4 ms·
"Every minute you spend shopping for groceries or cooking your own food is one less minute you could spend at work. So you live on fast food and a big chunk of
by natrius 14y ago
"Every minute you spend shopping for groceries or cooking your own food is one less minute you could spend at work. So you live on fast food and a big chunk of your paycheck goes to a fast food restaurant."
Do poor people resent fast food restaurants for providing them with cheaper food than they can make at home (including the cost of their time)? I presume they don't. Fast food restaurants provide a valuable product that poor people want to have. I wouldn't call that fleecing.
- angersock 14y agoCome now, the restaurants have every incentive to make a food product that is valuable to poor folks while still keeping costs as low as possible. Also note that making shit food tasty while still being cheap is indeed fleecing, and the oldest trick in the book: sweet, fat, salty. Consider how cheap it is to make soft drinks, which are easily preferred by most folks, and yet how terrible they are for your health. Humans are hardwired to seek out certain flavors and characteristics, and large fast food joints do nothing but exploit this. Now, consider how the markets and government reward farmers for growing things that may be in excess of what people need (lol corn subsidies) and how they drive upwards prices of food perceived as a status symbol (compare "organic" produce or milk with the mass-produced varities). It's a pretty rigged system.
- natrius 14y agoThis doesn't seem relevant to the financial fleecing the article is referring to. I'm all for eliminating subsidies, educating people better about nutrition, and mandating that restaurants provide nutritional information about food that consumers are likely to see at the time of purchase.