{"id":56408,"date":"2013-07-26T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T17:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=56408"},"modified":"2013-07-26T18:28:57","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T23:28:57","slug":"mcdonalds-delusional-blame-the-victim-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/07\/26\/mcdonalds-delusional-blame-the-victim-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"McDonald’s Delusional Blame-the-Victim Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

McDonald\u2019s has distributed a\u00a0pamphlet<\/a>\u00a0showing employees how to make a budget and stick to it. \u00a0As you can see, the pamphlet is a joint effort by McDonald\u2019s, VISA, and (apparently said with a straight face), Wealth Watchers International. \u00a0The \u201ckey to your financial freedom,\u201d they say, is keeping a budget journal.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot_1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the sample budget McDonald\u2019s uses:<\/p>\n

\"Budget<\/a><\/p>\n

The budget is encouraging, to say the least.\u00a0 With an income of $2060 a month, a 2-earner family can save $100 each month.<\/p>\n

But do you notice anything missing?\u00a0 Food, for example. Presumably, that comes out of the $27 a day in spending money.\u00a0 Transportation costs? Car payments are included, but not gasoline or upkeep. On an income of $24,000 a year, will this family have a car that needs no maintenance?\u00a0 And if the two earners have only one car, it\u2019s likely someone will have to take public transportation to work.\u00a0 Oh, wait\u00a0 \u2013 maybe they both work at the same McDonald\u2019s. And they never buy clothes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure how McDonald\u2019s employees get health insurance for $20.\u00a0 Or home heating for free.<\/p>\n

I compared this budget with those found at the The Economic Policy Institute, which has a \u201cFamily Budget Calculator<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 You enter the location and the number of adults and children, and it shows the budget for \u201ca secure yet modest living standard.\u201d\u00a0 Since McDonald\u2019s used a 2-earner family, I imagined a family with two adults and one child.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what they would need in San Antonio.<\/p>\n

\"Budget<\/a><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a northern city, Akron.<\/p>\n

\"Budget<\/a><\/p>\n

Both cities require a monthly income of $4400 for a modest living, more than double what McDonald\u2019s envisions for its employees.\u00a0 The big difference is health care \u2013 $1200 a month is a lot more than $20.\u00a0 Then comes transportation ($600 vs. $0).\u00a0 Then there\u2019s the $580 for childcare, an item that is also absent from the McDonald\u2019s budget.\u00a0 (Apparently, workers at Golden Arches are part of that low-fertility problem that some observers in the Wall Street Journal worry about \u2013\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0for example).<\/p>\n

As for daily spending, food alone, at $600, more than wipes out what the McDonald\u2019s budget suggests. Perhaps McDonald\u2019s assumes that the family eats most of their meals on site, taking advantage of the 50% employee discount.<\/p>\n

So much for the spending part of the McDonald\u2019s budget.\u00a0 What about the income part?\u00a0\u00a0The Glass Door<\/a>\u00a0 posted these pay ranges for various positions.<\/p>\n

\"Budget<\/a><\/p>\n

Workers might get as little as $6 or even $5 per hour.\u00a0 The average seems closer to $7.\u00a0 Fast food is not covered by federal minimum wage, but let\u2019s use that $7.25 as a default estimate.\u00a0 A forty-hour week, four weeks a month, comes in at $1160 \u2013 very close to the $1105 in the McDonald\u2019s sample budget. So that side of the balance sheet is fairly realistic.<\/p>\n

That annual income of just under $24,720 is above the official poverty line \u2013 $19,530 \u2013 but not by all that much.\u00a0 Given the omissions in the expense column, I would think that a family would find it very hard to live on that little.\u00a0 And I doubt they could sock away $100 in savings, no matter how much \u201cjournaling\u201d they did.<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McDonald\u2019s has distributed a\u00a0pamphlet\u00a0showing employees how to make a budget and stick to it. \u00a0As you can see, the pamphlet is a joint effort by McDonald\u2019s, VISA, and (apparently said with a straight face), Wealth Watchers International. \u00a0The \u201ckey to your financial freedom,\u201d they say, is keeping a budget journal. Here\u2019s the sample budget McDonald\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":56497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,36,76],"class_list":["post-56408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/07\/Screenshot_25.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56408"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56417,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56408\/revisions\/56417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}