> While true, there are many people who cannot do this because they work 16+ hours per day. And if they have children it is even more difficult.

Whenever I read these comments I feel like people either grew up in an alternate reality than I did, or they get their perception of poor people from the hyperbole on Reddit.

People who grew up in poverty and work two full time jobs aren’t the ones feeding their families with fast food for 2-3 meals per day. They’re the ones who are experts at cheap cooking, crockpot meals, and cheap meals at home.

Reading comments like this that hit a checklist of cliche bullet points (being “forced” to feed your family with fast food, parent who works 16+ hour days, using Walmart as the canonical American job, mentioning the anecdote about Walmart instructing people about how to apply for assistance) I suspect the experience is more of a conglomeration of talking points from politicians and Reddit rather than real experience.

In a wealthy first world country, it's very difficult to pay a living wage while also keeping prices low. Prices of things we buy are very sensitive to labor costs, so low income earners find themselves on a treadmill where their wage increases get eaten up quickly by cost increases.

The solution would be something like wage crush from the top. The mass of this change wouldn't come from billionaires or the 1%, they are a drop in the bucket compared to the 50-90%.

There are tons of "average" people who got absolutely stacked in the last 5 years. Especially here on HN. They won't raise their hand, it's pretty taboo in this environment, but consumer spending and unrelenting housing prices make it very clear which social classes are fucked and which ones are richer than ever. And it's not billionaires and everyone else.

> In a wealthy first world country, it's very difficult to pay a living wage while also keeping prices low.

Is this true? I have repeatedly come across people saying tipping in North America is insane since in most of the rest of the world it isn’t required because restaurants pay living wages to start, and the pricing is on par or less than in North America.

You have to look at exchange rates and relative incomes if you’re comparing US to Europe. (And a service fee is often tacked on in the UK for table service so it’s not unique to the U.)

Essentially any personal service is pretty expensive even for someone of above or even well above average income. Non-dedicated services such as Uber or a car to the airport are certainly more manageable than a private driver just as a restaurant is more manageable than a personal chef.

But anything along these lines is still relatively expensive.

I don't see how going to a fast food place saves you time: it takes significant time going to the fast food place, waiting in line, driving home. And at home you can multi-task--while waiting for the food to cook you can put the laundry in the washing machine, sweep the floor...large numbers of household tasks.

The actual situation. I have just picked up my child from wherever they are and I'm bring them home. I can either spend upwards of an hour cooking or I can stop at a fast food restaurant in the drive through and get food immediately with no effort on my part physical or mental.

Who is waiting while food cooks? When I cook I am attending to the food the entire time. Perhaps if you are a heavy oven user you get time to do other things, but otherwise, no.

And laundry lol. To barely keep up with the laundry, I have to do a load a day and the on the weekend I do several loads. It wasn't like this before I had a kid, but everything grt dirt faster and more often with a child around.

Being a parent who works is _exhausting_. You're always weighing money vs time investment. In many cases it's just easier to buy food you don't have to make or think about then have to do the whole rigamole of planning and buying groceries and then cooking the food yourself. If you're like me and you order a head via an app, you don't even have to wait the few minutes fast food takes. It's right there for you and you carry on your way. I can now spend my mental energy on something else.

> Who is waiting while food cooks? When I cook I am attending to the food the entire time. Perhaps if you are a heavy oven user you get time to do other things, but otherwise, no.

Long long ago I had a neighbour who cooked ONE day per month and froze everything. He printed out a menu card for himself with 3 and 4 course meals. He used a table cloth with the fine silver utensils and fancy plates. He would sit himself down, look at the menu, pick something then move the food from the freezer to the microwave. It looked like a high end restaurant. His argument was that he hated cooking and didn't want to spend any time on it.

The house had a shared kitchen. The one day he cooked was hilarious. He cooked for 40-50 people (inc guests), made various kinds of soup, all kinds of meat, pastas, curries, deserts etc

He one time pondered buying a rice cooker to make better rice but decided it was to much like cooking.

The food went in plastic bags in containers, when frozen he would pull it out of the container to save space and avoid having to wash the containers.

I also know people who eat together. They have no further relationship. They take turns cooking. Small groups like 3 or 4 but also larger ones like 6 or 8 people. You do need space for that ofc.

If you really attend to the food for an hour it is probably a more nutritious and more sophisticated meal than the fast food? How much money are you saving in that hour?

