4 ms·

Reality: A few years ago this would have been relevant. Most people can only afford the knockoffs now. My Chipotle meal cost $17 yesterday. It used to cost $8.

by dheera 3mo ago

Reality: A few years ago this would have been relevant. Most people can only afford the knockoffs now. My Chipotle meal cost $17 yesterday. It used to cost $8. The $9 difference is going to come out of my budget to buy authentic brands and buy local stuff. If you don't like it, make my Chipotle meal $8 again or double my salary, reduce my taxes, and don't pull random geopolitical shit that crashes the S&P500 every other weekend, and then we'll talk.

Cyberdog 3mo ago
Make your burrito or bowl at home, and it'll cost $4 or less.
- IncreasePosts 3mo ago
  That sounds really cheap, if you don't consider that you need to do all the shopping, you need to prepare all the food, and deal with probably a bunch of food waste.
  - otikik 3mo ago
    This was actually tried. Cheaper and healthier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRtoUoBgjDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRtoUoBgjDw
    - ssl-3 3mo ago
      That video shows a person spending more than $34 on groceries and making exactly 1 burrito.
      - otikik 3mo ago
        You didn't watch it then. The leftovers would allow him to make way more burritos than just one.
        ssl-3 3mo ago
        I saw what I saw. If there are more burritos in the future, then: I eagerly await Episode 2: One More Burrito [from last week's funky leftovers]
        otikik 3mo ago
        He says it right after returning from the store. Like "I bought this bag of 12 tortillas, I only need one for this burrito, obviously I would be using the rest for other things".
        ssl-3 3mo ago
        Sure. Tortillas can indeed last for quite a long time without any particular extra effort. Those 11 unused tortillas account for $4.39. We'll take that off of the total. The cost of the singular burrito has now been reduced to ~$30, which still seems rather expensive.
        otikik 3mo ago
        I'm not going to do the whole split here. If you want, watch the video. If you don't want to, just take my word for it that there's plenty of leftovers besides the tortillas.
    - IncreasePosts 3mo ago
      My point is it's cheap if you value your time at $0.
      - otikik 3mo ago
        Actually given that in the US especially you would have to drive to chipotle, queue and then wait for them to prepare it, and you are already doing groceries anyway, you are exchanging driving and waiting at a Chipotle by cooking things at home. I find the second more enjoyable, but I understand that for people that don't like cooking it might not be the case.
  - Cyberdog 3mo ago
    Are you someone who has the capability to be constantly making money any time you want to? If not and you just have a normal 9-5 job or something close to it, you have plenty of time to shop for an hour once a week, then spend 10-30 minutes a day making your own lunches and dinners and still come ahead financially -- way, way ahead. I have no idea where you're coming from with the "dealing with food waste" part so I'll just ignore it.
    - IncreasePosts 3mo ago
      Are you someone who has the capability to create extra time in your day? If not and you just have a few hours of free time per day, you can choose to spend some of that free time cooking, or you can let someone else cook for you and use that time on other things you value more than saving $10 or whatever. The strategy is dependent on what is more precious to you - time, or money. Telling someone they should spend their time to save $10 is pretty pointless if you don't know what their financial situation is and whether that $10 has any meaning. Food waste is food that you buy which is not ultimately consumed , which increases your cost per meal. This might be trimmings, it might be something you burn, it might be leftovers you don't get to.
  - mplewis 3mo ago
    is this your first time being introduced to the concept of cooking?
    - coryrc 3mo ago
      Why is it a sin in America to take advantage of economies of scale for cooking but not for anything else?
- mindslight 3mo ago
  Do you enjoy eating just rice wrapped in a tortilla or something? Burritos are a harsh illustration of the economy of scale. Doing a quick tally with sale prices, and I'd think buying all the ingredients to make one single burrito would be upwards of $20-25, at least. Never mind the time to cook each ingredient that needs to be cooked. And most of these supplies and prep are going to last what, ~4 days before they spoil?
  - Cyberdog 3mo ago
    But you wouldn't be making a single burrito. You'd be making several over several days, and/or using the leftover ingredients for other meals. Economic literacy is truly dead, isn't it? Good lord.
    - mindslight 3mo ago
