48.6% of Spaniards Aged 18-24 Would Take Any Job, Anywhere, for Low Wages; Ikea Spain Gets 100,000 Applicants for 400 Jobs; Walmart, McDonalds Comparison

48.6% of Spaniards Aged 18-24 Would Take Any Job, Anywhere, for Low Wages; Ikea Spain Gets 100,000 Applicants for 400 Jobs; Walmart, McDonalds Comparison

In contrast to McDonalds’ workers in the US demanding $ 15 an hour wages, Almost half of young Spaniards accept any job, anywhere, despite low salary

48.6% of Spaniards aged 18 to 24 said they would accept any job, anywhere and even with a low income. 84.9% felt very or fairly likely to have to work on what is available, 61.7% considered it equally likely to have to go abroad, and 79.2% said they need to study more. Despite this, an overwhelming majority (80%) are convinced that, at least in the near future, will have to be financially dependent on their family.

Future is Black

Young Spaniards recognize enjoy the benefits of the welfare state far more than their parents, except as regards stability and security. They are also convinced that their children will live much worse than them.

Frustrated Expectations

Only 20% of young people believe things will improve in the next two or three years, compared to 36% who think it will get worse. Moreover, nearly three in four young people (71%) considered likely to find little or no work in the coming year.

Ikea Spain Gets 100,000 Applicants for 400 Jobs

Also via translation from El Economista, please consider Ikea Spain Gets 100,000 Applicants for 400 Jobs

The Swedish multinational Ikea will have work to select staff for a store in Valencia because 100,000 people submitted applications to fill 400 jobs.

Ika received a total of 100,000 job applications through a web page offering. In the first 48 hours of processing, Ikea received 20,000 applications.

The store, which will open in summer, will have a staff of 400 employees and also generate about 80 indirect jobs to cover services such as security, transport and cleaning, among others.

Walmart, McDonalds Comparison

To be fair, there is a major difference between McDonalds’ employees and Spaniards seeking jobs.

The McDonalds’ employees demanding higher wages have jobs. Those seeking jobs, don’t.

However, every McDonalds’ employee knew their wage when they were hired. Like Spaniards willing to accept low wages, they took the jobs anyway.

1 Million McDonalds Applicants

I cannot find anything recent on McDonalds, but on April 28, 2011, Bloomberg reported “McDonald’s and its franchisees hired 62,000 people in the U.S. after receiving more than one million applications, the Oak Brook, Illinois-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. Previously, it said it planned to hire 50,000.“

Walmart 23,000 Applicants for 600 Jobs

On November 19, 2013 NBC Washington reported Walmart to Open First D.C. Stores Dec. 4

Walmart’s H Street and Georgia Avenue locations will open Dec. 4 at 8 a.m. Both the 103,000-square-foot Georgia Avenue store and the 74,000-square-foot H Street location will feature fresh produce, a deli, organic food items and a full-service pharmacy.

The stores will hire a combined 600 associates after combing through the more 23,000 applications its received from potential employees.

The arrival of Walmart has not been a smooth one. Both stores were on the verge of never opening after the retail giant threatened to pull its plans if Mayor Vincent Gray signed a living wage bill.

The Large Retailer Accountability Act, known colloquially as the “Walmart Bill,” would have required  the company — and other big-box retailers — to pay its employees a minimum of $ 12.50 an hour.

Gray vetoed the bill in September.

Minimum wage in the District currently stands at $ 8.25 an hour.

Reflections on Living Wages

Take a poll of those employees. I bet 100% of them are happier to have a job at $ 8.25 an hour vs. no job at some presumed “living wage” that they would not get because there were no jobs.

Of course, now that they have a job and should be happy, some union activist is going to try to convince them they shouldn’t be happy.

The Real Problem

Other than a couple of like-minded Austrian bloggers, no one has bothered to complain about the real problem: The Fed pumping money supply like mad, while holding interest rates low.

Five Results

1. Prices rising faster than wages


2. Grossly distorted income inequalities


3. Non-existent price signals


4. Interest rates that encourage hardware and software solutions to eliminate employees


5. Equity and bond market bubbles

I blasted the Fed regarding these issues early Friday.