Parenting is just hard work. I'm afraid it includes teaching how to cook.

By the time I pick my kids up from preK and kinder, it’s 5:00pm. Swinging by the drive though, I can have the kids in chairs eating by 5:20. Cooking a dead simple meal like spaghetti, we’re not eating until closer to 5:45, because of overhead in getting everyone in the house and situated to where I can focus on cooking while they play. It’s even worse if they have bad days, we’re eating closer to 6:00pm.

Nothing wrong with eating later, in fact we prefer it because fast food is kinda crap and I don’t really like them eating processed foods. But it definitely saves time, not to mention on the cleanup side too.

And no, can’t really multitask during the weekdays because the timing is so tight. I can do dishes as I go but that’s the limit because the kids start screaming at each other that their feet are touching or whatever the drama of the day is…

Yes and saving that time means there's more time to go to the park or the store on the way home, etc. without having to get everybody ready to go out again.

Also my kids are picky eaters (autism) so it's not like we only have to make one delicious and nutritious meal for everybody. It's more like two or three different meals, or my wife and I have to settle for buttered noodles or what have you. Eating out lets us get a different meal for each person and there's still a chance of the adults being able to eat something delicious and/or nutritious. Or we can get take-out for the kids and make our own dinner or vice-versa.

1. who are these people working 16+ hours a day?

2. let's say these 16+ hours workers were the only ones justified eating ready meals, would the industry survive?

I'm very liberal, but you have to admit that democrats held power at least as long as republicans over the last 30 years. There's plenty of ratfucking from both parties.

That is not true. Democrats have only had enough votes (60 in the Senate) to pass legislation for 6 months in the latter half of 2009 (which is when they got Affordable Care Act passed, with heavy compromises).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...

Also, Republicans have held the House for 22 out of the last 30 years. Hence why Republicans were able to hold up more Supreme Court judges from Obama, and obtain a Republican majority on the SC.

Can't Democrats make non-trivial changes at the state level? US states are very powerful. California's housing problems aren't a matter for the US Congress. Democrats hold a trifecta and legislative supermajority there.

Federal mortgage guarantees fan the flames of the housing shortage.

Unfortunately, NIMBYism is popular in both parties on the local level. But note that California Democrats did take action to force permitting of more dense housing on the state level.

Also, on the state level, Democrat led states have higher minimum wages, stronger labor protections, parental leave and paid leave in general, expanded Medicaid, and other policies that raise the floor in general.

> Republicans have held the House for 22 out of the last 30 years. Hence why Republicans were able to hold up more Supreme Court judges

Not what the House does.

Thanks for the correction. It was the Senate that didn’t confirm the appointments, I misremembered as House. Which is also pretty supportive of Dems not having control for most of the last 30 years.

People who work 16 hours a day were never eating fast food. They were cooking fast and cheap meals at home

If you pay a “living” wage, prices of goods will go up, and soon it will no longer be a “living” wage.

This entire discussion is about the price of goods going up even though people aren't being paid a living wage, so I'm not sure what argument you're making.

That depends on what "living wage" actually means.

What you describe is one of my concerns with UBI, but the devil is very much in the detail.

I don't think there's a linear scaling — unless you think somehow wages are the only expense for companies like Walmart.

There is also land and capital, of course, but it is not very often that the landlords don't also want a raise when labor starts making more money. That is their living, after all. For all intents and purposes there is only labor.

Granted, you can often play political games with labor, such as only raising the wages of workers in the USA, while leaving the labor making the plastic trinkets in who knows what third-world country to continue to struggle. In that sense, it doesn't necessarily happen linearly. Not really achieving the goal of a "living" wage then, though.

You're talking about a bullshit lunch of sandwiches. Most people are talking about breakfast, lunch and dinner where they have to juggle the wants and temperaments of their whole family and then spend more than an hour planning and getting that food. Because part of grocery shopping is inventorying your food stores and considering price and sales and how much money you have. When you're poor, you don't go to one grocery store, you go to multiple. I used to travel with my money to get stuff for the hour and it took hours. She made so little that it was better she spend her time rather than her money. When I was a poor college student I got it.

I'm a middle class white collar worker who makes every single meal my child eats and it sure as fuck doesn't take me one or two hours to feed my kid. I meal prep and I lose my entire day to just making food for the week.

Dont forget to tip your grocery store shelf stocker.