Report: Low Fast-Food Wages Cost Tax Payers $7 Billion A Year

"Taxpayers are spending nearly $7 billion a year to supplement the wages of fast-food workers, even as the leading fast-food companies earn billions of dollars in annual profits, according to a pair of reports released Tuesday. More than half of the nation's 1.8 million "core" fast-food workers rely on the federal safety net to make ends meet, the reports said. Together, they collect nearly $1.9 billion through the earned income tax credit, $1 billion in food stamps and $3.9 billion through Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, according to a report by economists at the University of California at Berkeley's Labor Center and the University of Illinois."Michael A. Fletcher in The Washington Post