For details and truly educational reading, please see Money as Communication: A Purposely “Non-Educational” Fallacious Video by the Atlanta Fed.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Mike “Mish” Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis

Read more about 48.6% of Spaniards Aged 18-24 Would Take Any Job, Anywhere, for Low Wages; Ikea Spain Gets 100,000 Applicants for 400 Jobs; Walmart, McDonalds Comparison and other interesting subjects concerning Economy at TheDailyNewsReport.com

McDonald"s poised to embrace new GMO potato farming in 2014 and beyond

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McDonald"s poised to embrace new GMO potato farming in 2014 and beyond

Fast-Food Workers Cry Poverty Wages As McDonald"s Buys Luxury Jet

Enlarge image i

Fast-food workers march towards the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Similar rallies occurred in about 100 cities across the U.S.

Morgan Walker/NPR

Fast-food workers march towards the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Similar rallies occurred in about 100 cities across the U.S.

Morgan Walker/NPR

When you’re making eight bucks an hour, which is pretty typical in the fast-food industry, it’s tough to make ends meet.

And increasingly, the working poor are asking this question: Why am I living in poverty, even when I’m working full time?

That’s the message that thousands of fast-food workers rallying Thursday in about 100 U.S. cities — from Oakland to Memphis to Washington, D.C. — want heard. A living wage in big cities is closer to $ 14 an hour, and it jumps to about $ 20 an hour for an adult supporting a child.

The protests are part of a growing campaign backed by a coalition of advocacy groups, religious organizations and union organizers aimed at raising fast-food wages to $ 15 an hour.

At at time when the fastest-growing jobs in the U.S. economy are also the lowest paid, the issue of income inequality is on the lips of leaders worldwide.

From the remarks by Pope Francis a few weeks back to President Obama’s speech Wednesday, it’s clear that there’s growing unease about the divide between the haves and the have-nots.

And the image problem for the fast-food industry is exemplified by this online petition urging McDonald’s chief executive officer, Donald Thompson, to cancel his order for another corporate jet until he pays all his employees a decent wage.

The Salt

McDonald’s President Was Caught Off Guard By Low-Wage, Single Mom

Intelligence Squared U.S.

Should We Abolish The Minimum Wage?

According to the petition, McDonald’s just bought a $ 35 million luxury Bombardier jet for its corporate executives. Yet many of the company’s employees make so little that they rely on public assistance to get by.

“It’s not right to impoverish your employees while sailing above them at a rate of $ 2,500 an hour,” reads the petition started by the Campaign For America’s Future. “It’s immoral to do it with a taxpayer subsidy.”

In a recent study, economists at the University of California, Berkeley, found that 52 percent of fast-food workers rely on taxpayer-funded public assistance programs, such as food stamps or Medicaid.

“Taxpayers are subsidizing the low-wage model of these employers, who are making record profits in some cases,” says Dorian Warren, an associate professor at Columbia University who studies income inequality.

McDonald’s didn’t comment on the new round of protests Thursday. But back in October, a company spokeswoman told The Salt that McDonald’s history is full of examples of individuals who worked their first job with the company and then went on to have successful careers — both within and outside of McDonald’s.

As for the push from workers for higher hourly wages, McDonald’s “does not determine wages set by our more than 3,000 U.S. franchises,” a spokeswoman for the company says.

But at the restaurants run by the company — less than 10 percent of the roughly 14,000 McDonald’s outlets in the U.S. — the spokeswoman explains, “we pay salaries that begin at minimum wage, but range up from that figure, depending on the job and employee’s experience level.”

And according to an analysis by the financial information company Sageworks, many franchise operators are seeing significant increases in sales revenue.

Over the past four years, privately held fast-food restaurants have seen profit margins nearly double, Sageworks found, while the restaurants’ labor costs have remained flat.

So what will it take to push up wages? Depends on who you ask.

Increasingly, politicians are under pressure to raise the federal minimum wage. The president made his case Thursday. And already, a patchwork of state and municipal pay hikes have been passed. For instance, New Jersey passed a ballot initiative to raise its minimum wage by $ 1 to $ 8.25 an hour. And many workers in the city of SeaTac, Wash., — home to the Seattle airport — will get a raise to $ 15 an hour.

