Doubling McDonalds' Paychecks Wouldn't Raise Menu Prices Much

Not McDonald's food, but one of several facts HuffPo
says the fast food industry doesn't want you to know.

Remember awhile back when the Papa John's founder (John McDoucherson, I think) balked at "ObamaCare," saying it would "force" him to raise the price of his pizzas by 14 cents each? And most rational people thought, "Wow! For 14 cents, the pizza workers can have health care? Great!" Well, except conservatives who for some reason don't want that. Anyway, the point is, nobody is going to cancel their pizza order over 14 cents, and look at all the good that would do.

Presently, McDonalds (and Walmart and others) are all in a twist over raising the minimum wage. Even though doing so wouldn't necessarily hurt business. In fact, it would create a larger base of consumers who can--you know--afford to buy things. What's more, given the big corporations' multi-billion dollar profits, they actually could afford to raise all of their workers' salaries, and still make a profit, just less profit. Or, they could raise their prices. But really, not all that much. Check out the story excerpted below.

And in a sidebar, I'd love a clarification on something. We hear, virtually every quarter, that Exxon-Mobil, BP and Shell have had record-breaking profits. In fact the biggest profits in the history of man. McDonalds makes billions too. A number of companies do. And then there's Walmart, with its handful of very, very lucky heirs. They rake in tens of billions in profits per year, per person! What is it to Alice Walton if she makes $10 billion this year, rather than $20 billion, but her employees can afford to shop in her own store? I'd seriously like to know, where do all of these multi-billions in profits go anyway? How much can Sheldon Adelson, for example, spend before he crumbles to dust? Why do the mega-rich try so hard to get even more mega-rich, while their employees can barely scrape by?

[Excerpt]

Doubling McDonald's Salaries Would Cause Your Big Mac To Cost Just 68¢ More: Study

McDonald's can afford to pay its workers a living wage without sacrificing any of its low menu prices, according to a new study provided to The Huffington Post by a University of Kansas student. . .

Read more at: Huffington Post

Ryan Plan Cuts Taxes for Rich, Raises Them for the Poor

Actually, that would be the rich tax.
Image from ThinkProgress.

Why oh why do they keep doing this? Over and over again, Republicans propose or enact policies that sting the poor, sick, elderly and infirm, while giving massive breaks to the richest. Why? The very rich in this country are actually very, very, very rich (and I'm probably missing a few verys). They don't need more money. They don't need more breaks.

I was thinking about this the other day. You've got your Foster Friess, your Sheldon Adelson, your Koch Brothers, all obscenely rich. I will not begrudge them their money, they earned it (one way or the other). But these guys have millions just to piss away on quixotic candidates like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. They fund think tanks and lobbyists, and cabals like ALEC, which ghost-writes legislation enacted later by Republicans. All of this money is spent with the prospect of making even more money. Much more money then they have to spend buying politicians. All of the guys above are in their seventies. What the frack are these guys saving up for? Are they buying a country (besides the one they're currently buying) to while away their eighties? Why do billionaires need to work so hard to make even more billions? For what?

But I digress.

[Excerpt]

CHART: House GOP Budget Cuts Taxes For The Rich, Raises Taxes On The Poor


As ThinkProgress has detailed, the House Republican budget, authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), pays for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans by cutting spending from programs that primarily benefit lower-income Americans. While giving an average of $187,000 to each millionaire, the budget finds 62 percent of its cuts from programs that benefit the lower- and middle-classes, kicking millions off of food stamps, gutting Pell Grants, and slashing Medicare and Medicaid. . .

Read more at: Think Progress

Big Oil's Big Haul: $102+ Billion in First 3 Quarters of 2011

Graphic from ThinkProgress

Conservatives shrug off income inequality, even though it is at all-time American highs. They aren't concerned about giant executive bonuses, even if it's being done in taxpayer-bailed-out corporations. And huge government subsidies to big oil, to the tune of billions? For some reason, with all the slash and burn they want to do to government spending, they don't mind shoveling the money to corporations.

