RUSH: How many of you have been aware in recent months that McDonald’s, Mickey D’s stock has been tanking? You have not been aware of that? It has been. McDonald’s stock has been tanking. And there are many who wanted it to tank. Many in the climate change business want it to tank. They want people to think that McDonald’s is responsible for climate change.

And the food Nazis have also been desirous of McDonald’s suffering some pain because they think the food McDonald’s sells just does nothing but cause heart attacks and make people dead. And McDonald’s has had some challenges here with their stock price and CEO, menu diversity and any number of other things that they’ve tried to reverse the company’s fortunes.

And they came across something. They have found a solution. No, it’s not food. They haven’t changed the menu. It’s nothing of the sort. McDonald’s stock has hit new highs in recent days despite continuing problems throughout the fast food industry. And do you know why? It’s because of the minimum wage. The minimum wage random increase has caused McDonald’s to do what it causes every time you raise it. It kills jobs.

Raising the minimum wage gets people fired. It’s a great political issue because it makes it look like you care and it makes it look like you’re going after these evil SOB CEO types that don’t care about people. You’re forcing ’em, you’re forcing ’em to pay a living wage and that makes ’em compassionate and that shows that you care, that you’re willing to go after Big Corporation. You make a big deal about raising the minimum wage, and when you do the restaurant business in Seattle craters, restaurants in Seattle started closing in droves shortly after.

You cannot arbitrarily mandate an increase in the lowest you’re gonna pay anybody and stay in business. Businesses do not have, particularly small businesses, do not have a pile of unused money being hoarded by the owner so he can entertain himself. This is what years and years of liberalism has done. It has told average, ordinary Americans that small businesses all have piles of money everywhere and that the owners, they don’t pay their people anything and they sell cheap stuff, they sell cheap services, and they keep all that money for themselves to buy pornography or nice cars or whatever they do with it.

And so people think that all businesses are all massively successful that have piles of money over here and in the bank, and they don’t like people, and they don’t pay people a livable wage ’cause they don’t like people. So the “raise the minimum wage” chorus hits: Make these greedy SOBs get rid of some of that pile of money and be fair with their employees. And every time it happens, people lose their jobs.

What did McDonald’s do? McDonald’s replaced 2,500 human beings with digital kiosks. The minimum wage is both hypocritical and racist in its effects since it disproportionately hurts young minority and immigrant employees ’cause they lack skills, they lack education, they lack training for other jobs, and so they can’t command a high wage based on any factor.

They don’t have the experience. They don’t have the knowledge. So the minimum wage is a good entry-level wage, but if you arbitrarily raise it without any relationship to market factors, wherever the wage is being paid, you’re gonna get people fired. Because the budget for labor doesn’t change no matter what costs. So if you have a labor budget that allows you to employee a hundred people and then all of a sudden some government entity comes along and makes you raise the minimum wage forcing your budget to go up by 20%, in Washington they just think you’ll bite the bullet and pay everybody 20% more.

It’s not how it happens. The labor budget stays the same. You have to get rid of some people. That’s how it works in your average, ordinary small business. So McDonald’s said, “Okay, fine. Raise the minimum wage, we’re gonna find ways that we’re gonna be exempt from it. Screw you.” And so they have automated with robots 2,500 jobs at digital kiosks. And as a result of this, McDonald’s stock has hit new highs in recent days, working from the absurd idea that higher wages are good for individual workers, it must be socially beneficial to have government order all employers to pay their workers more, but it never works out.

McDonald’s stock is up 27% this year. And pushed by concerns over a rising minimum wage, they replaced human cashiers as fast as they could. They had no choice. By the end of 2017, McDonald’s plans to have digital cashiers in 2,500 restaurants. By 2018, another 3,000 restaurants will go digital. They’re also gonna let you order via mobile device at 14,000 restaurants by the end of the year.

McDonald’s calls it the experience of the future strategy, and I’m just telling you, yes, technology is playing a factor here. There’s no doubt. But so is the minimum wage. The minimum wage is hastening the use of technology. Plain and simple. You’ll notice the minimum wage increase is not resulting in people at McDonald’s being paid more, is it? It’s resulting in people at McDonald’s losing their jobs to robots.