Household economy for muricans:

People who "eat out or doordash" their whole adult lives absolutely bamboozle me. Motherfucker, youre paying more than some people do in RENT for slop you could make better at home!
And I say this as a perennial slop enjoyer. I love a chippy or a chinese but good god eating that shit every day would kill me from the boredom long before it killed me from malnutrition
- Also that shit almost always shows up cold
- I've turned into this. :( full time work just kinda leaves me in a daze, unable to make decisions like "should I shower now" or what to eat, so I wind up eating out or ordering way more than I should.
  It hasn't helped that my last few bulk cooks have made me feel rather sick, so I've just been avoiding what used to be regular foods when I was unemployed.
  Also what used to be a 15 minute trip to the shops is now a few hours.

I've never once ordered a doordash in my life.
- I dont even like eating out, having people wait on me makes me uncomfotable
  it'd be different if we were abe to go to massive soviet style caffeterias, but some bougie resturaunt? No thanks

Maybe Americans will gain class consciousness through the economics of burger. Then again, perhaps not
- "Imagine you have two burgers"
  
  Two burgers? That's a whole tank of gas!

This is how we convert them. Using burger metrics to help understand the labor theory of value.
- Before I went vegan, I had the idea to make a site that calculates the cost of Whoppers in your geographic area so you could say something like "I'm not buying this new game, I could get 27 Whoppers for that price" when your friends question why you pirate everything.
  Technically still could but Impossible Whoppers are going to be a significantly worse ratio.
  
  Someone beat you to it
- how many burgers do you need to make a coat?
  
  We talking coats back in Marx's day or like a North face jacket?
- many ppl are saying this. the burger is a window and door into the American mind

I mean they are 100000% right about restaurants over charging for shit, the rest of that price difference sure as shit isn't going to labor
- a bunch goes to rent, gotta
  so we can have cheaper restaurants and fair wages
  
  It's actually wild how much speculation has driven up rent for businesses. I've seen pretty popular spots just get crushed by it. Petit beoug getting gobbled up by the bigger fish
  
  That’s my main “small business chud” talking point, ridiculous rents that drive up the base cost for absolutely everything and drive small businesses out.
  A co-workers wife has had a used bookstore for a few years, had low rent negotiated with this cool old Chinese man. He passed away, the property was sold, and their rent is jumping so much she’ll have to close.
  I foresaw this happening to them when they confided in me how precarious their business was and even then how much of what they made went towards rent despite them paying half “market value.” She doesn’t even pay herself a Salary, they just barely break even. When I asked them about it at the time it was just some nebulous future problem for them.
- I know for sure the boss is still ripping me off, that's wage labor. But profit per item at a restaurant is surprisingly low. Like 20%, generally that's made up with drinks that are much higher margin. Food costs on their own are no joke. Getting bulk from a supplier isn't that much cheaper than retail and often it's the same price. Especially if you want not shitty ingredients. Labor cost can be hard to figure item by item cause sometimes one item taking more time and being harder to do prep for means someone could be doing 2 or 3 different things instead with that time and a bunch of other shit but cooks get paid fuck all, so it's for sure where they try to save as much as possible. Then there's rent and utilities. Electric and water bills are really really high, we've got a propane pizza oven kept on all day at 640 degrees, Lotta gas getting used there. Add rent on top of that. My boss could still stand to make way less to no money off my labor but restaurant overhead is a lot. I've done the costing work at a few places and when all is factored in the profit margin is lower than most things that get sold. It's made up for in volume and drink sales.

BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO NOT PAY SERVERS A FAIR WAGE
- Or food delivery people

and still profit $12.40
Yeh, nothing but ingredients go into the cost of the product. They hammer that in to you in Econ 101.
- I think this is a common opinion, whenever I talk about labor costs peoples eyes glass over
  
  Unless they're business-owners of some kind and then it's literally all they care about.
- Unironically yeah

"I've uncritically consumed product for years paying extortionate prices and never thought twice due to my privilege and wealth. I tried making product myself and realized what a scam things have been all along, and now feel stupid. Why won't they just scam me for 400% profit instead of 500%?"
The closest thing to critical thinking a burger-brained treatlerite is kkkapable of.

Sounds like my uncle
Buys those pre-formed bulk budget burger patties that come in a box
He grills them until they taste like ash and woe and then goes on and on about how much money he saves
- That's because those things are full of so much fat they just go up in flames
  
  I figured it was because they were packed with sawdust

Revolution will come to America last but when it does arrive it will be because the price of burger
- Revelations will come to America last but when it does arrive it will be because the price of burger
  5 When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, “Come!” I looked, and behold, a black horse, and the one who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. 6 And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, "A cheeseburger for a day's wages, and a basket of chicken wings for a day's wages, and do not damage the corn syrup or bud light!"

Real talk if that restaurant makes 1 of surplus value on that 20 burger the owner is happy. Restaurants (fast food aside) are not surplus value machines, quite the opposite.
I'd also like to know where food is still that cheap in the west.
- I'd also like to know where food is still that cheap in the west.
  Maybe the burger is just ~2 ounces of beef or so, like a typical fast food burger? That would account for about half the per-meal cost, and both bread and potatoes are cheap enough that the rest could easily fit inside the limit.
  Or he's just counting wrong.
  
  Probably bought the cheapiest bulkiest frozen patties dude could find at Cosco. I imagine those come down to a pretty small unit cost
- Realised you're talking about the grocery cost being cheap, not the restaurant cost