So, besides all that, we Americans are paying north of $3.50 per gallon for gasoline. That's a damned site better than the getting-close-to $5 we were once heading for. But it is also quite a bit higher than it was, say three years ago.  If the costs were legitimate, if it really cost that much to make a gallon of gas, and make a little profit, that would be fine. But the big oil companies aren't making a little profit. They aren't making a moderate profit. They aren't even making huge profits. They're making obscene profits, higher profits than any other entity ever made in profit in the history of the world. Where do those multi-billions go, anyway? I'd love to see an accounting of it.

[Excerpt]


Big Oil’s Scary Haul: $100 Billion And Counting 

The combined profits of the Big Five oil companies — ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron — has already exceeded $100 billion this year. . .

Read more at: Think Progress

Gas Prices & Oil Profits: More Wealth Redistribution in the Wrong Direction

Image from AOL/HuffPo

Boy, remember when Barack Obama said something about spreading the wealth around, while on the 2008 campaign trail? It got conservatives all riled up, didn't it? Why, that's communism! It's un-American! So, why have all of the wealth redistribution schemes that take from ordinary Americans, and give it to the rich okay? Why do they keep taking pensions, and union benefits, and talk about killing Medicare and privatizing Social Security, while simultaneously giving tax breaks and benefits to big corporations and to the rich? And why do oil companies get to keep raking in multi-billions in profits (not just gross, but net) while they are jacking up the price for us peons? Clearly, it is not necessary for them to raise it as much as they have, and remain profitable. If that were true, profits would have stayed in the lower billions they were already making. I know it's a fine line to walk in America, talking about windfall taxes, or price caps. But this is--even a rock-ribbed Republican must admit--outrageous.

[Excerpt]

Your Pain, Their Gain: How High Gas Prices Impoverish The Many While Enriching The Few



The next time you're gritting your teeth as you fill your tank with $4 gas, here's something to consider: Your pain is their gain. . .
 
Read more at: AOL/Huffington Post

BP's Cost for Oil Cleanup So Far: 4 Days' Profits

Image from Think Progress

Don't feel too bad for British Petroleum. Sure, their stock has taken a hit, though surely not as much as you'd think. But for all the millions of dollars BP has spent on the cleanup of the gulf (and the ongoing efforts to stop the leak), they're not doing so bad. Four whole days' profit is all they've had to spend so far.  Even if this goes on for a couple more months (and it likely will), we're still only talking about a bad quarter here. And they'll probably still make some profit.

[Excerpt]

BP makes enough profit in four days to cover the costs of the spill cleanup thus far.

For now, at least, BP’s prodigious costs combating the oil spill in the Gulf are outweighed by prodigious profits.



On Monday, BP said it spent $350 million in the first 20 days of the spill response, about $17.5 million a day. It has paid 295 of the 4,700 claims received, for a total of $3.5 million. By contrast, in the first quarter of the year, the London-based oil giant’s profits averaged $93 million a day. . .

Read more at: Think Progress

Burying the Lede: ExxonMobil's Profits

I found the headline of the excerpted piece below kind of stunning. The big news here, of course, is that ExxonMobil's profits for 2008 were the highest ever recorded in all of human history. But this article highlights the fact that their 4th quarter wasn't quite as big as the rest of the year?

[Excerpt]

Exxon Mobil 4th quarter profit drops by a third

Exxon Mobil again broke its own record for highest annual profits ever by a U.S. company, pulling in $45.2 billion in 2008, an 11 percent jump over 2007’s $40.6 billion.

But the Irving-based oil giant’s lower fourth-quartery profits reflected how lower demand and plummeting oil and gas prices in the last three months of 2008 amid the global recession have siphoned the industry’s record-breaking streak, which became almost routine as crude rose to all-time highs. . .

Read more at: Chron