“The federal minimum wage has lagged behind the rising cost of living for the past four decades,” says Jack Temple of the National Employment Law Project.

According to Raise The Minimum Wage, a project of the National Employment Law Project, the minimum wage would be $ 10.74 if it had kept up with inflation over the past 40 years.

“Workers’ backs are against the wall,” Temple says.

But not everyone agrees that raising the federal minimum wage will fix the problem. “I would oppose raising the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour,” says Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute.

Such a hike in wages would lead to higher prices at the fast-food counter for all of us, Strain says, and employers would hold back on hiring. In addition, fast-food chains might replace people with new automated technology, which could be cheaper over time, he says.

Strain favors responses that wouldn’t put the onus on business owners, such as an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit or other subsidies.

Otherwise, free market economists, say low-skill workers run the risk of being priced out of the job market.

It’s true that the fast-food industry has given lots of young workers a start in the job market. In fact, the current CEO of McDonald’s started behind the counter of a Michigan McDonald’s decades ago.

But at a time when 70 percent of fast-food workers are in their 20s or older and one-quarter are raising children, the demands for higher wages are growing.

News

Fast-Food Workers Cry Poverty Wages As McDonald"s Buys Luxury Jet

McDonald’s To Low Paid Employees: Sell Your Stuff For Extra Cash

Because nothing says we care like menial wages for slaving over a hot deep fryer all day, the McDonald’s corporation has taken their philanthropic efforts one step further.

In a recent memo to employees who may be struggling to pay the bills this holiday season, the company launched a new initiative called “Digging Out From Holiday Debt,” in which they provide tips and recommendations on how to increase their net worth and reduce their frivolous spending.

McDonald’s McResource Line, a dedicated website run by the world’s largest fast-food chain to provide its 1.8 million employees with financial and health-related tips, offers a full page of advice for “Digging Out From Holiday Debt.” Among their helpful holiday tips: “Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash.”

But that’s not the only wealth building tip provided by the company.

For restaurant employees struggling to put food on their dinner table, McDonald’s makes another suggestion regarding the meals their families consume:

“Breaking food into pieces often results in eating less and still feeling full”

But their caring and empathy doesn’t stop there. With wages bordering on indentured servitude, McDonald’s like their colleagues at Walmart, have provided support for signing up to the government’s Supplement Nutritional Assistance Program.

But why would people working full-time work weeks need food stamps?

Looks like the fast food giant has no problem passing the buck to taxpayers when it comes to supplementing their meager compensation. Two studies published last week revealed that McDonald’s leaves taxpayers responsible for $ 1.2 billion annually across the nation to fund federal programs like SNAP and Medicaid with other fast food chains not far behind.

And just in case their employees aren’t sure how to spend all of the money they’re pulling in on a monthly basis, the company has graciously provided their team members with a basic budget guide:

A budget planning guide from McDonald’s for its employees, shown above, caught flak this past week for being out of touch. For starters, it didn’t account for food and gasoline. The second line on the sample budget leaves room for income from a second job, which many called an admission by the fast food giant that its workers can’t live on its wages alone.

Here’s the McBudget:

Luckily, McDonald’s employees, as well as the people of Walmart, have caring mega-behemoth corporations looking out for their best interests this holiday season.

Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

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McDonald’s To Low Paid Employees: Sell Your Stuff For Extra Cash

McDonald"s Employee Who Served Raw Burger To Cop Deserves Presidential Medal Of Freedom

Source: Lee Rogers, Blacklisted News

A New Hampshire police officer is complaining that a McDonald’s employee deliberately served him a raw burger causing him to get sick.  This McDonald’s employee not only deserves a promotion but should also be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  It actually isn’t very difficult to make this case.  There is little question that this person is much more deserving of receiving this award than a war criminal like Tony Blair who received the award several years ago.  At least this McDonald’s worker is protesting against a criminal entity that has been destroying freedom in America.   There will probably be a bunch of zombies reading this that will be outraged at even the thought of this but it is actually a serious suggestion.  Police officers are widely hated by a large number of people in America and they only have themselves to blame.  Police departments have morphed into uniformed criminal gangs that no longer protect and serve their communities but instead bully people around with their gun and badge. 

