In-N-Out has followed its own path: there are verses from the Bible on the bottom of its soda cups. More importantly, the chain pays the highest wages in the fast food industry. The starting wage of a part-time worker at In-N-Out is $8 an hour. Full-time workers get a benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, and life insurance. The typical salary of an In-N-Out restaurant manager is more than $80,000 a year. The managers have, on average, been with the chain for more than thirteen years. The high wages at In-N-Out have not led to higher prices or lower-quality food. The most expensive item on the menu costs $2.45. There are no microwaves, heat lamps, or freezers in the kitchens at In-N-Out restaurants. The ground beef is fresh, potatoes are peeled every day to make the fries, and the milk shakes are made from ice cream, not syrup.
In March of 2000, the annual Restaurants and Institutions Choice in Chains survey found that among the nation’s fast food hamburger chains, In-N-Out ranked first in food quality, value, service, atmosphere, and cleanliness. In-N-Out has ranked highest in food quality every year that the chain has been included in the survey. According to the consumers polled by Restaurants and Institutions in 2000, the lowest-quality food of any major hamburger chain was served at McDonald’s.
scientific socialists
THERE IS NOTHING INEVITABLE about the fast food nation that surrounds us — about its marketing strategies, labor policies, and agricultural techniques, about its relentless drive for conformity and cheapness. The triumph of McDonald’s and its imitators was by no means preordained. During the past two decades, rhetoric about the “free market” has cloaked changes in the nation’s economy that bear little relation to real competition or freedom of choice. From the airline industry to the publishing business, from the railroads to telecommunications, American corporations have worked hard to avoid the rigors of the market by eliminating and absorbing their rivals. The strongest engines of American economic growth in the 1990s — the computer, software, aerospace, and satellite industries — have been heavily subsidized by the Pentagon for decades. Indeed, the U.S. defense budget has long served as a form of industrial policy, a quasi-socialist system of planning that frequently yields unplanned results. The Internet at the heart of today’s “New Economy” began as the ARPANET, a military communications network created in the late 1970s. For better or worse, legislation passed by Congress has played a far more important role in shaping the economic history of the postwar era than any free market forces.
The market is a tool, and a useful one. But the worship of this tool is a hollow faith. Far more important than any tool is what you make with it. Many of America’s greatest accomplishments stand in complete defiance of the free market: the prohibition of child labor, the establishment of a minimum wage, the creation of wilderness areas and national parks, the construction of dams, bridges, roads, churches, schools, and universities. If all that mattered were the unfettered right to buy and sell, tainted food could not be kept off supermarket shelves, toxic waste could be dumped next door to elementary schools, and every American family could import an indentured servant (or two), paying them with meals instead of money.
Much like the workings of the market, technology is just one means toward an end, not something to be celebrated for its own sake. The Titan II missiles built at the Lockheed Martin plant northwest of Colorado Springs were originally designed to carry nuclear warheads. Today they carry weather satellites into orbit. The missiles are equally efficient at both tasks. There is nothing inexorable about the use of such technology. Its value cannot be judged without considering its purpose and likely effects. The launch of a Titan II can be beautiful, or horrific, depending upon the aim of the missile and what it carries. No society in human history worshipped science more devoutly or more blindly than the Soviet Union, where “scientific socialism” was considered the highest truth. And no society has ever suffered so much environmental devastation on such a massive scale.
The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty-first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power. The great challenge now facing countries throughout the world is how to find a proper balance between the efficiency and the amorality of the market. Over the past twenty years the United States has swung too far in one direction, weakening the regulations that safeguard workers, consumers, and the environment. An economic system promising freedom has too often become a means of denying it, as the narrow dictates of the market gain precedence over more important democratic values.
Today’s fast food industry is the culmination of those larger social and economic trends. The low price of a fast food hamburger does not reflect its real cost — and should. The profits of the fast food chains have been made possible by losses imposed on the rest of society. The annual cost of obesity alone is now twice as large as the fast food industry’s total revenues. The environmental movement has forced companies to curtail their pollution, and a similar campaign must induce the fast food chains to assume responsibility for their business practices and minimize their harmful effects.
what to do
IN 1995, THE American Academy of Pediatrics declared that “advertising directed at children is inherently deceptive and exploits children under eight years of age.” The academy did not recommend a ban on such advertising because it seemed impractical and would infringe upon advertisers’ freedom of speech. Today the health risks faced by the nation’s children far outweigh the needs of its mass marketers. Congress should immediately ban all advertisements aimed at children that promote foods high in fat and sugar. Thirty years ago Congress banned cigarette ads from radio and television as a public health measure — and those ads were directed at adults. Smoking has declined ever since. A ban on advertising unhealthy foods to children would discourage eating habits that are not only hard to break, but potentially life-threatening. Moreover, such a ban would encourage the fast food chains to alter the recipes for their children’s meals. Greatly reducing the fat content of Happy Meals, for example, could have an immediate effect on the diet of the nation’s kids. Every month more than 90 percent of the children in the United States eat at McDonald’s.
Congress cannot require fast food chains to provide job training to their workers. But it can eliminate the tax breaks that reward chains for churning through their workers and keeping job skills to a minimum. Job training schemes subsidized by the federal government should insist that companies employ workers for at least a year — and actually provide some training. Strict enforcement of minimum wage, overtime, and child labor laws would improve the lives of fast food workers, as would OSHA regulations on workplace violence at restaurants. Passing new laws to facilitate union organizing might not lead to picket lines in front of every McDonald’s, but it would encourage the fast food industry to treat workers better and listen to their complaints. Teenagers should be rewarded, not harmed, by the decision to work after school. And if the nation is genuinely interested in their future, it will adequately fund their education, instead of inviting advertisers into the schools.