- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
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From the article - they believe eating fast food should be cheaper than eating at home, but isn’t. What kind of fucked up belief is this? No wonder they view fast food as a luxury.
Fucked up? It’s not a matter of what “should be.” It was reality for decades. When were you born?
When I was growing up dominos did the “5-5-5” deal. $15+tax for 3 medium 1-topping pizzas. You can feed like 6-10 people with that depending on their age. You’re talking like $2 a person.
$1 menus included 1-2 sandwich options. Usually a chicken sandwich (obviously fried not grilled).
Meals with fries and drinks were $4-6 all in.
This was the 90’s and 2000’s. You could feed a family of 4 with $10 or less without much thought.
It was possible to feed people for less than $1/serving then. Fast food has always been more expensive than home cooking on a per serving basis.
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No it wasn’t, a frozen pizza was always cheaper than dominos. And I don’t know what kind of little only eat one third of a medium pizza.
I usually finished one myself. Well okay, I’m a big man, but still.
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So when you said it feeds 6 to 10 people, you meant 6 to 10 children? Lol
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I definitely get the appeal of fast food. It might also depend on what a “Medium” pizza is.
6 people for 3 medium pizzas doesn’t seem too bad, especially if there’s other snacks or food. But if I had 10 people with 3 medium pizzas, I think I’d have 10 hungry people and 0 pizzas left, haha
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When FDR created the minimum wage he explicitly stated that someone making it should be able to live in some comfort. That meant not just food and shelter, but some savings and a chance to have a few nice things.
In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour. The average house was $11,000.00. Two people could eat and go to a concert for $5.00. In those days, $1 million was an incredible fortune.
And now, $1 million probably isnt even enough to retire
That’s the other crazy thing. Look at all the millionaire actors and music stars. They have much bigger incomes than past artists, but is Tom Hanks or Taylor Swift really that much richer than John Wayne or Marilyn Monroe? A doctor today is giving his family the life a moderately successful plumber had 50 years ago.
What is a doctor if not a body plumber?
The wages of fast food workers have been increasing over the past decade. Ten years ago, their median wage was $8.69/hr. Today, it’s over $14/hr. In California, the minimum is now $20/hr.
Increased wages for low income workers are good, since they have outpaced inflation. But they will inevitably result in increased prices. It’s unrealistic to expect the employer to absorb all of the increased costs.
And fast food employers often couldn’t absorb the wage increases even if they wanted to. Remember, a McDonald’s employee isn’t paid by McDonald’s HQ, they are paid by the person who runs the individual location, who is also paying McDonald’s HQ for ingredients. Some of the franchise owners are doing well, some of them aren’t, but all of them are going to raise prices.
In other words, if you don’t want to pay more for fast food, then you don’t actually want to see fast food workers earn a better wage.
That’s out of date.
Median fast food wage in US is now $14/hr. A Big Mac in Denmark is now 49 krone, which is $7.10
Of course, it’s still true that unions provide better pay and benefits to employees. But the price of a Big Mac is roughly a third of the hourly wage in both the US and Denmark.
In other words, if you don’t want to pay more for fast food, then you don’t actually want to see fast food workers earn a better wage.
If a business relies on exploitation, it shouldn’t exist. If paying the workers a living wage means raising the prices beyond a sustainable level for the business, this business shouldn’t exist. If a business pays out millions in bonuses to it’s executives while the workers are relying on government subsidies, the business shouldn’t exist.
That’s true. But restaurant owners aren’t paying millions to anyone.
And hiking prices to pay fast food employees more isn’t unsustainable. It just means customers won’t eat fast food as often as they used to.
I’m happy to say that I emphatically want better wages for service industry workers. IDC how much food goes up, or how many mega franchises have to close for it. Either better wages, or cause these these super franchises to close so mom and pops and open instead.
I also don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect businesses to give up a small portion of their infinite growth targets to actually cover their employees needs. Maybe a large departure from the past 50 years, but it’s absolutely something most of them can afford.
If a business genuinely can’t afford it, then I’d also be okay with my tax money going towards a business analysis for that owner to find a way to make it work. If they still can’t, then how long were they really going to be open anyway and what were they really adding to their community?
unrealistic to expect businesses to give up a small portion of their infinite growth targets
Almost no restaurants, including fast food restaurants, have infinite growth targets. A lot of them are struggling to survive.
From a business perspective, most fast food franchises are mom-and-pop locations. They are not owned by a giant corporation. The giant corporation simply sells them ingredients and sets their menu.
Well yeah, that shit’s expensive.
Which is ironic as fast food used to have 2 appeals - quick and cheap.
I’m not sure how quick they are these days because I can no longer afford it.
Which is ironic
Is it tho?
It’s capitalism, once you dominate the market share you raise prices.
Fast food pushed out small local shops, but there’s a few major chains everywhere. So now they’re more expensive than sit down restaurants, because the “speed” which isn’t all that fast anymore is treated as a premium and not a side effect from being cheap/easy food.
Like, everything is based off stock price, and stock price is about profit margin going up. And that’s exponential, it’s not mathematically possible to keep going up.
The only way is to keep pushing up prices and making products shittier.
It’s not irony, it’s working as intended.
Capitalism only works when you break up monopolies regularly so there can be competition.
Hell, this is way more evident in a franchise model. The actual owners can’t really do anything, they’re locked in long leases and are forced to buy from only one supplier.
If McDonald’s says party prices go up 50%, the franchise owner has literally zero options. They have to pay it.
The whole system is fucked and pretty much a pyramid scheme.
Just to add, Reagan ‘deregulated’ the hell out of the economy. It gave America a phoney boom in the 1980s.
In 1980, ‘middle class’ was still one Union job supporting a family of four, and $1 million was considered a vast fortune. By 1992, middle class was two incomes to keep the house going, and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
Republicans break shit, moderate Dems neglect to fix it.
For generations we’ve had a steady march to the right because of that system.
And considering the same people/corporations donate to both parties, it doesn’t seem overly cynical to say ourmodern political system is working exactly as the wealthy designed it to work.
If voting didn’t work, the GOP wouldn’t be trying to prevent people from voting.
If you don’t like the Dem candidates in your area, you can contribute to AOC or Omar.
you can contribute to AOC or Omar.
Yep. Stopped giving to the DNC back in 2016 after Hillary’s swindle.
I only give directly to individual candidat I support now.
Doesn’t stop all the spam from Biden or the DNC tho, no matter how many times I text “stop” or “unsubscribe”, they just don’t care about anything a voter says.
Moderate Dems get elected because this country isn’t progressive. We collectively want these things to happen, which is why they do.
Progressive policy is popular regardless of labels or even parties.
Even in 2020 most Americans wanted single payer healthcare.
But because trump ran as a Republican, that meant the Dem candidate couldn’t want to fix healthcare, for some reason is till don’t understand.
We collectively want healthcare to be improved, but the people who donate to both parties don’t, which is why it doesn’t happen.
Either our government is representative of its people and they don’t really want those things, or it’s not representative of its people and needs destroyed. See the Declaration of Independence for more information.
How much of the increased price of fast food is because restaurants have to pay workers more than $7.25/hour now? It seems like the entire business model of cheap fast food was premised on low-quality food and labor costs so low that most fast-food workers qualified for public assistance. Leaving aside the low-quality oligarchical food product industry and just looking at the labor side, it’s still a failure. And a business model that relies on food stamps and welfare for its employees really isn’t a business model.
This is the EXACT reason why prices NEVER WENT UP until the $7.25 Minimum Wage was RAISED!
grocery store food is now a luxury too
sure voting Trump or Biden will fix it depending on what color you like
