61–70 of 104 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inflation is a good thing?
Paying people a livable wage is a good thing.
This tracks with.... basically everything except the official numbers. I routinely see people who record their grocery prices finding increases that start in the 40% range. Certainly true for soda and snacks in my experience. There's a new second-order concern where I'm now alarmed by low prices. For example: I have no idea what johnsonville did to keep their brats at $4.99 over the past 5 years while the more local…
I make six figures but I have resorted to making eating out a rare treat in order for me to maintain my financial goals. This harkens back to my childhood in a low-income family, though I do remember my parents taking advantage of fast food deals in the 1990s and 2000s. I pack lunches and dinners to work, and I regularly cook, sometimes resorting to frozen meals for convenience’s sake. Eating out is reserved for social gatherings and for travel.
What’s interesting is the situation isn’t that much better in Sacramento, my hometown and where I visit family members. While Sacramento has lower housing prices, eating out isn’t substantially cheaper.
On the flipside, I’m in Tokyo now on a trip, where eating out feels cheap. $10 in the Bay Area or even Sacramento doesn’t get a satisfying meal these days (it’s not even enough for a fast food combo meal in many cases), but ¥1,500 (roughly $10) in Tokyo can buy a satisfying meal. Even ¥750 can buy a satisfying meal if one looks harder.
The situation in the Bay Area is demoralizing. I’m still in the Bay because of my career and because of social ties. It’s one thing to be priced out of buying a house, but it’s another thing to feel priced out of eating out. I don’t know if the situation is better in other parts of the United States, though; I’ve heard of people in other states complain about the high price of eating out these days.
The other thing i've noticed about burritos is that more places take card or apple pay now. When I moved to sf in 2015 many of them were cash only, same with bars. I always assumed some amount of cash was being shuffled under the table.
I still carry cash because services like massage and housecleaning and some restaurants are happy to give good price breaks for cash payment, but I also love Apple Pay as a consumer.
The article claims "a burrito that cost $5.50 in 2014 is now $13.95" but I just checked one of the better SF Mission taquerias that has a web site with prices (Papalote) and used the Way-Back Machine and a carne asada burrito was $9.10 in Jan 2014 and is now $13.75. That's only 1.5X not 2.5X increase. According to the BLS CPI calculator, that $9.10 in 2014 has $12.61 of buying power as of a couple months ago, or $13.…
Mmm 14$ sounds nice! In Seattle a burrito is hard to find for under 17$ IMO. For example, a local and delicious place in a nearby liquor store has 18$ burritos: https://eltacolocoballard.com/seattle-ballard-el-taco-loco-f... Or a longtime establishment of the area offers 15$ ones - https://www.gorditosmexicanfood.com/menu#menu=burritos Granted these are massive compared to basically anywhere else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paying people a livable wage is a good thing.
For most poor people, raising the minimum wage doesn't mean increasing their income, but rather reducing it to zero. It literally prohibits workers from working for low wages, effectively putting them out of job.
Should I blame SF inflation or what?
> A burrito that cost $5.50 in 2014 is now $13.95. They haven't been that cheap since the 90s. 10 years ago, they were around $10.
Read TFA. They got the price from the menu they were comparing to in 2014.
> A burrito that cost $5.50 in 2014 is now $13.95. They haven't been that cheap since the 90s. 10 years ago, they were around $10.
> They haven't been that cheap since the 90s. 10 years ago, they were around $10. You do realise that the article has actual photos of the menus from different years, right? What's your hypothesis here? They photoshopped the images?