced garbage instead of by paying their executives less and their employees more.
Clearly the underlying philosophy here isn’t “let’s respond to the increasing wealth gap by working for a solution,” but “let’s respond to the increasing wealth gap by figuring out ways to continue taking advantage of poor people even as they keep getting poorer.”
It wasn’t that long ago that I was generally too cynical. Now I can barely even keep up.
instead of by paying their executives less and their employees more.
Couldn’t they just lower their prices and make less profit?
Why do we always jump to paying employees more, when that just gives other businesses an excuse to charge more?
Couldn’t they just lower their prices and make less profit?
Literally illegal. Shareholder primacy and the Friedman Doctrine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Been there. Read that article to the end. It’s more about straight up cultural narcissism and less about legal precedent. AND its hurts them because it hurts the economy. Good for no one.
Because employees turn around and spend that money. Especially at lower incomes. Businesses need customers, they don’t operate in a vacuum.
For example, there are signs that more lower-income households are investing in the stock market than a decade ago.
Chipotle got way expensive a few years ago, I thought. I haven’t gone since around 2018. It was pricey even then. Scottish fast food (McDonalds) around here has always had some extra-cheap items though. I’m not into it in general, but have partaken now and then.
