Good Jobs Would Help Solve the "Deficit Problems."

The past couple of days there have been all sorts of stories in the news about "OMG! The budget deficit!!11!!1! Whatever shall we do?" From the news that Standard & Poor is threatening forecasting a need to "downgrade" long term US debt to Sen Dick Durbin whining about Bernie Sanders introducing a resolution vowing that Social Security should not be cut to Treasury Secretary Geithner declaring that an "agreement is near" for long term deficit reduction, the Beltway Villagers are all in a tizzy.

Earth to the Villagers - decent paying jobs with good benefits would go a long way to resolving much of the "crisis" that has so many of you twisted in knots. And that is not to be defined as McDonald's level jobs or other primarily minimum wage service jobs. I'm talking here about jobs that can allow a family to do more than survive and jobs where the wage earner can pay a rent or mortgage, purchase new clothing, maybe even buy a new car. If the jobs actually have benefits rather than being Perma-Temp, all the better.

Hey! McDonalds Is Hiring!

Have you seen the news? McDonald's is set to hire 50,000 new workers in one day (April 19). From Reuters:

(Reuters) - Fast-food chain McDonald's Corp announced a one-day spring hiring spree aimed at fighting the use of the term "McJob" as shorthand for describing low-wage, dead-end work.

The global restaurant chain said it plans to hire as many as 50,000 new U.S. employees -- ranging from restaurant crew to managers -- on April 19. The move would increase the hamburger company's U.S. workforce by 7.7 percent to 700,000, but such hiring is typical in the lead up to the busy summer months.

Sounds great, right? Time to combat the image of the "McJobs" and show how those McDonald's jobs can help folks reach that middle class dream.

Uh, not so fast there Bucky. From a bit further down in the linked article:

She added that McDonald's hourly employees typically make more than minimum wage, often more than $8 per hour.

...snip...

McDonald's said it and its franchisees would be spending an extra $518 million on wages and salaries for the 50,000 new workers it plans to hire.

Now, if we do a bit of basic mathematics and divide $518M by 50,000 we have a whopping figure of $10,360, which isn't even five dollars an hour for a forty hour week, 52 week year. So much for countering the "McJobs" image there. And since McDonald's was one of the firms receiving a waiver from the HHS on the Health Care Reform back in October, any wagers on how many of these new employees would be receiving any health care benefits upon employment? No, I didn't think so.

Of course, CNN went full cheerleader on the news:

This announcement from McDonald's is just the latest sign of an improving job market. On Friday, the U.S. government announced a gain of 216,000 jobs in March, pushing the unemployment rate down to 8.8%, its lowest level in two years.

If we could just find a reasonable medium between the McJobs universe (or WalMart World if you will) and the world where we pay $1M per year for each soldier on the ground in Irak and Afghanistan. The world where taxes are cut for businesses (via the NY Times) and taxes are cut for the well-to-do (while maybe not millionaires, they are still in better financial position than the vast majority of the country - also via the NY Times) all while members of Congress propose cutting federal services $4 trillion over the next ten years. The same members of Congress that see nothing wrong with shutting down government services but continuing pay for themselves.

Snark fails.

And because I can: