MicroWaveMay 12, 2024

Americans are choking on surging fast-food prices. "I can't justify the expense," one customer says

https://lemmy.world/post/15328109

Americans are choking on surging fast-food prices. "I can't justify the expense," one customer says - Lemmy.World

Kevin Roberts remembers when he could get a bacon cheeseburger, fries and a drink from Five Guys for $10. But that was years ago. When the Virginia high school teacher recently visited the fast-food chain, the food alone without a beverage cost double that amount. Roberts, 38, now only gets fast food “as a rare treat,” he told CBS MoneyWatch. “Nothing has made me cook at home more than fast-food prices.” Roberts is hardly alone. Many consumers are expressing frustration at the surge in fast-food prices, which are starting to scare off budget-conscious customers. A January poll [https://www.revenuemanage.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Feb24-RMS-RestaurantConsumers-General.pdf] by consulting firm Revenue Management Solutions found that about 25% of people who make under $50,000 were cutting back on fast food, pointing to cost as a concern.

Show threadUnderpantsWeevilMay 13, 2024

The devil’s bargain that the American Middle Class struck in the 70s was that women would enter the labor force and all the domestic work would be handled by a professional service sector. Rather than cooking at home, we all eat out at cheap kitchens. Rather maintaining a home, we just rent. Rather than spend a day cleaning, we have dishwashers and rumbas and cheap immigrants to do maid work. Rather than spending time outdoors, we get a gym membership. Rather than providing child care ourselves, we outsource to daycare centers. Etc, etc.

That deal has been breaking down since at least the Housing Crisis of '08, but its really kicked into high gear after COVID. What was supposed to be cheap industrialized outsourcing has climbed in cost by leaps and bounds.

You can argue that the original deal sucked. Establishing a permanent underclass to do the grunt labor of civilization had all sorts of awful knock on effects, not the least of which was the food getting saltier and sugarier and generally more awful for our physical health.

But the alternative is what? Tell half the population to get back in the kitchen? Boycott Big Agriculture? Just eat smaller portions?

Show threadzalgotextMay 13, 2024
Congrats buddy, you’re now the winner of the “most sexist comment on Lemmy” award! Excited to see where your career goes as others try and battle it out with you for this prestigious prize.
Show threadAceticon

It’s a valid point that the bargain according to people’s mentality back then was that.

It’s also interesting to consider that in this domain the change in the mindset of first women and eventually men is a result of, in a couple both people having to work because one salary was not enough for a whole family and yet many men still had the expectation that it was the woman who would do most house chores and take care of the kids (I’ve actually saw a lot this kind of mindset even amongst well educated people of my generation - I’m in my early 50s - though in a different country which might be a little ahead or behind the US in this trend).

Also a single earner family is absolutelly compatible with gender equality - already 20 years ago I lived in The Netherlands and 18% of families there had a stay at home dad (literally in Dutch a huisman).

Unlike the self-serving bullshit that Neoliberal Capitalists have pushed to try to make people accept exploitation by making it seem like it is or promotes Gender Equality, it’s the expectation that a stay at home person is a woman that’s the Sexism, not the idea that it should be possible and acceptable for one member of a couple to stay at home.

May 13, 2024 at 3:08pmWeb
Show threadUranium3006May 14, 2024
Also you can throw the nuclear family in the dumpster and go for a more communal setup which would be better anyways but would be a social change