Put McDonald's CEO Don Thompson on the McBudget [View all]

[question everything]

By Al Lewis

McDonald's found itself mired in a public-relations flap last week over a sample budget it provided to its employees, advising them how to live on the low wages it pays. The fast-food giant meant well, but its sample budget left out useful items like food, heat and gasoline, advancing the argument that nobody can really live on minimum wage. Media reaction ranged from "hilariously obtuse" to "worthy of The Onion," a freebie newspaper offering satire in an age when so many things just satirize themselves.

There is an easy way out of this mess for Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald's. It's called leadership. Put Chief Executive Don Thompson on the McBudget. Show the world how to live like a CEO on less than $25,000 a year. Last year, McDonald's gave Mr. Thompson a compensation package worth $13.8 million, or more than 558 times what McDonald's expects employees to make from two jobs. By adopting a McBudget, Mr. Thompson could end the debate over President Barack Obama's plan to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 an hour. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage is currently 20% less than it was in 1967—which is why so many people still eat at McDonald's.

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A bicycle could slash McDonald's corporate aviation costs. It would eliminate the need for gasoline and support Mr. Thompson's weight-loss goals. In May, he boasted at an analyst conference that he'd lost 20 pounds by getting his "butt up" and "working out again" while still eating at McDonald's "every single day." With a healthy lifestyle like that, I'm sure he can easily find health insurance for the $20 a month allotted in the employee sample budget.

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I would feel more comfortable knowing that a top corporate executive can live on a McBudget, too. Besides, if the minimum wage goes up, McDonald's stock will go down, and we can't have stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average going down. That's just un-American. McDonald's put out a statement saying the sample budget is "intended to help provide a general outline of what an individual budget may look like." One of its best suggestions is that employees find a second job. With his credentials, Mr. Thompson could easily land additional work at Popeyes or Taco Bell. This would diversify his diet, too.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323309404578613752264059748.html