      This is what you said: "Make your burrito or bowl at home, and it'll cost $4 or less" That statement implies you can straightforwardly save by substituting that one meal with a made at home meal. The reality is much more complicated, as shown by your backpedaling to making several burritos and other meals. I could just as easily lob that economic literacy jab right back at you. For example, perhaps OP has a burrito once a week, to break up the monotony of eating a home made sandwich every other day. That would be savvy, right?
      - Cyberdog 3mo ago
        I mean, I figured the concept of buying ingredients to make a single meal for one person and then just throwing whatever's left away is so ridiculous on the face of it that I wouldn't need to qualify it, but apparently I was wrong. I currently live by myself and I bought a pork loin to barbecue for Independence Day as a treat. I bought one of the smallest ones I could find, then ate about a third of it that night. Then I put the rest in the fridge and ate it over subsequent days - one night I had it on its own with some veggies on the side, and another I sliced it up thin and topped some ramen with it. The loin cost me about $5, but to say that the meat for that one meal on Independence Day cost me $5 is baffling logic. Maybe we can simplify this. Do you eat breakfast cereal? If you buy a box of breakfast cereal for $4 and a gallon of milk for $4, then have a bowl of cereal with milk the next day, do you think that means that one bowl of cereal cost you $8?
- dheera 3mo ago
  I have work to do. I'd probably get PIP if I did that every day.
  - inetknght 3mo ago
    So you're doing work but not willing to pay others to do?
    - dheera 3mo ago
      Nope, because I don't get to keep much of the money that I get from my work.
bluefirebrand 3mo ago
You're not wrong. People are going to be on about "just cook at home" but the general point still is correct. Life has just become a lot more expensive. We need to realize that the cost of food at grocery stores has gone up a lot too.
- dheera 3mo ago
  Exactly. My point is the price of everything has gone up, and the authentic "original" brands are no longer affordable. The knockoffs are still affordable, and with them I'm doing great. I have no incentive to change anything about my spending habits. If the "system" changes itself so that I have a ton more disposable cash lying around then sure I'll re-consider the authentic brands. About the only situation I still buy authentic brands is if there's an electrical safety or lithium battery involved. But yeah, I'm not spending $52.99 on a nice-looking bike bell ([1] with shipping and taxes) when there's a $10 knockoff of it that looks exactly the same and works just as well. Back in the days when the original was $5 and the knockoff was $1, I might be willing to pay for the original. [1] https://us.knog.com/products/oi-luxe-bike-bell https://us.knog.com/products/oi-luxe-bike-bell
Brendinooo 3mo ago
Depending on your date range, much of this difference might be the same inflation that has happened everywhere in the market.
pocksuppet 3mo ago
That is because the value of the dollar is half what it used to be. In other words, inflation has been 20% per year for 5 years. So why do they keep telling us it's 4%?
jcranmer 3mo ago
> My Chipotle meal cost $17 yesterday. It used to cost $8. [...] make my Chipotle meal $8 again or double my salary I don't know what the date brackets are for your meal ranges there, but the largest component of the price increases in things like takeout meals over the past few years has in fact been wage increases for low-wage workers like the people making your Chipotle meal. In other words, it's more expensive because their salaries have doubled.
- inetknght 3mo ago
  That's a great excuse. Meanwhile, there are billionaires whose investment incomes could pay those salaries many times over. Where do those investment incomes come from? Ahh, yes. Profits.
  - jcranmer 3mo ago
    If we're being pedantic, investment income comes from a bunch of people who trade pieces of paper for a living deciding that a particular piece of paper is now worth $1 more today than yesterday. Well, okay, it's not paper anymore, just entries in some computer database in New Jersey or Delaware or something. Investment income--in the form of capital gains--isn't coming from profits, it's coming from the mass delusion in the value of stock assets (which is somewhat correlated with profits, although the existence of stocks like SpaceX or Gamestop show the possible disconnects). If you wanted to complain about the salaries of billionaires, or the stock grants on the other hand... but you said investment income!
  - tptacek 3mo ago
    This is the problem with populism; it's thought-terminating. Do the math on this. Liquidate a mega-billionaire to cover Chipotle's payroll. What happens next year?

by dheera 3mo ago

Cyberdog 3mo ago

Make your burrito or bowl at home, and it'll cost $4 or less.

