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McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

latimes.com

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Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#591

Post by red-iron-pine »

stego-tech wrote: post #44

These articles deliberately skew reality to fit an anti-worker narrative. All the focus is on costs of labor and materials, with not one single sentence devoted to McDonald’s own financials - like the growth of their margins, the share buybacks performed, the executive compensation, or the franchising model itself. When I was rallying for a higher minimum wage and was challenged on it driving up costs, I made it abun…

> These articles deliberately skew reality to fit an anti-worker narrative. All the focus is on costs of labor and materials, with not one single sentence devoted to McDonald’s own financials - like the growth of their margins, the share buybacks performed, the executive compensation, or the franchising model itself.

Capital will always blame Labor for their problems

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#592

Post by red-iron-pine »

testing22321 wrote: post #317
stego-tech wrote: post #44

These articles deliberately skew reality to fit an anti-worker narrative. All the focus is on costs of labor and materials, with not one single sentence devoted to McDonald’s own financials - like the growth of their margins, the share buybacks performed, the executive compensation, or the franchising model itself. When I was rallying for a higher minimum wage and was challenged on it driving up costs, I made it abun…

This has been the story in the US for a few decades now. You can’t have nice things that other developed countries take as a given like higher lineage, healthcare, higher education, public infrastructure, etc because of profit, exec compensation, stock buybacks and all the rest. To suggest decreasing those is akin to treason.

under the current US techno-capitalist regime, it may quite literally be treason to suggest it in the near future.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#593

Post by johnisgood »

Telaneo wrote: post #474
johnisgood wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the US education system really this bad?

The same problem is present in other parts of the world, even in Europe, although I believe not to the same extent.

I got down-voted, which is odd, because I truly have not encountered anyone here in Hungary who do not know how to read nor write. The only demographic that may difficulties with that are gypsies because they typically do not go to school.

Additionally, is it not common knowledge the US education system is bad?

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#595

Post by FatherOfCurses »

wahern wrote: post #432
johnisgood wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is cheaper to spend 1000$ on a restaurant than to take an hour or two to cook a very low-effort food that takes max 2 hours to cook and lasts for 3 days? I'm genuinely baffled. Personally I would not call it a waste of 2 hours. Either way, if you can afford it, then Godspeed. :D I definitely do not have 1000 USD per week for food. I do not even have 100 USD per week for food.

I have a friend who, once he started steadily making mid-high six figures in Silicon Valley, began taking the HOV lane on his commute into work, despite driving alone. The calculus was easy. Assuming $500,000 salary (I think he made more), 8 hour days, 50 weeks a year, that's $250/hour. As a manager, he couldn't shuffle his schedule around very easily, unlike when he was programming and could come in late and leave l…

What a clear example of how being wealthy allows you to thumb your nose at the laws that the rest of us plebs have to follow.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#596

Post by hilbert42 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #327
johnisgood wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are such restaurants around here in Europe but they are super expensive, so you are better off doing it on your own at home. Cooking a stew of lentils or any other legumes is very easy and does not consume that much time either, and you can cook for 3 days easily. Why are people not doing this?

Because they lack the skill? You seem to take the ability of people to cook for granted. I don't think it is automatic anymore. Generational transmission of some skills has ceased. Jamie Oliver famously asked British school kids to name objects such as an apple, a potato or a cucumber, and plenty of them did not know. They just stared at the raw vegetables/fruits, baffled. And as of now, you cannot simply vibe-cook u…

I'm male, and I was never taught to cook nor prepare a meal. And I do not like cooking one little bit yet I can prepare a meal that all but the most fussy would eat. And I'm talking about a meal with multiple parts—meat, three vegetables with condiments, and bread etc. then say finishing with a desert.

Basic cooking is profoundly easy, and for most it's instinctive, after all one has to eat, so there's incentive. In fact I have never knowing met anyone who couldn't prepare a basic meal that would not at least sustain them and other members of a family. It's true I've met people whose food preparation leaves much to be desired and I'd prefer to avoid their cooking but the food they prepared was definitely edible.

"You seem to take the ability of people to cook for granted."

Right, I've lived my whole life in a world where everyone I know well takes one's ability to prepare a basic meal for granted, it's something that's not even contemplated it's so elementary. In fact, when reading your comment my initial reaction was as this isn't April 1st he must be winding us up for the sake of argument.

If what what you say is true and there are significant numbers of people who can't cook then to me this is a startling revelation. Similarly, I'd not previously heard of Jamie Oliver's questioning of school kids and revealing their ignorance of food types but that's not surprising given that cooking programs bore me to tears. That said, the first thing I'd no doubt agree with Oliver about is that this ignorance is truly shocking, and second we'd be questioning how did we arrive at this disgraceful situation when it would have been inconceivable several generations ago.

How can someone not pick up the basics of food preparation after seeing it done several times? Even if like me one doesn't like cooking, at three meals a day it's hard to completely avoid watching those who are preparing one's food—so the normal human gets lots of experience even if they only see food preparation infrequently.

Even with my disinterest in cooking I picked the skill up by simply being around the kitchen at meal times. By age 10 I could easily prepare a decent meal, that's just how it was for the average person.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#597

Post by johnisgood »

ludicrousdispla wrote: post #515
johnisgood wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still baffles me that people compare cooking to playing an instrument. It really is not that difficult to cook, depending on what it is. Do people know how to make schnitzel (breadcrumbed meat)? Make fries? Make rice? Make boiled potatoes? Or are those things difficult as well? Making a stew out of legumes is not that difficult either. Boil your legumes, then mix eggs, flour, and paprika together, put it in oil, h…

You could open a trendy restaurant in SV called 'Soup Kitchen' serving various stews and goulashes and I am confident it would do very well.

I am confident in this, too. My Hispanic girlfriend made goulash for the first time in her life and it was delicious! She used Hungarian paprika. :)

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#598

Post by johnisgood »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #539
wahern wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend who, once he started steadily making mid-high six figures in Silicon Valley, began taking the HOV lane on his commute into work, despite driving alone. The calculus was easy. Assuming $500,000 salary (I think he made more), 8 hour days, 50 weeks a year, that's $250/hour. As a manager, he couldn't shuffle his schedule around very easily, unlike when he was programming and could come in late and leave l…

> The 30+ minutes saved during his commute each day I mean, you could also live closer to the office

It is not really feasible for many people.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#599

Post by philjw »

mycall wrote: post #264
philjw wrote: post #217

The lack of vegan options — and Trump flexing his one-day McDonald’s internship — finally pushed me to boycott McDonald’s altogether. Also it became slow with all the delivery drivers queuing up as well. Burger King might be raising prices too, but at least their deals are still decent, and every burger has a vegan option (which is supposedly even cheaper for them to produce). My actual favorite “fast food” is IKEA —…

The US has efficient vans to like the Ram ProMaster City or Ford Transit/E-Transit, pretty popular.

"The Ram ProMaster City was a compact commercial van made by Stellantis, which discontinued the model in 2022."

Also, people in the US started importing Kei-Trucks so there is a demand and a certain level of resistance to the car bloat.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#600

Post by Telaneo »

johnisgood wrote: post #593
Telaneo wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same problem is present in other parts of the world, even in Europe, although I believe not to the same extent.

I got down-voted, which is odd, because I truly have not encountered anyone here in Hungary who do not know how to read nor write. The only demographic that may difficulties with that are gypsies because they typically do not go to school. Additionally, is it not common knowledge the US education system is bad?

Might be an American in denial.

The 'meaningful' part of my original comment is carrying a lot of weight there. Most people are literate in the literal sense of that word, but I went to class with people who have not read a written work longer than five pages sine they went out of school, and I would not trust them to read an even vaguely complicated instruction manual without me explaining something to them. They are not literate in any meaningful sense of that word. They barely knew how to read when we took our final exams, but they did pass, since no-one wants to deal with the trouble of actually teaching them now. They're good people. The schools just failed them.

I could barely write when I got out school, in the sense that I couldn't read my own handwriting. I had to be taught anew when I learned a language that uses a different script, and that practice made my normal handwriting 10 times better.

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