Thursday, June 5, 2008

Poetic Justice or Irony

Money is a finite resource. You can only print so much of it before it loses its value. I always wondered how a town in the Midwest could sustain itself with so many national and global franchises gradually bleeding it dry, sending the profits to some other coast or country?

It's only a matter of time before the well runs dry. The only people left with income will be the land owners and farmers. You can do the math around a Big Mac or even a Pizza from Pizza Hut or Tombstone.

A single fast food worker should be earning $7.50 in Illinois at the very least, that's the legal minimum wage.

If the average cost of a meal is around four dollars, how many meals can one fast food worker make in one hour? About one every four to five minutes, depending on the method of preparation, so four times twelve is forty eight dollars worth of meals per hour. That seems a little much, so lets cut that in half.

So the average fast food worker making seven dollars per hour, makes twenty dollars worth of meals per hour. The community is in essence leaking a little over twelve dollars per hour, per minimum wage employee.

I thought it was a real problem, and I cared very much about the future of Springfield's local economy, until I tried to find work. I preferred a job with a local business, but none of them were interested. I was finally hired to work in Springfield by a company based in another state, for much better wages.

What incentive do I have to spend any of my earnings on local businesses? None.