ANALYSIS: TRUE. America Needs More McJobs.

“McJobs” aren’t just worth having. They’re vital. They make it easier for the people who have them to accumulate valuable skills and labor market experience, which research has shown leads to higher future earnings. The market process allows low-skill people to specialize in what they do best while freeing up high-skill people who can concentrate their efforts on things they do best. Everybody wins, and in some small way, you have a part in every achievement by every bleary-eyed customer for whom you dutifully pour coffee on their morning commute.

Consider a real-world example. This article has sat in my “drafts” folder for a very, very long time. I wrote the very first draft of this article more than a decade ago at a McDonald’s and revised it one time at India Palace (one of my favorite restaurants in Memphis, where I was living at the time). The opportunity to cooperate with the owners and staff at India Palace freed up time I would otherwise spend on food preparation and allowed me to concentrate on something I enjoy and do relatively well, namely, writing articles like this one. The owners and staff at the restaurant were able to earn higher incomes. I’m able to earn a higher income. We’re both better off.

Minimum wage laws and other job-killing regulatory schemes have forced automation — or getting customers to do for themselves what employees used to do for them — on what used to be entry-level jobs that young people needed to get started in the real world. That, coupled with the elimination of work requirements for welfare, goes a long way towards explaining our stubbornly low labor participation rate.

If government had intended to destroy the American work ethic, I’m not sure what they would have done differently. Or maybe that was the goal all along.