FFN Research Areas

Chapter 3:
An interesting area of research in chapter 3 would be on how fast food restaurants capitalize on young inexperienced labor. It is interesting to see how profitable busisnesses are by taking advantage of workers that will work long hours for minimum wage. This relates to my own life because I work in the restaurant business and was paid minimum wage for quite a while and many of the people that started working around the same time I did are barely making more than minimum wage.
Another area of research would be the effects of fast food chains in an area's high school dropout rate. FFN reports that many kids like the experience of the real world, and would much rather be making money than sitting in class without pay. This was important to me through my high school years because I had to make many decisions about whether or not to stay in school or drop out and get a job. It was not hard to decide that education was an important investment I would have to make in myself.

Chapter 7:
Low wages in the meatpacking industry and their effect(s) on the quality of work/cleanliness of the meat would also be an interesting area of research. Meat plays a key role in many of our diets and if we are provided with meat that has been processed in unsanitary conditions, the consumer deserves to know.

Air and water pollution is generally assumed to come from coal burning factories and not meatpacking industries which gives rise to yet another area of research: the effects of the toxic leftovers on the neighborhoods surrounding the meatpacking plants. Although this does not directly effect me because I am not in close vicinity of a plant, if the industry is required to more strictly regulate its output of contaminants, the cost of meat will most likely rise substantially.