So McDonald's CEO said something interesting about his corporation's marketing to children back at its 2014 annual shareholder's meeting: "we have been marketing responsibly...We don't put Ronald out in schools." That would be a big deal, since fast-food marketing to children is a bit exploitive, to say the least -- except that Ronald McDonald avatars appear regularly at schools all over America, as well as in Australia, China, and the Netherlands. That's "putting Ronald out in schools," and so what if they "put Ronald out" to promote reading and living healthy as if no one else could deliver that message? You know what those kids are thinking of when he shows up: a Big Mac with a side of embalmed fries, that's what. I'd be happier if they were contemplating how Mayor McCheese might be lining his pockets with taxpayer money. Seriously, these kids are a captive audience, and they need a lot less commercialism in their lives, especially at school. Hence the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood helps you tell McDonald's to keep its clown out of our schools.
Meanwhile, we haven't forgotten about raising the minimum wage, which four in five Americans including Mitt Freaking Romney! now support, hence the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise the minimum wage to $10.10/hour. What did my state's junior Senator tell me last I wrote him on this matter? He noted that the Congressional Budget Office said the $10.10/hour wage "could cost America 500,000 jobs," though not that this job loss would occur over 10 years, meaning 50,000 jobs annually, meaning a little over 4,000 jobs monthly -- in an economy creating nearly 200,000 jobs a month! And that CBO study also happened to find that the $10.10/hour minimum wage would lift nearly 1,000,000 Americans out of poverty, which really is kind of the point. He also said that "(w)e must enable the private sector to create good-paying jobs for Pennsylvanians." But, frankly, you don't "enable" the private sector to do that -- you force the private sector do that, since the private sector generally finds workers an impediment to profits and acts accordingly.
Comments