IncreasePosts 3mo ago
That sounds really cheap, if you don't consider that you need to do all the shopping, you need to prepare all the food, and deal with probably a bunch of food waste.
- otikik 3mo ago
  This was actually tried. Cheaper and healthier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRtoUoBgjDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRtoUoBgjDw
  - ssl-3 3mo ago
    That video shows a person spending more than $34 on groceries and making exactly 1 burrito.
    - otikik 3mo ago
      You didn't watch it then. The leftovers would allow him to make way more burritos than just one.
      - ssl-3 3mo ago
        I saw what I saw. If there are more burritos in the future, then: I eagerly await Episode 2: One More Burrito [from last week's funky leftovers]
        otikik 3mo ago
        He says it right after returning from the store. Like "I bought this bag of 12 tortillas, I only need one for this burrito, obviously I would be using the rest for other things".
        ssl-3 3mo ago
        Sure. Tortillas can indeed last for quite a long time without any particular extra effort. Those 11 unused tortillas account for $4.39. We'll take that off of the total. The cost of the singular burrito has now been reduced to ~$30, which still seems rather expensive.
        otikik 3mo ago
        I'm not going to do the whole split here. If you want, watch the video. If you don't want to, just take my word for it that there's plenty of leftovers besides the tortillas.
  - IncreasePosts 3mo ago
    My point is it's cheap if you value your time at $0.
    - otikik 3mo ago
      Actually given that in the US especially you would have to drive to chipotle, queue and then wait for them to prepare it, and you are already doing groceries anyway, you are exchanging driving and waiting at a Chipotle by cooking things at home. I find the second more enjoyable, but I understand that for people that don't like cooking it might not be the case.
- Cyberdog 3mo ago
  Are you someone who has the capability to be constantly making money any time you want to? If not and you just have a normal 9-5 job or something close to it, you have plenty of time to shop for an hour once a week, then spend 10-30 minutes a day making your own lunches and dinners and still come ahead financially -- way, way ahead. I have no idea where you're coming from with the "dealing with food waste" part so I'll just ignore it.
  - IncreasePosts 3mo ago
    Are you someone who has the capability to create extra time in your day? If not and you just have a few hours of free time per day, you can choose to spend some of that free time cooking, or you can let someone else cook for you and use that time on other things you value more than saving $10 or whatever. The strategy is dependent on what is more precious to you - time, or money. Telling someone they should spend their time to save $10 is pretty pointless if you don't know what their financial situation is and whether that $10 has any meaning. Food waste is food that you buy which is not ultimately consumed , which increases your cost per meal. This might be trimmings, it might be something you burn, it might be leftovers you don't get to.
- mplewis 3mo ago
  is this your first time being introduced to the concept of cooking?
  - coryrc 3mo ago
    Why is it a sin in America to take advantage of economies of scale for cooking but not for anything else?
mindslight 3mo ago
Do you enjoy eating just rice wrapped in a tortilla or something? Burritos are a harsh illustration of the economy of scale. Doing a quick tally with sale prices, and I'd think buying all the ingredients to make one single burrito would be upwards of $20-25, at least. Never mind the time to cook each ingredient that needs to be cooked. And most of these supplies and prep are going to last what, ~4 days before they spoil?
- Cyberdog 3mo ago
  But you wouldn't be making a single burrito. You'd be making several over several days, and/or using the leftover ingredients for other meals. Economic literacy is truly dead, isn't it? Good lord.
  - mindslight 3mo ago
    This is what you said: "Make your burrito or bowl at home, and it'll cost $4 or less" That statement implies you can straightforwardly save by substituting that one meal with a made at home meal. The reality is much more complicated, as shown by your backpedaling to making several burritos and other meals. I could just as easily lob that economic literacy jab right back at you. For example, perhaps OP has a burrito once a week, to break up the monotony of eating a home made sandwich every other day. That would be savvy, right?
    - Cyberdog 3mo ago
      I mean, I figured the concept of buying ingredients to make a single meal for one person and then just throwing whatever's left away is so ridiculous on the face of it that I wouldn't need to qualify it, but apparently I was wrong. I currently live by myself and I bought a pork loin to barbecue for Independence Day as a treat. I bought one of the smallest ones I could find, then ate about a third of it that night. Then I put the rest in the fridge and ate it over subsequent days - one night I had it on its own with some veggies on the side, and another I sliced it up thin and topped some ramen with it. The loin cost me about $5, but to say that the meat for that one meal on Independence Day cost me $5 is baffling logic. Maybe we can simplify this. Do you eat breakfast cereal? If you buy a box of breakfast cereal for $4 and a gallon of milk for $4, then have a bowl of cereal with milk the next day, do you think that means that one bowl of cereal cost you $8?
dheera 3mo ago
I have work to do. I'd probably get PIP if I did that every day.
- inetknght 3mo ago
  So you're doing work but not willing to pay others to do?
  - dheera 3mo ago
    Nope, because I don't get to keep much of the money that I get from my work.

