What about the dude that owns 1 McDonalds or Subway or whatever franchised location? I think people forget that most McDonalds (90%) are franchised, not company owned. I'm just using them as an example bc I think most people consider them one of those multi million dollar corps. Sure the McDonalds company is worth billions. But Joe over there doesn't have access to that money. Joe has access to the money from sales from his 1 store. And from that money he has to pay royalties to McD, food costs, insurance, leases, equipment, taxes and payroll. Should that guy with one store who might make 150k a year, which is less than 6% of sales. When you consider what Joe put on the line to be able to purchase the franchise, build or lease the building, lease on the lands etc, and the fact that he probably works 60 hours a week, Joe def isn't rich or making a ton of money at the expense of his employees. Now, Walmart,
Amazon, those kinds of things that are 100% company owned and all have the same giant pot of money, sure. They can pay a ton more, and should. Whereas Joe over there, if he has to up his employees from say 12 to 15$ an hour thats an extra $105,000 a year just towards pay rll, not including payroll taxes. (assuming 8 employees working at a time, open only 12 hrs a day, 365 days a year which is much less than actual hours worked). So now Joe only takes home 45K a year (again, not accounting for taxes). Why would he work that hard and put his own resources out there to only make that? I only bring all of this up bc the argument is always about wages and in this example Joe would either A) raise his prices to offset the cost or B) close entirely. You can put this same scenario at any franchised business. I don't think those can be held to the same ideology as the Walmarts and Amazons of the world when it comes to pay.