Word: mcdonald
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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More striking still is the contrast between the onetime peak and present P/Es of some individual stocks. Samples: Polaroid, a high of 114 v. 18 now; McDonald's, 81 v. 26; Xerox, 63 v. 16. At one point in 1968, IBM was selling at $701.50 a share, or 161 times earnings, giving its stock a market value equal to all the shares in all the oil companies in the U.S. Now, at $256 a share, IBM is priced at a modest 18 times profits...
...workers who produced McDonald's secret weapon, the 50-second burger, receive their share of the benefits. McDonald's has lobbied for years for a subminimum wage for the teenage workers who form the majority of its employees. And even some famous universities could take a lesson from McDonald's union-busting methods. Claiming no "outsider" (read: union) is needed to resolve labor-management conflicts, managers hold "rap sessions" with employees, ostensibly to understand their grievances. Actually, Hamburger Central directs managers to heed complaints only as a clue to which employees have unionizing sympathies. Tricky lie detector tests await...
...market Big Mac smashes is that of consumer sovereignty--the freedom to choose from a variety of goods. The burger entourage rolls on, covering over every trace of local color with a uniform circus yellow. Culinary freedom in America is disappearing--what became of the hot dog? And now McDonald's is standardizing the greasy spoon eateries of the world...
...When McDonald's executives contest the charges of restriction of consumer choice and cultural imperialism, Boas and Chain give them enough rope to hang themselves. Company spokesmen point out, for example, that the McDonald's in London serve tea, and that advertisers in Japan, out of deference to the Japanese tongue, changed Ronald McDonald's first name to Donald. To those who feared a forest of golden arches across the land, President Turner once replied that "uninterrupted scenery, too, can get pretty monotonous...
...moral of the McDonald's success story is not that every little poor boy can become chairman of the board with enough sweat and strain. The many skeletons in the McDonald's refrigerators disprove this. It was not the invisible hand of the free market but the iron-gloved fist of corporate greed which flipped the burgers that made McDonald...