bluefirebrand 3mo ago

You're not wrong. People are going to be on about "just cook at home" but the general point still is correct. Life has just become a lot more expensive. We need to realize that the cost of food at grocery stores has gone up a lot too.

dheera 3mo ago
Exactly. My point is the price of everything has gone up, and the authentic "original" brands are no longer affordable. The knockoffs are still affordable, and with them I'm doing great. I have no incentive to change anything about my spending habits. If the "system" changes itself so that I have a ton more disposable cash lying around then sure I'll re-consider the authentic brands. About the only situation I still buy authentic brands is if there's an electrical safety or lithium battery involved. But yeah, I'm not spending $52.99 on a nice-looking bike bell ([1] with shipping and taxes) when there's a $10 knockoff of it that looks exactly the same and works just as well. Back in the days when the original was $5 and the knockoff was $1, I might be willing to pay for the original. [1] https://us.knog.com/products/oi-luxe-bike-bell https://us.knog.com/products/oi-luxe-bike-bell

Brendinooo 3mo ago

Depending on your date range, much of this difference might be the same inflation that has happened everywhere in the market.

pocksuppet 3mo ago

That is because the value of the dollar is half what it used to be. In other words, inflation has been 20% per year for 5 years. So why do they keep telling us it's 4%?

jcranmer 3mo ago

> My Chipotle meal cost $17 yesterday. It used to cost $8. [...] make my Chipotle meal $8 again or double my salary I don't know what the date brackets are for your meal ranges there, but the largest component of the price increases in things like takeout meals over the past few years has in fact been wage increases for low-wage workers like the people making your Chipotle meal. In other words, it's more expensive because their salaries have doubled.

inetknght 3mo ago
That's a great excuse. Meanwhile, there are billionaires whose investment incomes could pay those salaries many times over. Where do those investment incomes come from? Ahh, yes. Profits.
- jcranmer 3mo ago
  If we're being pedantic, investment income comes from a bunch of people who trade pieces of paper for a living deciding that a particular piece of paper is now worth $1 more today than yesterday. Well, okay, it's not paper anymore, just entries in some computer database in New Jersey or Delaware or something. Investment income--in the form of capital gains--isn't coming from profits, it's coming from the mass delusion in the value of stock assets (which is somewhat correlated with profits, although the existence of stocks like SpaceX or Gamestop show the possible disconnects). If you wanted to complain about the salaries of billionaires, or the stock grants on the other hand... but you said investment income!
- tptacek 3mo ago
  This is the problem with populism; it's thought-terminating. Do the math on this. Liquidate a mega-billionaire to cover Chipotle's payroll. What happens next year?