http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/rollingstone1.htmlThe rapid growth of the fast-food industry has been driven by fundamental changes in the U.S. economy. The hourly wage of the average American worker peaked in 1973 and then steadily declined until last year. Women entered the work force in record numbers, often motivated less by feminism than by a need to help pay the bills. In 1975, about a third of American mothers with young children worked outside the home; today about two-thirds of such mothers are employed. As the sociologists Cameron Lynne Macdonald and Carmen Sirianni have noted, the entry of women into the nation's work force has greatly increased demand for the types of services that housewives traditionally performed: cooking, cleaning and child care. The fast-food industry has benefited from these demographic changes, supplying at low cost the meals no longer prepared in the home and hiring at low wages millions of young women in need of extra income.
The McDonald's Corp. has become a powerful symbol of America's service economy, the sector now responsible for ninety percent of the country's new jobs. In 1968, McDonald's operated about 1,000 restaurants. Today it has about 23,000 restaurants worldwide and opens roughly 2,000 new ones each year. An estimated one of every eight Americans has worked at McDonald's. The company annually trains more new workers than the U.S. Army. McDonald's is the nation's largest purchaser of beef and potatoes. It is the second-largest purchaser of poultry. A whole new breed of chicken was developed to facilitate the production of McNuggets. The McDonald's Corp. is the largest owner of retail property in the world. Indeed, the company earns the majority of its profits not from selling food but from collecting rent. McDonald's spends more money on advertising and marketing than does any other brand, much of it targeted at children. A survey of American schoolchildren found that ninety-six percent could identify Ronald McDonald. The only fictional character with a higher degree of recognition was Santa Claus. The impact of McDonald's on the nation's culture, economy and diet is hard to overstate. Its corporate symbol - the Golden Arches - is now more widely recognized than the Christian cross.
Almost twenty-five years ago, the farm activist Jim Hightower warned of "the McDonaldization of America." He viewed the emerging fast-food trade as a threat to independent businesses, as a step toward a food economy dominated by giant corporations and as a homogenizing influence on American life. Much of what he feared has come to pass. The rise of the fast-food industry has been accompanied by important changes in how America's food is produced. The centralized purchasing decisions of large restaurant chains and their need for standardized products have given a small number of corporations an unprecedented degree of power over the nation's food supply. Moreover, the success of the fast-food industry has encouraged other industries to adopt its business methods, filling America's main streets and malls with Gaps and Coconuts, Maid Brigades, Pawn Marts and HobbyTown USAs. Franchises and chain stores have in the last twenty-five years gained a forty percent share of all retail spending in the United States. Almost every facet of American life has now been franchised. From the maternity ward at a Columbia/HCA hospital to an embalming room owned by the Houston-based Service Corporation International - "the world's largest provider of death-care services," which since 1968 has grown to include 3,012 funeral homes, 365 cemeteries and 156 crematoriums, and which today handles the final remains of one of every nine Americans - a person can now go from the cradle to the grave without spending a nickel at an independently owned business.
Almost twenty-five years ago, the farm activist Jim Hightower warned of 'the McDonaldisation of America'. He viewed the emerging fast-food industry as a threat to independent businesses, as a sep toward a food economy domainated by giant corporations and as a homogenizing influence on American life. Much of what he feared has come to pass.
me: you really should want better for your country's economy and your fellow citizens than this.
that 'it's job attitude' is insulting and not very well conceived -- we're not coming very far from 1998.