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 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.
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?
Yes back in the kitchen but this time not just one gender. Eating out shouldn’t be the norm.
You couldn’t keep me out of the kitchen if you tried. But I’ve found that confidence fuels engagement.
Home Econ and cooking class are great tools for establishing basic skills and familiarity. Deliver a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to grill, and he’ll cook for the rest of his life.
If I had a dollar for every tired phrase you just wrote
I don’t see any connection between women entering the workforce and half the stuff you said.
ok, boomer
More elder millennial. But I’m old enough to remember the tail end of home economics and shop class taught in the American education system. And I remember when it was all immolated to cut taxes.
Kids today have no idea how much was robbed from them. McDs selling you pink slime in a bun for 10x what it cost to produce is only the latest atrocity.
what was robbed from them?
kids don’t live on McDonalds.
youtube is full of tutorials how to make your own food, more knowledge is available to them then ever.
If kids live on mcd, it’s because their parents got robbed of a liveable wage and need to overextend themselves.
stop shouting at the golden arch decorated skies and saying women belong in the kitchen
Education sufficient for some serious self-determination and independence of the corporate economy.
What percentage of children and adolescents consumed fast food on a given day?
:-/
Yes. Hence the “Devil’s Bargain”. Economic policy in the US rewards commerce and discourages labor that can’t be attached to some kind of cash value or profit motive. Consequently, parents are forced into the workforce to earn a salary less than their value at home would be worth, because so many of our household subsidies and tax credits are predicated on mandatory work requirements.
Whether its Liz Warren’s “Two Income Trap” or E. P. Thompson’s “The Making of the English Working Class”, the story of industrialization is one of devaluing labor and commodifying the output, for the purpose of extracting surplus as profit.
One of the true peculiarities of the misogynist brain is that they believe women are designated as biological “food makers” but have no problem when male chefs consistently collect higher paychecks in the professional workforce.
This has nothing to do with women “belonging in the kitchen” and everything to do with industrialization of labor denuding the working class of the fruits of that labor. A gender hierarchy only exists to further that institutional theft.
You’re doing well writing out the truth, I appreciate your comments.
I also really like the word “denuding”, first time hearing it.
People don’t only eat too much McD for financial reasons, people never developed an adult palate and find most natural ingredients „gross“, for example the Spoonman Mike Mitchell.
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.
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.
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
I dont see the sexism? Am i missing something? He says that since families moved away from single income households we were told we could just pay for the household services we no longer had time for, but that they have been raising the prices on those services ever since. Where sexism?
Wow, that’s totally not what that person said. Project much?
I’m not projecting, I’m trying to get the award.
You could do better (worse)
Ah I get it now. Yes, you could do worse.
What’s the problem?