Leadership Quote by Norm Coleman

Coleman’s line is a neat piece of political jujitsu: it uses a household brand to make an abstract policy argument feel instantly legible. “McDonald’s” isn’t just an employer here; it’s shorthand for entry-level, low-status work. By claiming you’d earn more flipping burgers than under the “existing minimum wage,” he’s not merely citing a wage discrepancy. He’s staging a humiliation test for the law itself. If the floor is so low that even the archetypal “starter job” clears it, the statute looks less like protection than neglect.

The intent is to reframe the minimum wage as obsolete without getting bogged down in numbers. It’s a sound bite built for cameras: one comparison, one villain (a stagnant policy), one implied fix. The subtext is where it gets sharper. Coleman borrows McDonald’s cultural visibility to imply the market is already doing what government won’t - paying more - which flatters pro-business instincts and nudges listeners toward the conclusion that mandated increases may be unnecessary or symbolic. At the same time, it quietly concedes the opposite: if private employers are paying above the legal minimum, the legal minimum has stopped functioning as a meaningful standard.

Context matters because wages often rise unevenly: in tight labor markets, big chains hike pay to recruit, while smaller employers and weaker regions lag. The line collapses that complexity on purpose. It’s less an economic claim than a political pressure point: a way to make “minimum wage” sound like an embarrassing anachronism, and to force opponents to defend a number that suddenly feels indefensible.