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Comment by hungryforcodes | Hacker News Reader

Not to disagree with you -- of course I agree with you -- but in your scenario a MacDo burger now costs $20.

McD's workers in Denmark are paid $22US/hr + 6 wks paid vacation, and their Big Macs only cost $0.35 more than in the US.

Denmark McDonald's prices are among the highest in the world.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_price_rankings?it...

So not $0.35 more, but $2 or 20% more it appears.

Take out cities in blue states and the prices are even lower

I imagine the better paid workers in Blue states can actually afford the slightly higher Big Mac price.

Your citation points out that a McMeal in Denmark costs around 12$ while in the US costs around 10$.

Even if you blindly assume that revenue is tied to salaries, are salaries in the US only 20% apart?

Your citation also points out that a McMeal in Spain is cheaper, and I'm sure that quality of life + benefits in the US is even in the same division, specially give that Spain has free healthcare for all.

The truth of the matter is that workers in the US are massively exploited and abused, and that as a deep impact on everyone's quality of life, even the privileged.

You should look at that chart again. Prices in red states are almost uniformly lower than blue states where minimum wages are higher.

I don't want to join this argument, but clicked the link just to see out of interest.

$10 is a little misleading, as that's the very topend places in USA. Check out El Paso, it's closer to $6.

Americans pay more in taxes to provide subsidies that make beef cheaper. https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi...

Continuing with the scenario: Easy fast food has contributed to the obesity epidemic, factory farming conditions, eviction of families from farms to corporations can take them over, and environmental disasters that contribute to global warming. The absence of fast food places is a benefit to a sustainable society.

How much of that is “fast food” and how much of that is just “feeding billions of people a lot of meat”?

What would happen if easy fast food went away? I suppose people wouldn’t eat the same quantities of food? So the farming requirements wouldn’t change.

If easy fast food went away then the working poor would have to find time, money, and energy to source their own ingredients, keep them fresh, and cook them. Which is a tall order when you're already stretched to the breaking point working three shitty part-time jobs with ever-shifting hours. A lot of the people in that situation live in places with nothing but fast food in a reasonable distance, too.

Slower restaurants aren't an option - they take far more time and money then people in this situation have.

I don't know what percentage of those shitty part-time jobs are fast food, but all of those jobs are gone along with the places if we imagine snapping our fingers and decreeing No More Fast Food. Some might be substituted by increased demand at grocers?

I feel like one possible result is former fast food workers who do find some measure of fulfillment in the job of "feeding people" pooling their resources and creating some kind of neighborhood co-op kitchen that feeds their community, with a very different allocation of the money brought in by people paying for the food - more towards paying the workers and getting good ingedients than to increasing shareholder returns. Someone's probably gonna try to get rich off of doing this too of course. Depending on what kinds of resources they can acquire there might be a shift towards purchasing food from more local farmers, or even growing some crops themselves.

That's my first guesses, at least.

Or you could look at what people did 100 years ago before fast food. I suppose you typically had one partner that was not employed and could cook, a bachelor might live with his parents, or a boarding house where meals were cooked.

These work too!

Well aside from the fact that paying rent on one person’s salary is nigh-impossible these days.

If you ever see a $40 hamburger, it will be because of capitalistic forces - what the market can bear - and not the cost.

That, or because some jackass wrapped it in gold leaf... https://www.cookingchanneltv.com/devour/2014/10/1700-dollar-...

Nit: is there a grammatical difference between: 'capitalistic forces' and 'capitalist forces'?

Capitalistic forces means the force itself is capitalistic (and says nothing about who is creating the force). Capitalist forces means the force of a capitalist - it directly references the being that is creating the force.

How much does a McDonalds burger cost right now in the places with the best worker protections and pay?

Pretty sure it's not $20 dollars adjusted for inflation and exchange rates. Who would by them? May $5?

You've missed the point. McDonalds here in Seattle starts workers at $16+. A Big Mac is still within a dollar or two of what it is in the rest of the country. It's not $20.

Dick's Deluxe starts pay at $19 and has benefits. Their burger is $1.80.

And yet these are all the people that are apparently missing in action in the economy. Or are they? Perhaps it's just small businesses that are unable to compete.

It's misleading to say "a dollar or two" cheaper when that's almost 50% cheaper.

"Customers may pay anywhere from $3.75 for a Big Mac in Austin, Texas, to $6.39 in Seattle. For Cheeseburgers, the variation was even greater, from $1 in places like Chicago and Houston to $2.29 in New York City."

https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/why-big-m...

Is this what McDonald's has to charge in New York and Seattle to be lucrative, or is it what they want to/can charge and can now excuse with "our workers are being paid living wages"?

Sounds like no matter what the result is, you get your preferred conclusion. In other words:

big macs costs significantly more in locations that have high labor costs -> "they're just using the high labor costs an excuse to charge more!"

big macs costs slightly more in locations that have high labor costs -> "see! that proves we should raise minimum wages!"

None of the “significantly more” is even remotely close to the cost claimed by the original comment. That’s the problem here - you can’t keep saying “but but but” to clear refutation. The assertion was simply false.

And in places where there are REAL worker protections, like the Scandinavian countries, a Big Mac is cheaper than in Seattle, potentially partly because employers aren’t responsible for healthcare.

But my point is that the commenter overstated the impact of paying higher wages dramatically.

A plain cheeseburger at Dick’s was $2.50 last time I went (this summer). The Dick’s deluxe is around $4.50 or so. The quality is low, so I’ve switched to Cali burger for my Saturday cheese burger with my kid (we go to downtown Seattle via lower Queen Anne, which puts us right next to a Dick’s, but I can’t handle eating there anymore).

Big Mac’s have been pricey here for awhile. Reminds me of Swiss McDonald prices almost, though I’m sure the 11 CHF Big Mac meal from 2006 costs a lot more there now.

https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index

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