Short answer: because drug dealing gangs are organized like McDonalds franchises where most "foot soldiers" make minimum wage or less while the leaders make hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I'd be surprised if the average McDonald's franchiser is making anything close to $100,000 per year. I'd guess that it's around $60,000 in a good location and year. McDonalds is known to be especially bad at fleecing franchise owners.
I worked at a chain grocery store one summer and had observations pretty similar to Barbara Ehrenreich's in Nickel and Dimed. "Four digits" (per week) was considered to be rarefied compensation. The #3 man in the store was making around $50k, and this was a huge store with about 150 employees.
The costs associated with new restaurants are as follows:
Initial Costs
$45,000 Initial Fee paid to McDonald's
Equipment and Pre-Opening Costs
Typically these costs range from $905,200 to $1,746,000. [...] The new Owner/Operators must pay forty percent (40%) cash of the total costs of a new restaurant, and may finance the remainder from traditional sources.
The average McDonalds franchise owner will make $240,000 per year for each restaurant owned. The average McDonalds restaurant will have sales of 1.9 million per year.
It's $1m+ in America now, if you're lucky enough to find a spot where you can even open one. There are so many of them that the geographic restrictions make that hard. They're also a lot pickier about who they'll let open one than they used to be.
Side note: I wish TED talks were available in text format. They're always interesting, but most of the time I'm unable (or unwilling) to hunker down and watch a 20 minute video. Web content needs to be scan-able.
Google underpays because they have a 'cult' following similar to Apple which allows them to recruit not based on pay, but on their credibility as a cool-smart company, and other non financial perks.
