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The $14 Burrito: Why San Francisco Inflation Feels Higher Than 2.5%
71–80 of 104 posts
Re: The $14 Burrito: Why San Francisco Inflation Feels Higher Than 2.5%
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s this already debunked by the famous Danish McDonald’s example? This is also debunked simple napkin math, even if the napkin math is generous to skeptics. Let’s say you buy a product for $100 with these example costs: $30 of the price goes to labor $30 of the price goes to rent/utilities/“keeping the lights on” $30 of the price goes to inputs (materials) $10 of the price goes to profit. Let’s say wages go up by 2…
This is really disingenuous and doesn't debunk anything. Who claimed that wages going up 20% would raise the overall price of the product 20%? I'm sure you can find someone on Twitter who said that because you can find any dumb thing on Twitter, but it's not a main argument. It's obvious to everyone that labor is just one cost to the seller. People only care that the price went up $6, not how that $6 happens to break…
I disagree with your last paragraph. This math is not obvious to most laypeople.
Many people think that if a McDonald’s worker’s salary goes from $10 to $20 that their Big Mac will go from $4 to $8.
My napkin math is extremely generous to minimum wage haters. It assumes that everyone is getting a raise and therefore all costs of all goods are going up. It also assumes basically a worst case scenario restaurant industry wage breakdown.
For example, the S&P 500’s average labor cost as a percentage of revenue is only 12%.
I haven’t even brought up the fact that people making wages that are too low to survive on already use government benefit programs, like how Walmart is the largest employer consumer of food stamps in the country. Minimum wage could be one mechanism among others to reduce corporate welfare. Walmart doesn’t deserve to have its labor costs be subsidized by the taxpayer.
Re: The $14 Burrito: Why San Francisco Inflation Feels Higher Than 2.5%
#73The 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.…
That may be. Okay, do you think you’d start looking for another opportunity if your cushy current job was like, “we’re reducing your salary by 9%”? You probably drive to a different gas station to save literally cents on a refill. It’s not so simple to frame the subjective feeling of what 9% is, even if I agree with you that the burrito isn’t that important.
Re: The $14 Burrito: Why San Francisco Inflation Feels Higher Than 2.5%
#74I quit eating out in the Bay Area over a year ago (except for socializing) because the prices feel painfully expensive to me while my pay hasn’t increased anywhere near the rate of restaurant price hikes. $14 for a burrito that cost roughly half as much a decade ago is painful, while my salary hasn’t doubled (I’m not a FAANG engineer). It’s not just burritos; it’s $10+ fast food combo meals, $15 deli sandwiches, etc.…
It's not just SF. The $10 lunch of 2015 is now $15. Default tipping of 20% on things that we never tipped on in 2015 (takeout, fast food) is also adding alot to the total cost.
I don't know how people are affording the various delivery services and their fees on top of it.
Re: The $14 Burrito: Why San Francisco Inflation Feels Higher Than 2.5%
#75It's funny watching people in this thread talk about food in LA being so much cheaper than in SF, because in my humble experience LA is also quite expensive compared to pretty much everywhere else in the country.
LA has a low end to a lot of things that is simply missing and not an option in SF
Applebees is gonna be the same in both places but in LA you're gonna be much more able to find some categorically lower and lower priced end non-franchised place.
Re: The $14 Burrito: Why San Francisco Inflation Feels Higher Than 2.5%
#76This 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…
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Re: The $14 Burrito: Why San Francisco Inflation Feels Higher Than 2.5%
#77I quit eating out in the Bay Area over a year ago (except for socializing) because the prices feel painfully expensive to me while my pay hasn’t increased anywhere near the rate of restaurant price hikes. $14 for a burrito that cost roughly half as much a decade ago is painful, while my salary hasn’t doubled (I’m not a FAANG engineer). It’s not just burritos; it’s $10+ fast food combo meals, $15 deli sandwiches, etc.…
It's not just SF. The $10 lunch of 2015 is now $15. Default tipping of 20% on things that we never tipped on in 2015 (takeout, fast food) is also adding alot to the total cost. I don't know how people are affording the various delivery services and their fees on top of it.
I see a lot of references to a “K-shaped” economy where there happens to be enough well-off people who are continuing to spend to push prices further upward, even though more people are forced to cut back since they can’t afford higher prices. There’s still enough people ordering $14 burritos and having them delivered in order to sustain both $14 burritos and the delivery companies.
It’s the same with the RAM situation. Prices will continue to skyrocket as long as there are enough buyers paying whatever prices the sellers set.
Re: The $14 Burrito: Why San Francisco Inflation Feels Higher Than 2.5%
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seattle used to have good food at reasonable prices. The extreme increase in costs, much of which is self-inflicted, has killed any restaurant that didn't both dramatically increase prices and cut corners on quality. Almost all of my favorite restaurants in the city are no longer around. Seattle had much better food 15 years ago. The average food quality has noticeably deteriorated at the same time as prices skyrocke…
> Seattle used to have good food at reasonable prices. The extreme increase in costs, much of which is self-inflicted, I'm curious about the self-inflicted part. How was it self-inflicted?
Tarrifs have affected the cost of inputs.
Re: The $14 Burrito: Why San Francisco Inflation Feels Higher Than 2.5%
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you read the article?
I did. Did you notice that in the article they're talking about how the price (89%) spanned a decade at least? This seems to align with what I've said in my above coment. >That's an 89% increase over a decade, and a 32% jump in just two years. San Francisco has the highest indexed concert ticket prices in the nation, roughly 29% above the norm, according to analysis from Tickethold. Of course prices are increasing ev…
It's the cost. The high cost of labor, due to the high cost of real estate, due to the limited availability. This is ultimately the cause of booth what you've pointed out (the average high salaries in the area) AND the high cost of local goods and services. If we had more affordable real estate, the average income of residents wouldn't be so high, and the costs of other things also wouldn't be so high.
Re: The $14 Burrito: Why San Francisco Inflation Feels Higher Than 2.5%
#80I quit eating out in the Bay Area over a year ago (except for socializing) because the prices feel painfully expensive to me while my pay hasn’t increased anywhere near the rate of restaurant price hikes. $14 for a burrito that cost roughly half as much a decade ago is painful, while my salary hasn’t doubled (I’m not a FAANG engineer). It’s not just burritos; it’s $10+ fast food combo meals, $15 deli sandwiches, etc.…
It's not just SF. The $10 lunch of 2015 is now $15. Default tipping of 20% on things that we never tipped on in 2015 (takeout, fast food) is also adding alot to the total cost. I don't know how people are affording the various delivery services and their fees on top of it.
A random stall by the road in LA will charge you $10 flat and the same one in SF will ask for $20. Neither will have a screen for tips. THAT would make your SF purchases simply stratospheric. I have lived in Jersey City, NJ and New Orleans, LA. Neither one holds a candle to LA prices outside some random roadside vendors. Walmarts in greater LA are vastly more expensive than those in NOLA. But grocery shopping in SF is straight up nightmare where they dont seem to respect Murican money all that much if at all. LA could never.