Labor advocates are promoting a shocking (edited) recording of a phone call between a longtime McDonald's worker and the company's 1-866 McResource Line, in which an operator advises the worker to bolster her $8.25-an-hour wages by signing up for food stamps and Medicaid. Good for McDonald's! Why should they keep pretending that our economy isn't completely ruined?

Employment is a scam. Millions of jobs no longer come close to paying enough money for people to live on, let alone enough money for people to keep living on after their usefulness has been exhausted and they have to stop working. McDonald's believes that in an economy where labor no longer can meet basic human needs, it is the government's responsibility to support its citizens.

It's the opposite of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich's cynical pieties about pushing people off welfare and onto work: One of America's most famous and successful corporations says it's time to push the workers onto welfare. Capitalism is too dumb and broken to provide.