CT Blue

According to this morning’s Day, McDonald’s sales are slumping.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This is a good thing. I don’t expect to die happy, but I will die at least slightly contented if McDonald’s predeceases me.

Still, there’s something about this story that mystifies me. Here is the reason McDonald’s is doing poorly:

“I think ultimately, we’ll need job growth to get things turned around to get back in the positive territory,” said Morningstar restaurant analyst R.J. Hottovy.

On Tuesday, McDonald’s said sales at restaurants open at least a year fell 0.6 percent in the U.S. It was the second consecutive monthly decline for the measure, an important indicator of a restaurant chain’s health, and a steeper fall than October’s 0.1 percent.

…

That’s because until the U.S. unemployment rate, which was 10 percent in November, recovers significantly, McDonald’s customers are less likely to visit the chain – picking up coffee and a McMuffin for breakfast, or dashing in for a Big Mac with co-workers.

That’s right. Things are so bad that people can’t even afford to eat at McDonald’s. Proving that for every cloud there is indeed a silver lining.

But I digress.

Here’s what mystifies me. We all know that whenever certain of McDonald’s corporate interests are at risk, it exerts every effort to advance those interests. If someone proposes that we raise the minimum wage, armies of lobbyists working for McDonald’s and like corporations descend on Washington to prevent the marginal improvement of their worker’s lives. Yet, when those same corporate interests are seemingly aligned with those of the masses, the corporations grow silent. McDonald’s is losing money because people are unemployed. So are lots of corporations. Yet, how many of them are lobbying for an effective stimulus package to lower that unemployment rate? These folks are not stupid. They are perfectly aware that the Republican panacea, tax cuts to solve all problems, doesn’t work. Similarly, having experience in other countries, they know that rational national health care systems lower their costs in those countries. Witness the car companies. We constantly hear that several thousand dollars of the cost of each car represents health care expenses, yet the auto companies never advocate for the type of health care systems that save them money elsewhere. Why do corporations that actually make things stand idly by and let the bankers suck the life blood out of our manufacturing base without at least trying to get laws to stop the pillaging?

Why is that? Why do corporations fall silent when their own interests coincide with those of the American people as a whole? I can’t bring myself to believe that they actually believe the garbage they spew about capitalism, since they are perfectly willing to violate capitalist tenets when it serves their interests at the expense of the taxpayer, e.g., giant corporate bailouts.

As I say, it’s a mystery. My guess is that the answer lies more in the expertise of the psychiatrist than the economist.