5d ago

McDonald’s CEO is grappling with a ‘two-tier economy’ as he slashes prices on value meals—and signals backing for a minimum wage increase

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return2ozma @lemmy.world

5d ago

fortune.com /2025/09/03/mcdonalds-two-tier-economy-lower-income-minimum-wage/

16 comments

And what we see is, it’s really kind of a two-tier economy. If you’re upper-income, earning over $100,000, things are good … What we see with middle- and lower-income consumers, it’s actually a different story.
McDonalds is now high value food. Never thought I'd see the day.
- Food in general is high value food now. Anyone not in the wealth holding class is considered second rate and irrelevant.
- Good my ass, my family is making $125,000 a year together and it's still paycheck to paycheck.
- Mind you, $100K in many areas is really not that much.
- Please don't conflate value with cost :)
You know... You could just choose to pay your employees more. You don't need to petition the government to change the minimum wage to do that...
- But what they actually want is for their customers to have better pay, if they could have everyone except their employees earn more they'd advocate for that but even they must realise that's too hard a sale.
  
  It's a problem of competition. If they raise salaries and their competitors don't then they're at a disadvantage with higher costs. So they want the government to make everybody raise salaries.
- McDonald’s corporation doesn’t actually employ all its fast food workers, the franchise owners do. Franchise owners are free to pay their workers more. Some do, such as in high cost of living areas where they’d otherwise be unable to hire anyone.
  
  Surely McDonald's can create a floor for pay that franchise owners cannot go below...
From what I hear it is not cheap at all, the slashing of their prices will still leave it much more expensive than other options, and it is garbage food. They treat their workers as bad as any other company, and one of these meals would not even fill me up, especially not drinking pop.
1 10th of a pound cheeseburger value meal is still nine bucks.
They are completely and entirely insane.
It's a quarter of a cup of flour, two tablespoons of ground beef, a potato, a single slice of cheese and some sugar water. That meal literally cost them a dollar at scale.
I stopped going to McDonald's a while ago when the prices went through the roof. I can go to Taco Bell for $6 and walk out of there with more food than I know what to do with.
It's been a year since I last had McDonald's and I don't miss it. Food is way too expensive for what it is, and no, a data mining app will not fix that.
I don't care if they pay me. They broke the cool. For years it was a fun and cheap place and now it's everything that it wasn't . Been 4 years since I went and it will be an eternity plus before I ever waste my money again.

16 comments