Let’s look at some of the facts that prove this to be the case.  There are now countless documented cases of police officers unjustly beating and even killing people.  Many of these cops have actually gotten away with these crimes due to their privileged position as a police officer.  Sometimes police departments have the nerve to charge the person they beat up with crimes like assault and battery.  Combine this with the continued militarization of police departments and this type of thing is only going to get progressively worse.    

When cops aren’t running around beating and killing people they are handing out record numbers of traffic tickets to people.  Many police departments have setup quota systems which require their cops to hand out a certain number of tickets within an allotted time frame.  These jackasses don’t even consider the fact that we are in the midst of an economic depression.  Instead, they continue to hand out ticket after ticket even though we are at a point where a lot of people can barely afford to buy basic necessities.  Make no mistake about it, speed limit laws and many of these other ridiculous traffic regulations are not meant to keep people safe but are instead used as another revenue source for government.  Anyone who willfully participates in enforcing such a system has less value as a human being than the feces that comes out of a pig’s ass.

On top of this, many cops act in a completely disrespectful manner towards other people.  It is almost as if they have some sort of inferiority complex so they have to make up for it by taking a job that allows them to bully people around.  It would be interesting to see how many of these so-called heroes have thwarted or solved real legitimate crimes.  That number on a percentage basis is probably extremely low because these tough guys view writing tickets as a more important task than paying attention to crimes that have real victims.

With all this said should it really be a mystery as to why people hate the police?  They enforce all sorts of ridiculous rules, regulations and laws most of which are totally victimless in nature.  Take for example all of the insanity surrounding the enforcement of drug laws in America.  Do we really need an army of these uniformed idiots running around looking for marijuana, cocaine and other substances?   It should be obvious that we do not.

Businesses around the country should begin refusing to provide service to any and all uniformed police officers until major attitude and policy adjustments occur.  Either that or do what the guy at McDonald’s did and serve them with an inferior product.  This will send a clear message to these criminals that people hate them.  The New Hampshire cop should actually be thankful the McDonald’s employee didn’t do worse to his cheeseburger.  The employee could have dropped a deuce on the hamburger patties if they were truly vindictive.

Make no mistake about it, police officers are not heroes and it is absolutely ridiculous that they are portrayed with such reverence by the corporate media.  Look at how they present stories in which a cop gets killed in the line of duty.  It is as if they want us to believe that their lives are more valuable than someone who isn’t a cop when in reality the opposite is true.  Anyone who decides to make a living as a police officer is less valuable than someone who earns a living by providing a legitimate service that people want.

Some say that not all cops are bad, but this is a misinformed view.  Anybody that willingly becomes a cop to help enforce a never ending list of unjust rules, regulations and laws is mostly as bad as anybody else on these forces.  Some might be worse than others, but that’s about all that can be argued.  The system is so far gone that cops who have any sort of conscience left should quit in protest and find real honest work.  Working as a police officer is dishonest because the profession has devolved into government sanctioned criminality.

BlackListedNews.com

McDonald"s Employee Who Served Raw Burger To Cop Deserves Presidential Medal Of Freedom

McDonald"s Adding Books to Happy Meals, Temporarily

(Newser) – Kids, McDonald’s is adding something new to your Happy Meal, and it’s not more fries. Parents, next time you pull up to that drive through window, you might be hearing, “Do you want a book with that?” For two weeks beginning Nov. 1, McDonald’s will distribute four nutrition-themed kids’ books with the meals. One of the original titles: The Goat Who Ate Everything. Newsy reports:

McDonald’s Adding Books to Happy Meals, Temporarily

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McDonald"s Adding Books to Happy Meals, Temporarily

VIDEO: Rihanna Shows Off Her New Mullet Mohawk in Instagram Snap

Rihanna sports another new look, flaunting a mullet Mohawk hybrid in New York City.

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VIDEO: Top 10 Iconic American Businesses

These American businesses have stood the test of time and are positioned to dominate in the 21st century. Join http://ww.WatchMojo.com as we count down our picks for the top 10 iconic American businesses.

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