This part gripes me when they travel to “less fortunate” or “poor” countries where eating out is $0.50-2.00 but the same or similar thing is $30-500 in the US, however: people earn different levels of income. Like in that “third world” country, people may only live with $10 a day while Americans live with either $7.25 / $15 per hour in minimum wage, so it’s not comparable as to why the prices are seen as “cheap” by Americans.
Now, put it this way: if an average joe were to earn the FEDERAL mandated minimum wage of $7.25, is buying a whole weeks worth of groceries affordable with that alone (excluding rent, utilities, insurance, etc)? Do you consider a $200 semi-fancy dinner at a restaurant (not over the top luxurious, but formal & fine dining) with family or friends “cheap” in the US whilst earning $15 (or even $30) per hour in minimum wage?
Not mentioned by others is the cost of inputs going into a meal between countries. For various reasons, Vietnamese street vendor food is going to cheaper than an American fast casual meal.
When you look at the Big Mac Index, you’ll find that the variance in cost to a single burger served in an air-conditioned building across different countries isn’t as much as you’d think.
I make $15/hr and my wife makes $16/hr. A $50 meal for us and our kid is often too much.
Are you trying to ask how many hours of work it takes to buy a reasonable meal at a restaurant? Minimum wage in Florida is $15. You can buy something that would make a day’s food or one cheap meal (without a drink) at a cheap restaurant for that one hour of work, but of course we pay taxes so the net in the paycheck doesn’t equal $15. Also you can’t just exclude housing like that. Nobody can use groceries if they aren’t housed.
At $15/hour and 25% going to taxes, gross about $2,000/month. Net about $1500 Average rent here 2,500 so with one roommate, rent is still taking most of that.
You seem to be mixing two topics. One appears to be a complaint about purchasing power between tourists and locals, and the other about US domestic purchasing power on minimum wage.
You’ve got lots of great answers by others on the latter and how it is unsustainable as a living wage. Why Americans (and likely other Western tourists in general) consider certain countries “cheaper” is because of exchange rates. That would be a whole post on it’s own.
A single US Dollar (USD) can be used to buy about 93 Indian Rupees (INR), as an example. The average monthly wage is something like 25,000 INR, so even minimum US federal wage would be 5x more monthly buying power (but as explained by others, minimum wage earners are not the ones traveling). “Cheap” is used to compare against a similar purchase in their home country and what it would have cost there. It is not an insult but a way to describe the difference in cost relative to income.
Short answer - no. It’s not cheap. Have you even seen fast food prices? We’re getting priced out of the very thing that was once stupid cheap. A big mac should not cost nearly $7 alone and $13 for a meal with it, when at one point it was literally $2!
I struggle to understand your question. What are you trying to get at? Maybe try rephrasing it. In the current form, you’re basically asking: are people making a minimum wage able to buy fancy dinners? To which the answer is no, but like why would you think so?
You start with “the part that gripes me when they travel “ suggests you are complaining about Amercans traveling to cheaper countries finding the prices cheap? Note that Americans who travel abroad are not the average American and typically are not living on minimum wages.
That was exactly what I was thinking. I read through it and said out loud “what the fuck is the question??”. It seems like the ramblings of someone who doesn’t understand relativity or currency exchange.
Thing you should keep in mind is that, at least in my experience, there are next to no businesses that only offer the federally mandated minimum wage. States have their own mandated minimum wage, and yes, many of them are also 7.25/hr, but many are significantly higher. I live in a state where the minimum wage is 7.25 but I’ve never seen a job posting that started there. It’s always higher, because it’s not survivable and no one is accepting that as a starting offer. I know that’s adjacent to your question but I still wanted to clarify that.
Having said all that, your estimations on what an average American spends on dining out are off. I can take myself and my son to a fast food place and feed us both for around $15. I can take us to a mid-tier restaurant (think a place like Applebees) and feed us both for about $40-$50. Family of four? $80-$100 at such a place. Yeah it’s not great - I can remember a family of four doing that for around $50-$60 not that long ago, but that still falls short of your estimations. Can you spend $500 or more dining out? Of course. But your average household isn’t doing that.
To more directly answer your question, the disproportionate increases in median household income and inflation have caused Americans to eat out less and be more frugal with their grocery shopping. Still got other bills to pay as you rightly pointed out. I’m a single dad and my monthly grocery bill is around $200 and I consider that manageable. I only eat out maybe 2-3 times a month, more for health reasons, as restaurant food is a massive warhead of carbs, calories, and sodium.
Thing to remember overall, is that the US is its own economy, just like any other country. And this is where things stand here currently. There will always be a proportional relationship between what people earn in a given country and what food costs and what they spend. It’s neither good nor bad the way I see it. It just is.
Sorry for the long winded answer. I just wanted to try and give you my perspective.
Nobody making $8 an hour is spending $200 on something so transient as a meal without some serious consideration. That’s 24 hours of labor (spread over at least 2 days) for something that may last for 2 hours and will sustain you for 8-12 hours.
MIT made a living wage calculator that shows that federal minimum wage is basically not sustainable anywhere.
MIT living wage calculator is not really accurate. It says you need 70K to support yourself in my city… that’s not really true. There are also way more factors involved and people’s perceptions of what a ‘living wage’ are wildly skewed. I make about 150K and many folks think I am living in poverty in my city.
Some of these ‘costs’ are wildly over and wildly under, and very hard to generalize because people have such wildly different living standards/expectations. Someone who is 20yo is going to have way lower costs than someone who is 50yo.
My brother, a living wage includes “Adequate income for food shelter and recreation”
yes, as imagined by some MIT people, who are overwhelmingly wealthy/upper middle class types. it’s a theoretical measure, not one reflective of people’s real lives. This is your typical ‘academic researcher totally out of touch with how real people live their lives’ stuff.
70K for 22 year old is a boatload of money, it’s not ‘adequate’ for someone who is 65 and has to live in an assisted facility, it wouldn’t cover the basic costs, they’d need closer to 100K+
Do you consider a $200 semi-fancy dinner at a restaurant
Genuinely unthinkable.
if an average joe were to earn the FEDERAL mandated minimum wage of $7.25, is buying a whole weeks worth of groceries affordable with that alone
Yes, but only because you stipulated that you’re somehow not paying rent because rent would likely eat your entire wage
So your question is “is the cost of living magically lower for people who make minimum wage?”
A genuinely confusing post.
Eating out is ridiculously expensive these days and on minumum wage (even on the $15+/h local minimum wage here) you can’t eat out very often. Can you buy a week’s worth of groceries on 40*7.25=$290, maybe $200 after taxes, assuming your housing and everything is paid some other way? Yes $200/week for groceries is plenty for one person who spends carefully. I don’t spend anywhere near that much.
$200 sounds about right for what I’d call a semi-fancy restaurant meal for 4 people including some drinks etc. I wouldn’t call it cheap in the sense that I would want to do it frequently. It would be a ridiculous luxury for someone on $7.25/h. Try a Costco pizza for cheap filling take-out.
Yes $200/week for groceries is plenty for one person who spends carefully. I don’t spend anywhere near that much.
That’s a heck of a lot more than I spend on my family of 4 for groceries! Even with an added allergy that means some of the stuff that’s normally $2-3 we have to get ~$10 variants of
This comment comes up every single time food prices are mentioned. And it is never useful.
I am legitimately happy for you, but your circumstance is not everyone else’s and you may not be doing it on purpose, but making this claim could make someone else who can’t pull that off feel like less of a parent, or less of a provider.
$200 for any meal is crazy expensive (unless you’re feeding a table of 6). There are obviously way more expensive places out there but if I go for a rare and fancy meal for 2 it’s usually under $150. And that’s not a normal dining experience, because it is not seen as cheap. Cracker barrel breakfast is way more food for less than McDonald’s (which is actually expensive these days).
If you make the federal minimum wage in the US, you likely qualify for government assistance to supplement your income for buying groceries in the form of what was once called “food stamps”. We have large employers taking advantage of that by instructing their own employees to sign up for those benefits when they hire them, in the hopes that they then spend that food assistance at the place they work (Walmart). Effectively making our taxpayers supplement the poor wages the employer pays their employees, and turning that supplementation into their own income. The US is a grifter’s paradise if you’re part of the in-group.
No. It looks like you might be considering the cost of $200 in isolation against a wage of $15/h, but that wage also has to cover the costs like rent and bills that you say to exclude, without explaining why you would exclude them.
No. Minimum wage is/was never supposed to be a wage for an adult to support themselves. It’s a wage floor for part time workers. Also most state have their own higher wages. in HCOL states it’s 15-17/hr and that’s still not enough to support yourself in those states.
But that doesn’t stop people from buying stuff like that, people often spend more than they make due having access to credit.
Also… fancy dinners in the USA in a major city are like $500 or more. Not $200.
The ONLY time that I have EVER spent that kind of money on a meal was to take my wife out for her birthday once to an EXTREMELY high-end restaurant with a chef’s tasting menu kind of thing. It was by far the most extravagant and overly ridiculous meal I’ve ever had and I will NOT be doing it again. The money was for the ‘experience’ and not the food. Gimme some fried chicken over caviar any day.
Typical ‘eating out’ meals are around $30 - $40. Grocery store trips are between $100 and $300 depending on what we need. Fast food is rarely over $30, and if it is it’s because I got it delivered.
I tend to be fairly frugal when it comes to grocery shopping. I’ll go to Aldi for most things, or look for ‘store brand’ knockoff products elsewhere. I swapped ground beef for ground turkey years ago and I can get a pound of that for $2 at Aldi.
how long ago was that?
a tasting menu for two in my city is over $1000+
$200 is like a first date a pub these days.
Two years ago? I think? Might be more. I’ve slept since then.
I was going on $200 dinner dates in 2007, but back then that was a nice place that today would cost you $600+
