Thank you for so succinctly summing up the sort of utterly out of touch combined with willful ignorance attitude I've come to associate with Hacker News in general.

Life with no money and the perpetual fear of being evicted and living in a car with your children until they're taken away, or being fired for taking a day off sick because you work a bad job with no protections, or not being able to pay the electric and making a game of huddling together with your children at night for fear that they'll freeze, this is being poor. Learn to live poor? Learn to live this life? People do, and it's horrible, and life with nothing to ever look forwards to is a long slow suicide.

A McDonald's for some of these people IS life. It's the point of being alive, now that they have so little. It's the special treat that they've worked hard for, and it's pretty much the lowest tier special treat.

Happy Meals toys were my ONLY toys for the first decade of my life.

I remember every single one I had; I didn’t have many.

Does it sound better if I say "live within their means"?

No, you still don’t understand, at all.

Ah yes. "If only these people would abstain from the joys of eating fucking McDonald's, they'd no longer be poor."

I'd first like to respond that McDonalds is terrible and don't see how it brings you joy.

I'm also not saying poor people do t get any joy. They just don't get to have every joy they want. Even if you're not poor you don't get to do that.

At what point do you see the irresponsibility? Applebees? Ruth's Chris? The French Laundry?

> At what point do you see the irresponsibility? Applebees? Ruth's Chris? The French Laundry?

Definitely not the $2 burger special at Mcdonald's, that's for sure.

A double quarter pounder meal is $11 with tax in Texas.

I'm not poor but I'm realizing just how insane it is to eat out regularly now.

The poor aren't getting the meals.

When I was a grad student, my McD's trips were 'hey I found a toonie (Canada), I can treat myself to a McDouble'.

I remember working retail years ago, and having co-workers that would get fast food for lunch. They're spending 3 hours (after-tax) of of their minimum wage pay on lunch. How much sense does that make?

There are multiple subsets of poor.

There are poor who are so exhausted and so without capacity to move up that a little enjoyment from fast food is what keeps them going.

And there are also poor who are wasting resources they could be using to move up. Such as young kids with stable homes working retail/hotel/other lower paying jobs, but instead of a making a healthy moong bean salad at home for $3 of ingredients and 30min of their time, they order a $25 chipotle meal from door dash everyday at work.

The point is that even the cheapest restaurants are more expensive than preparing food yourself.

Do you actually believe poor people don't know that?

Your comment made it sound like you didn't know that.

Monetarily, perhaps[1], but there's also the time factor - buying 4 McDonalds meals is a lot quicker than preparing, cooking, and cleaning up after 4 people.

[1] I wouldn't say it was 100% true - McDonalds is a pretty cheap way of getting calories.

This is some tired avocado-toast-level commentary.