McDonald’s Strike Demands $15 Hourly For Fast Food Jobs, Are They Serious?

A McDonald’s strike in New York City is demanding $15 an hour for fast food jobs.

The McDonald’s strike is joined by other minimum wage wage workers at Burger King and Domino’s Pizza. This writer thinks they might be taken a little more seriously if the fast food workers set their demands at a reasonable level.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, President Obama says the federal minimum wage is too low. Elizabeth Warren made headlines by suggesting a $22 per hour federal minimum wage, although she raised the $22 minimum wage as an example and not as a serious proposal for lawmakers in Congress.

The Federal minimum wage is currently set at $7.25 per hour as of January of 2009. Economists say the goal with the minimum wage is to raise it more slowly than inflation. The end result is that the poor always stay behind the inflationary line to avoid more inflation. Essentially, you have to raise minimum wage at a level that keeps the poverty line below the cost of living.

The people behind the McDonald’s strike in New York City do have a good point though. New York City is home to three of the top five most expensive areas in the country. How can you expect people to live on $7.25 an hour in a state where both taxes and the cost of living are higher than the United States average?

So what would be a good figure for the McDonald’s strike to demand? An analysis by economist John Schmitt at the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that, if the minimum wage is indexed to the official Consumer Price Index (CPI-U), then the Federal minimum wage should be $10.52 an hour. If you use the current methodology (CPI-U-RS) for calculating inflation, then the Federal minimum wage should be $9.22.

But that study is based upon the entire nation and does not take into account the particular situation of the fast food workers in the McDonald’s strike. If you take into account inflation and the higher than usual cost of living, then the McDonald’s strike should be demanding around $11 to $12 an hour, not $15 hourly. Basically, this means the state of New York needs to take action, not the Federal government.

Do you think the fast food workers in the McDonald’s strike are demanding too much money?