Not that NRA, But the Other One

That other NRA, of course, is the National Restaurant Association,whose lobbying juggernaut is surpassed only by--you guessed it?--The National Rifle Association. Almost sixty percent of its employees are classified as "low wage," the highest percentage of any American industry. That, according to an April report of the Institute for Public Policy, entitled "Restaurant Industry Pay: Taxpayers' Double Burden. " Big corporate restaurant chains pay their employees so meagerly that more than half of the nation's front-line, fast-food workers rely on at least one public-assistance program, such as Medicaid or food stamps through Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP>). Irony does even begin to capture that abomination Not to mention, of course, that customers are expected to pony up anywhere from ten to twenty percent of the bill in "TIPS." Many "cheapskates" fail to even meet that percentage and, even when patrons do, the amount is usually divvied up among the waiter, the bus boy, the hostess, and, in many cases, "the house."

In addition, when Congress--which still functioned reasonably well in 1993--capped the tax-deductible "salaries" of corporate executives at $1,000,000, most corporations simply increased "performance- based" pay, which can be deducted from corporate income-tax filings. Over the past two years, CEOs at the NRA's twenty largest corporate affiliates were lavished with $662 million in fully deductible performance pay. If that compensation had been taxed as salary, those conglomerates would have paid the IRS an additional $232 million dollars. That increased revenue would, for instance,cover food stamp benefits--at $133 per month--for 145,000 households of fast-food workers employed by the big restaurant chains.

FOOD FOR FUTURE THOUGHT: WE NEED TO DO A REAL COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS ON THE COST TO BUSINESSES OF BENEFITS, SUCH AS EXTENSION OF UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS OR MINIMUM WAGE LAWS, COMPARED TO HOW MUCH THEY SPEND ON LOBBYISTS TO FIGHT THOSE LAWS.NOT TO MENTION THE MONEY THEY SPEND ON CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS TO POLITICIANS COMMITTED TO OPPOSING MINIMUM WAGE LAWS OR EXTENDED UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS. IT MIGHT JUST BE MORE COST-EFFECTIVE FOR MOST BUSINESSES TO ALLOW SUCH "HORRORS" THAN IT IS FOR THEM TO "BUY" LOBBYISTS AND POLITICIANS.IFTHAT TURNS OUT TO BE THE CASE, THEN WHY NOT JUST "TAKE THE HIGH ROAD" INSTEAD? WHO WOULD BE HURT? LOBBYISTS? BOUGHT AND PAID FOR POLS? THE COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY THAT EXTORTS TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS FROM BUSINESSES TO "TAKE THE LOW ROAD"? COULD IT BE THAT "THE BOTTOM LINE" OF MOST BUSINESSES WOULD BE SUBSTANTIALLY IMPROVED IF THEY STOPPED WASTING MONEY ON LOBBYISTS,POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS, AND OTHER PARASITICAL PRACTICES? IT CERTAINLY SEEMS WORTH THE EFFORT AND MONEY FOR CORPORATIONS TO ENGAGE IN SUCH ANALYSES!

Which restaurant chains? I am sad to say that the list includes several of our families' favorites. For instance, Starbucks CEO received $236 million in deductible performance pay over 2012-2013. That is a tax break of $82 million for a chain that pays baristas an average of $8.79 an hour. <And Starbucks pays its employees more than do most of its competitors. 

The CEO  of Yum! Brands (Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut) received $67 million in performance pay during that same period. That's on top of the $232,622,472 in tax-deferred retirement benefits that he has been provided over the last 14 years. By way of contrast, the Tax Code only allows workers to defer up to $23,000 a year on 401k contributions. Yum! pays its workers an average of $8 a an hour, while its patrons--US--provide them with $650 million in various public assistance programs. 

The dual CEOs of Chipotles received a combined total of $82 million in non-taxable options respectively and $20 million each in vested performance stock. One of the "twins" also exercised another $42 million in options. Their combined taxpayer subsidy for 2012-2013 was $69 billion. 

The head of Dunkin' Brands (Dunkin' Donuts, Baskin-Robbins, and Togo's) cashed in more than $20 million in tax-exempt stocks in both 2012 and 2013, thus saving the company $15 million in corporate income taxes. 

"Tax-payers are losing billions of dollars, shareholders are being taken for a ride," asserts former Secretary of Labor and U. of California-Berkeley economist Robert Reich. At the same time, millions of food chain workers who put in 40 hours a week qualify for means-tested anti-poverty programs.         
BON APPETITE!

JDB